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book review: The Evolution of God

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The Evolution of God
by: Robert Wright

Yep, you guessed it – the reason I haven’t written a book review in…at least a month was that I’ve been reading nonfiction.  Yes, a single nonfiction book, even one that I generally enjoy and am interested in, will grind down my pace of reading 15fold (2 days->30).  So don’t take it as anything against this book that it took me a month to read it.  It just did.

A book like this just isn’t going to interest some people, so for the interest of civil discussion, don’t chime in if you’re not going to do any more than point out something like that.

That out of the way… the format and style of writing here was quite interesting.  It was very casual slash armchair-scientist, but not really in a bad way.  He lays out a reasonable case by way of all kinds of examples – there’s stuff here from a decent swath of academia: sociology, evolutionary biology, history, archaeology, biblical/Koran/Torah scholarship, etc.

I think there’s a central thesis.  He doesn’t exactly set out to prove it though – merely to show that it’s a possibility, which is an interesting take in today’s world of hardheaded side-taking.  The thesis -  I’m totally going to butcher this, so bear with me -  is that there are things that could be construed as  evidence, based on mankind’s sort of “moral drift” towards what we would generally agree are more positive points of view, that some kind of divinity like being may exist and if so, it is something like Philo’s Logos. Ie if there is a single “god”, then maybe it is a god that operates in ways humans can’t describe and all the various religions we see (he mostly focuses on the Mosaic trinity of modern big guns, but spends a decent amount of time on religions from most sizes & states of social groupings) are poor mappings filtered through the social animal.  Sort of.  Roughly.

It’s a more modern take (using lots of modern data and methodology) on an old, old idea, and it has a bit of bite to it. I’m not convinced of anything – and he doesn’t really set out to MAKE YOU BELIEVE HIM, which I think is admirable – but it’s nice to have another way to look at things, especially if you are inclined to see the spiritual in the natural world, but don’t buy into any of the “old men in the sky” religions.

There’s lots in here on the way social groups of various size use and benefit from religion, evolutionary reasons for doing so, and large sections on each of the Mosiac threesome.  Definitely worth reading if you enjoy this kind of thing (which I do, in small doses).

THREE AND A HALF STARS


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