The+Evolution+of+God

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A Wiki summary of //The Evolution of God// reviews
From Jack Thompson

//**The Evolution of God**// is a 2009 book by Robert Wright that explores the history of the concept of God in the three Abrahamic religions through a variety of means, including archeology, history, theology, and evolutionary psychology. The patterns which link Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and the ways in which they have changed their concepts over time are explored as one of the central themes. One of the conclusions of the book that Wright tries to make is a reconciliation between science and religion. The future of the concept of "God" is also prognosticated by Wright, who attempts to do so through a historical lens.

** Reviews **
Journalist and political commentator Andrew Sullivan gave the book a positive review in //The Atlantic//, saying that the book "...gave me hope that we can avoid both the barrenness of a world without God and the horrible fusion of fundamentalism and weapons of mass destruction." [1@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_God][2@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_God] //Newsweek// religion editor, Lisa Miller, described //The Evolution of God// as a reframing of the faith vs. reason debate. Drawing a contrast to such authors as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, Miller gives an overall positive review of the book's approach to the examination of the concept of God. [3@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_God] In a review for //The New York Times//, Yale professor of psychology Paul Bloom said, "In his brilliant new book, “The Evolution of God,” Robert Wright tells the story of how God grew up."[4@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_God] Bloom sums up Wright's controversial stance as, "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." However, in a //New York Times// review that included a reply from Wright, Nicholas Wade, a writer for the "Science Times" section, notes the book is "a disappointment from the Darwinian perspective", because evolution "provides a simpler explanation for moral progression than the deity Wright half invokes."[5@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_God]. Wright replied to Wade's comments, saying Wade had misunderstood Wright's argument and that "The deity (if there is one–and I’m agnostic on that point) would be realizing moral progress through evolution’s creation of the human moral sense (and through the subsequent development of that moral sense via cultural evolution, particularly technological evolution)."[6@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_God] Wade replied that "evolution seems to me a sufficient explanation for the moral progress that Mr. Wright correctly discerns in the human condition, so there seemed no compelling need to invoke a deity."[6@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_God]

A theist critique of The Evolution of God
from Jack Thompson:

Robert Wright, a former "Christian," and author of //The Moral Animal//, has written a new book, in which he purports to show that the concept of God has evolved along with mankind. Wright believes that the concept of God will continue to evolve until He becomes a complete patsy and all humankind will live together in harmony. Yes, it is the classic "religion is bad" and "atheism will save humanity" story. For having been a "Christian," Wright's handling of the scriptures is actually worse than that of either the LDS or Watchtower faiths, as we shall see.

**//Evolution// summary**
The first three chapters of //The Evolution of God// discuss the origin of gods based primarily upon speculation, based upon modern hunter-gatherer societies, Shamans, and chiefdoms. There are few hard facts about what actual ancients believed prior to the establishment of civilizations. The fourth chapter examines the religions of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt, with their myriad of Gods. The second section of the book examines the purported evolution of God from plurality to singularity, specifically, the establishment of Abrahamic monotheism out of polytheism. We shall examine some of these claims in more detail below. The third section is entitled, "The invention of Christianity" with its usual claims that the Jesus of the New Testament was primarily invented. Interestingly, chapter 11 is entitled, "The Apostle of Love," although it is not about the apostle John, as the average Christian would expect. Instead, Wright seems to think that Paul is the apostle of love, probably based upon 1 Corinthians 13 (which is actually in the context of the members of the church). This is the first time I have heard of anybody describing Paul as the apostle of love, as opposed to the apostle of theology. It makes one wonder exactly how much theology Wright studied when he was a "Christian." We have a page addressing the claim that Paul invented Christianity. The fourth section is entitled, "The Triumph of Islam." Before all you Moslems get your hopes up, like the rest of the book, Wright is not being kind to Islam. However, according to Wright, Muhammad was an ecumenicist - something I have never heard anyone else claim. The fifth section is entitled, "God Goes Global." Wright contends that religions are successful when they produce social "salvation" as opposed to personal salvation. He even contends that the Abrahamic scriptures were really about social salvation, and that the "historical" Jesus may have been "more concerned with social salvation." Accordingly, the next evolution of religion is toward globalization, so that we can all get along together. Wright suggests that "westerners can employ their moral imaginations to appreciate the perspectives of Muslims" since "there probably aren't many people in Indonesia or Saudi Arabia reading this book." In other words, it is "American arrogance" that accounts for Muslim terrorism (probably because of all the religious fundamentalists in the U.S.). Wright says the road to social salvation is through "moral imagination" - "our capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of another person." The problem with such a concept is that if the other person has no "moral imagination" he is apt to blow us out of our shoes! Ultimately, Wright concludes that none of the gods "invented" by human societies really exist. Instead, Wright concedes that some kind of "god" exists that encompasses the ideals of love and truth. He seems genuinely bothered by the existence of love, but hasn't come to the point of dismissing it merely as brain biochemistry, as other atheists have done. Finally Wright authored in an appendix entitled, "How Human Nature Gave Birth to Religion." Although there is a definite association between human nature and religion, Wright seems unaware that there is a question here of cause and effect. Wright assumes human nature gave rise to religion, when, in fact, it could be that religion (i.e., God) gave rise to human nature.

