The Evolution of God

Just can't imagine that its been two years since I wrote a blog or logged in here. I am too ashamed to even quote my usual reason of "being lazy" as the reason for delay. Did read a couple of books after the last book (The Grand Viewer) about which I had blogged 2 years back but don't remember all of them. One book which I can recall is "Why Evolution is True" by Jerry A.Coyne. Sufficient to say that its a good read for those who would like to have a solid understanding of the scientific reasons (based on natural selection) behind the story of our evolution.

This blog, however, is about another book and the one I just finished reading called "The Evolution of God" by Robert Wright. Other notable books by the author are: The Moral Animal, Nonzero and Three Scientists and Their Gods. Wright has taught philosophy at Princeton and religion at the University of Pennsylvania and is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and editor in chief of Bloggingheads.tv

The book traces the origin and history of God or the concept of god as carried around by mankind from about 20,000 years ago up untill the present (2009 is when the book was published) and how God might look like in the future. In the first unit, "the birth and growth of gods" is traced as mankind progressed from being a hunter-gatherer society to an agrarian society/chiefdom and then on to the nation-states. The history and evolution of the Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity & Islam - is beautifully narrated in the next three units. In the last unit, Moral Imagination (the capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of others) is discussed. The Afterword "By the Way, What Is God?" which has a good dialogue-like tone between an atheist and believer defending their respective stance made very interesting read. The Appendix "How Human Nature Gave Birth to Religion" discusses how genetic evolution (genes) and cultural evolution (memes) shapes our proclivities toward religion.

There are a couple of  driving points in the book. One is that when a relationship is deemed as a "non-zero sum relationship" (win-win situation), the parties involved in the relationship becomes much more tolerant (and peaceful) toward each others' religious belief. This has what has been observed throughout the human history.
Another point that is stressed is regarding the composing of the holy scriptures. The social/political/technological circumstances in which the author of the scripture finds himself in greatly influences not only the tone used but also perhaps modifications of actual facts. The different accounts of Jesus' birth/birth place or His last words on the cross as recorded in the different Gospels was a striking example. Biblical scholars agree that Mark was the first Gospel written around 30 years after Jesus' death/resurrection and the Matthew and Luke after a decade and then John around 100 A.D. Similarly the varying tone of the Koranic verses ranging from belligerent/violent (Medina suras) to tolearant/peaceful (Mecca suras) is attributed to the circumstances (place and political power) in which Prophet Muhammad found himself in.

Note: This was written a long time/more than a year back but published only now in January 2014!