Did People Create God, Rather Than the Other Way Around? Bestselling "The Evolution of God" (Hardcover) -- 576 Pages
Robert Wright
BuzzFlash.com's Review (excerpt)
In this bestselling book, Robert Wright exhaustively explores monotheism as a way of coping with the world. That is to say, the creation of a God is a "hot-wired" sociological attempt to cope with some sort of moral order.
Wright presents an optimism that in the face of a world without the "concept" of God, anarchy would prevail. He looks at the overall trajectory of religious evolution, which allows him to explain the wars fought because of religion as deviations from an overall trend of acceptance.
Wright is hardly for the true believer, in that he explains the development of Christianity, for instance, as one of political negotiation and marketing savvy. But he offers dazzling insights into why most men and women need a God -- and that religion is, perhaps, preferable in terms of social order than warring tribal identities, because it offers the possibility of "negotiated" reconciliation between religions that supersede national and tribal identities.
You can watch Robert Wright talk about the book by clicking here.
Obviously, this is a provocative, thoughtful reflection on how God was created due to social needs -- and that there may be, ironically, something mystically divine in that need, although without the dogma of any given religion.
Fascinating stuff.
"In his brilliant new book, The Evolution of God, Robert Wright tells the story of how God grew up. He starts with the deities of hunter-gatherer tribes, moves to those of chiefdoms and nations, then on to the polytheism of the early Israelites and the monotheism that followed, and then to the New Testament and the Koran, before finishing off with the modern multinational Gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Wright's tone is reasoned and careful, even hesitant, throughout, and it is nice to read about issues like the morality of Christ and the meaning of jihad without getting the feeling that you are being shouted at. His views, though, are provocative and controversial. There is something here to annoy almost everyone."
-- Paul Bloom, New York Times
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