**Evolution of Abrahamic monotheism?**
I would like to deal with the central tenet of Wright's book in more detail, especially the claim that Abrahamic monotheism arose out of polytheism. It is in this section, that Wright shows his willingness to use any and all techniques, especially quoting out of context, to support his hypothesis. Robert Wright claims that the original God of Abraham was just one of many Canaanite gods, which one can get from "decoding" the biblical texts. Wright claims that God was not originally transcendent, but was a "hands-on deity" and cites as evidence that He planted the garden of Eden, made garments to clothe Adam and Eve, and could be heard walking in the garden. Wright seems to fail to understand that God often took on human form in order to interact with human beings, including His incarnation as Jesus Christ. Wright says that God was not omniscient at that time, since He had to ask Adam and Eve where they were hiding. In reality, God was using a technique most parents have used on their children (maybe Wright never had any kids?). Many times, I have asked our three boys a question to which I knew the answer, just to see if they would tell the truth. In fact, God's response indicates that He knew exactly what Adam and Eve had done.1 Of course, Wright doesn't quote from those verses! Wright indicates that the Old Testament actually supports the existence of other Gods. For example he says that the command "You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3), implies that there are other gods. However, just 20 verses below, the text clarifies the command: 'You shall not make other gods besides Me; gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves. (//Exodus 20:23//) So, the text makes it clear that these "gods" are made merely of silver or gold. Does Wright believe that this text is trying to tell us that these gods of silver or gold were real, living deities? I don't think so! The entire point of the commandment is that God wants our loyalty to Him to come before our loyalty to things that we place value on. Jesus confirmed this commandment in saying that loving God was the "great and foremost commandment."2 Wright goes on to say that the scriptures imply the existence of other gods when God uses the plural "Let Us make man in Our image"3 and "let Us go down and there confuse their language,"4 among others.5 However, instead of the "Us" being a plethora of gods, Christianity interprets the "Us" as representing the trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is one God.6 Among the Jews, the "Us" refers to God and His angels. The Old Testament is replete with instances of angels appearing before men and instructing them what God wants them to do.7 The text indicates pretty clearly that God had communicated with the angels who were being used as His instruments - hence the reference to "Us." Wright claims that in "the poems that most scholars consider the oldest pieces of the Bible, there's no mention of God creating //anything//" (emphasis in the original). The statement is blatantly false, since, according to scholars, the consensus oldest book of the Bible, Job, contains the longest creation account in the entire Bible (Job 38-41, 129 verses, compared to only 56 in Genesis 1-2). Wright's claim that "Yahweh was not yet the //cosmic// creator" is laughable, since God clearly describes to Job the founding of the earth, complete with it being originally shrouded in a blanket of clouds and "thick darkness,"8 which is what science tells us. If this is not cosmic creation, then what is? Wright also quotes Psalm 82 as evidence for a divine council of gods: A Psalm of Asaph. God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: (//Psalms 82:1//, ESV) Wright had to quote from an obscure translation (ESV) to support the interpretation he was after. However, if he had quoted from any other translation, the meaning would have been clear that it was no reference to a divine council, but merely a reference to a ruling body. The context makes it clear that these "gods" are merely mortal men who are acting as unrighteous judges in Israel. This example is certainly not a reference to some divine council of gods. In contrast to Wright's interpretations, the Bible makes it clear that the gods of the other peoples are not real, but manmade.9 The Bible also makes it clear that some of these "gods" are demons - fallen angels.10 Other passages make it clear that there is but one God and no others.11 Although Wright claims that those verses were added later, he provides no evidence to support such an assertion, and his verses out-of-context certainly do nothing to add to his argument. If the Bible were truly edited from the original writings, certainly there would be evidence of these changes in the nearly 1,000 years between the copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic text. The complete book of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls is a prime example of monotheistic theology and yet remained virtually unchanged over the centuries. The atheistic claims of extensive editing of the Bible remain unsupported speculation based upon extreme bias toward materialistic naturalism. Wright asserts that another God, named Elyon, was the father of Yahweh, who was given the people of Israel to rule over, citing Deuteronomy 32: "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel. For the LORD'S portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance." (//Deuteronomy 32:8-9//) Contrary to Wright's assertion, Yahweh is the name of God and Elyon (Most High) is one of His many titles. Many passages make it clear that Yahweh //is// Elyon.12 Wright continues with his assertions that Yahweh was a minor god of the Canaanites who had a consort name Asherah. In fact archeologists have found a couple inscriptions to "Yahweh and his Asherah." Does this discovery prove that the God of the Bible evolved from Canaanite polytheism? The reality is that the grammatical structure of the inscription suggests that "his Asherah" should probably be "his asherah" and doesn't really refer to any kind of goddess at all. Even if it did, I would find it extremely unlikely if archeologists did //not// find evidence of polytheism in ancient Israel. The Bible very clearly states that the kings, the common people and even the priests went after other gods, including Asherah. So, it would be expected to find such evidence somewhere in Israel. In fact, I would expect to find much //more// than just a couple examples of polytheism, since about half of the kings of Israel are described as having lead the people astray. If the Bible were trying to hide the existence of polytheism in Israel, why is it so prominently mentioned? The book continues for nearly 500 pages of this nonsense. //The Evolution of God// contains many other atheistic myths that are extensively covered on this website. For more information, see Related Pages, below.
 * A psalm of Asaph. God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the "gods": (//Psalms 82:1//)
 * "How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Selah (//Psalms 82:2//)
 * Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. (//Psalms 82:3//)
 * Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. (//Psalms 82:4//)
 * They know nothing, they understand nothing. They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. (//Psalms 82:5//)
 * I said, 'You are "gods"; you are all sons of the Most High.' (//Psalms 82:6//)
 * But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler." (//Psalms 82:7//)

