The Evolution of God by Robert Wright

From the Publisher

The prize-winning author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero presents a groundbreaking examination of religion through the ages.

The New York Times - Paul Bloom

In his brilliant new book, The Evolution of God, Robert Wright tells the story of how God grew up. … 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.

Publishers Weekly

Wright's brief reveals why religious and scientific beliefs do not have to be mutually exclusive. While his history of monotheistic religions is accessible, if not illuminating, his game theory approach to God and religious coexistence and harmony is dense and difficult to process aurally. Arthur Morey delivers a flat and monotonous reading. While he does inflect, his projection lacks the emphasis and energy to sustain listeners through all 19 hours of this production. A Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, May 11). (July)

Library Journal

While the diatribes of the "new atheists"—Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and company—have made headlines in recent years, Wright (The Moral Animal, Nonzero) takes a decidedly more friendly approach to human religiousness. Although he shares their materialist, naturalist assumptions, he argues that over time human notions of God have "gotten closer to moral and spiritual truth….Religion hasn't just evolved, it has matured." Making the best recent scholarship accessible to the general reader, Wright follows the historical trajectory from polytheism through monolatry (worship of one god among many) to monotheism, focusing primarily on the evolving vision of God in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur'an, and ending with a discussion of religion's place in human evolution. In his focus on scriptures, Wright avoids the philosophical terrain covered more intently in Karen Armstrong's The History of God and The Great Transformation. VERDICT Wright's approach will appeal to a broad range of readers turned off by the "either/or" choice between dogmatic atheism and religious traditionalism. Recommended for all readers engaged in consideration of our notions of God.—Steve Young, McHenry Cty. Coll., Crystal Lake, IL

Kirkus Reviews

Wright (Nonzero, 2001, etc.) joins the decade's bandwagon with a tome explaining away God as something people made up over time. Focusing on the monotheistic, "Abrahamic" God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the author trains his critical eye and evolutionary insight on the Bible and Koran and what they represent. In opposition to the Talmudic accounts of Abraham, Moses and other patriarchs, Wright sees a faith adapted by an indigenous people from polytheistic roots for social and even political reasons. "Apparently Abrahamic monotheism grew organically out of the ‘primitive' [religion] by a process more evolutionary than revolutionary," he writes. Extant scriptural accounts are the work of layer upon layer of editors who slowly turned polytheism into monotheism to serve the purposes of the times. None of this is particularly new; what Wright adds is his own language about how God, or rather our view of God, changes morally over time. "Monotheism turns out to be, morally speaking, a very malleable thing," he writes. "Circumstances change, and God changes with them." For instance, Wright argues that Jesus as most people know him, and indeed as the New Testament presents him, is very different from the "historical Jesus" gleaned by scholars from analysis of the texts. This argument has been gathering force for nearly a century, but the author adds an analysis of how supposed additions to Jesus' teachings came about due to moral issues faced by his later followers. Namely, preachers such as Paul wanted the movement to grow, and therefore ascribed to Jesus a love of all peoples and a universal mandate for evangelism. "Traditional believers," as Wright calls them, will find all this adifficult pill to swallow, but they do not appear to be his intended audience. Offers little new scholarship, but the in-depth approach yields original insights.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents