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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
I got off to a rocky start with this book because the author said some shockingly offensive things and I wasn't sure I'd be able to get past his worldview. (Cherry picking examples of "primitive" religion to paint it as worthy of ridicule, saying that using the itinerant for human sacrifices may have served a need for getting rid of people who "didn't contribute," several casually sexist remarks, etc.) I still wanted to know where he was going with all this so I stuck with it out of curiousity. Then I started learning a lot I didn't know about early Judaism, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, and other interesting history of the Abrahamic religions, so I started patting myself on the back for learning from someone I disagreed with. I was even disappointed in the final section when he raised some big questions and said they would need to be answered in separate book length by someone else, because I wanted to know how *he* would answer them. By the end when he was making the case for the expansion of our collective moral imagination to come to a shared understanding that all people are people, I teared up a little bit. Overall, I do think this book has some value.
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
I think this was just too slow paced for me, and the audiobook I had did not have chapter markers, which made it difficult to schedule time to read for me.
While I appreciate many of the insights, The Evolution of God has some big downsides. In simple terms, it can best be described as a neoliberal or eco-political history of the ways in which the conception of God has changed according to Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).
What can be an interesting framing, becomes a droning note halfway through the book. Wright leans heavily on the notion of non-zero-sum dynamics to justify his belief that "God" has become more moral as religions have universalized and societies have globalized.
Further, he assumes both moral realism and some variance of the correspondence theory of truth. As a materialist, he's hesitant to express a semblance of belief in God, but his reliance on moral realism as a philosophical foundation closely mirrors the way in which people employ "God" to ground truth, existence, and, well, morality.
Not only does he analyze religion through an economic lens, but he also leans heavily on evolutionary psych to justify a bunch of speculative claims about how earlier theists came to their theological conclusions. I don't necessarily disagree with some of these explanations, but feel they are better seen as partial motivations of a much more complex psychological puzzle.
Plus, evolutionary psych has the infamous reputation of being used to rationalize an absurd range of behaviors with negligible evidence. It also doesn't help that the field has a history of being used to justify some pretty atrocious political agendas.
As far as philosophy or psychology of religion goes, I come more from the camp of pragmatist William James, author of the early 20th-century classic The Varieties of Religious Experience, a pluralist tome that resists so much of the reductivism that I encountered in Wright's book. There is little to no employment of humanistic psychology in Wright's analysis of God. Almost no mention of the psychological resonances people have with the Abrahamic faith. Hardly any discussion about the power of myth or fecundity found in archetypes.
Religious experiences are mostly viewed through, you guessed it, an economic mindset: "So, this thing can also be made sense of through this non-zero-sum analysis of mine."
Personally, I much prefer Karen Armstrong's approach to religious analysis.
All these criticisms aside, Wright offers one worthwhile way to look at religious history. One that should be included alongside the many others we have available in our intellectual tool kit.
The Evolution of God gifted me one major takeaway: scriptures are dangerous, especially in the hands of fundamentalists (read: literalists). But, perhaps, they are also catastrophic in the hands of most lay people.
The canon in Abrahamic traditions has been translated, compiled, and edited so many times, contains books from endless authors, and includes obscure references that require a deep knowledge of history and culture, to the point that it seems most contemporary interpretations of any scriptural verse are suspect when taken literally. Changing a single word, such as form, appearance, shape, or body, can wildly modify the meaning of a verse.
Reflecting on my own experiences with religion in America, I've seen the ways in which we moderns imbue the meaning of words in a verse with contemporary American associations that thoroughly miss the mark. The Bible and Qur'an feature complex allusions that require a deep knowledge of Middle Eastern anthropology to understand, if we believe scriptural analysis is about uncovering the original intent of the books' authors.
The Evolution of God reinforces my view that the meaning of scriptures is negotiated and renegotiated continually by communities for particular ends at particular times. Abrahamic scripture can be beautiful and mined for great insights, but we should rarely take any of it as literal.
Scripture, revelations, and words of so-called "prophets" have always been cherry-picked and selectively highlighted to strengthen the political or intellectual interests of the person doing the interpreting.
What can be an interesting framing, becomes a droning note halfway through the book. Wright leans heavily on the notion of non-zero-sum dynamics to justify his belief that "God" has become more moral as religions have universalized and societies have globalized.
Further, he assumes both moral realism and some variance of the correspondence theory of truth. As a materialist, he's hesitant to express a semblance of belief in God, but his reliance on moral realism as a philosophical foundation closely mirrors the way in which people employ "God" to ground truth, existence, and, well, morality.
Not only does he analyze religion through an economic lens, but he also leans heavily on evolutionary psych to justify a bunch of speculative claims about how earlier theists came to their theological conclusions. I don't necessarily disagree with some of these explanations, but feel they are better seen as partial motivations of a much more complex psychological puzzle.
Plus, evolutionary psych has the infamous reputation of being used to rationalize an absurd range of behaviors with negligible evidence. It also doesn't help that the field has a history of being used to justify some pretty atrocious political agendas.
As far as philosophy or psychology of religion goes, I come more from the camp of pragmatist William James, author of the early 20th-century classic The Varieties of Religious Experience, a pluralist tome that resists so much of the reductivism that I encountered in Wright's book. There is little to no employment of humanistic psychology in Wright's analysis of God. Almost no mention of the psychological resonances people have with the Abrahamic faith. Hardly any discussion about the power of myth or fecundity found in archetypes.
Religious experiences are mostly viewed through, you guessed it, an economic mindset: "So, this thing can also be made sense of through this non-zero-sum analysis of mine."
Personally, I much prefer Karen Armstrong's approach to religious analysis.
All these criticisms aside, Wright offers one worthwhile way to look at religious history. One that should be included alongside the many others we have available in our intellectual tool kit.
The Evolution of God gifted me one major takeaway: scriptures are dangerous, especially in the hands of fundamentalists (read: literalists). But, perhaps, they are also catastrophic in the hands of most lay people.
The canon in Abrahamic traditions has been translated, compiled, and edited so many times, contains books from endless authors, and includes obscure references that require a deep knowledge of history and culture, to the point that it seems most contemporary interpretations of any scriptural verse are suspect when taken literally. Changing a single word, such as form, appearance, shape, or body, can wildly modify the meaning of a verse.
Reflecting on my own experiences with religion in America, I've seen the ways in which we moderns imbue the meaning of words in a verse with contemporary American associations that thoroughly miss the mark. The Bible and Qur'an feature complex allusions that require a deep knowledge of Middle Eastern anthropology to understand, if we believe scriptural analysis is about uncovering the original intent of the books' authors.
The Evolution of God reinforces my view that the meaning of scriptures is negotiated and renegotiated continually by communities for particular ends at particular times. Abrahamic scripture can be beautiful and mined for great insights, but we should rarely take any of it as literal.
Scripture, revelations, and words of so-called "prophets" have always been cherry-picked and selectively highlighted to strengthen the political or intellectual interests of the person doing the interpreting.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
a very impressive writing on evolution of God in different religions. His theories on religion resulting from moral and economical needs in the society completely make sense. I also learned a lot on history of religions formation and concept of God.
Biggest takeaway is the idea of nonzero sum games and the idea of steady moral development being caused by increased social interaction between diverse groups (which is caused by technological increase).
An interesting perspective on the development of religious thought from an agnostic approach which employs anthropology, economics, neuroscience, and game theory. Slow at times, but the insights in the concluding section are worth the journey.
challenging
informative
medium-paced