**Conclusion**
//The Evolution of God// is a prime example of what is wrong with common atheistic scholarship. Robert Wright uses logical fallacies and extensive quoting out-of-context in order to support his hypothesis that God is a made up myth. The book attempts to demonstrate the evolution of God, but merely shows the evolution of Robert Wright to the point that he must believe every atheistic denigration of God in order to prop up his atheistic worldview.



If you want to skip to the chase, here are the final three paragraphs: It is not just moral progress that raises these sorts of issues. I don’t doubt that the explanation for consciousness will arise from the mercilessly scientific account of psychology and neuroscience, but, still, isn’t it neat that the universe is such that it gave rise to conscious beings like you and me? And that these minds — which evolved in a world of plants and birds and rocks and things — have the capacity to transcend this ­everyday world and generate philosophy, theology, art and science?

So I share Wright’s wonder at how nicely everything has turned out. But I don’t see how this constitutes an argument for a divine being. After all, even if we could somehow establish definitively that moral progress exists because the universe was jump-started by a God of Love, this just pushes the problem up one level. We are now stuck with the puzzle of why there exists such a caring God in the first place.

Also, it would be a terribly minimalist God. Wright himself describes it as “somewhere between illusion and imperfect conception.” It won’t answer your prayers, give you advice or smite your enemies.So even if it did exist, we would be left with another good news/bad news situation. The good news is that there would be a divine being. The bad news is that it’s not the one that anyone is looking for.

Cheers, jak  June 28, 2009 

No Smiting (New York Times)
 By PAUL BLOOM  //THE EVOLUTION OF GOD// By Robert Wright 567 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $25.99 God has mellowed. The God that most Americans worship occasionally gets upset about abortion and gay marriage, but he is a softy compared with the Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible. That was a warrior God, savagely tribal, deeply insecure about his status and willing to commit mass murder to show off his powers. But at least Yahweh had strong moral views, occasionally enlightened ones, about how the Israelites should behave. His hunter-gatherer ancestors, by contrast, were doofus gods. Morally clueless, they were often yelled at by their people and tended toward quirky obsessions. One thunder god would get mad if people combed their hair during a storm or watched dogs mate. 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. In sharp contrast to many contemporary secularists, Wright is bullish about monotheism. In “Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny” (2000), he argued that there is a moral direction to human history, that technological growth and expanding global interconnectedness have moved us toward ever more positive and mutually beneficial relationships with others. In “The Evolution of God,” Wright tells a similar story from a religious standpoint, proposing that the increasing goodness of God reflects the increasing goodness of our species. “As the scope of social organization grows, God tends to eventually catch up, drawing a larger expanse of humanity under his protection, or at least a larger expanse of humanity under his toleration.” Wright argues that each of the major Abrahamic faiths has been forced toward moral growth as it found itself interacting with other faiths on a multinational level, and that this expansion of the moral imagination reflects “a higher purpose, a transcendent moral order.” This sounds pro-religion, but don’t expect Pope Benedict XVI to be quoting from Wright’s book anytime soon. Wright makes it clear that he is tracking people’s conception of the divine, not the divine itself. He describes this as “a good news/bad news joke for traditionalist Christians, Muslims and Jews.” The bad news is that your God was born imperfect. The good news is that he doesn’t really exist. Wright also denies the specialness of any faith. In his view, there is continuous positive change over time — religious history has a moral direction — but no movement of moral revelation associated with the emergence of Moses, Jesus or Mohammed. Similarly, he argues that it is a waste of time to search for the essence of any of these monotheistic religions — it’s silly, for instance, to ask whether Islam is a “religion of peace.” Like a judge who believes in a living constitution, Wright believes that what matters is the choices that the people make, how the texts are interpreted. Cultural sensibilities shift according to changes in human dynamics, and these shape the God that people worship. For Wright, it is not God who evolves. It is us — God just comes along for the ride. It is a great ride, though. Wright gives the example of the God of Leviticus, who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and he points out that this isn’t as enlightened as it may sound, since, at the time, “neighbors” meant actual neighbors, fellow Israelites, not the idol-worshipers in the next town. But still, he argues, this demand encompassed all the tribes of Israel, and was a “moral watershed” that “expanded the circle of brotherhood.” And the disapproval that we now feel when we learn the limited scope of this rule is itself another reason to cheer, since it shows how our moral sensibilities have expanded. Or consider the modern Sunday School song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” (“Red and yellow, black and white, / They are precious in his sight.”) Actually, there is no evidence that he loved all of them; if you went back and sang this to the Jesus of the Gospels, he would think you were mad. But in the minds of many of his followers today, this kind of global love is what Christianity means. That certainly looks like moral progress. But God still has some growing up to do, as Wright makes clear in his careful discussion of contemporary religious hatred. As you would expect, he argues that much of the problem isn’t with the religious texts or teachings themselves, but with the social conditions — the “facts on the ground” — that shape the sort of God we choose to create. “When people see themselves in zero-sum relationship with other people — see their fortunes as inversely correlated with the fortunes of other people, see the dynamic as win-lose — they tend to find a scriptural basis for intolerance or belligerence.” The recipe for salvation, then, is to arrange the world so that its people find themselves (and think of themselves as) interconnected: “When they see the relationship as non-zero-sum — see their fortunes as positively correlated, see the potential for a win-win outcome — they’re more likely to find the tolerant and understanding side of their scriptures.” Change the world, and you change the God. For Wright, the next evolutionary step is for practitioners of Abrahamic faiths to give up their claim to distinctiveness, and then renounce the specialness of monotheism altogether. In fact, when it comes to expanding the circle of moral consideration, he argues, religions like Buddhism have sometimes “outperformed the Abrahamics.” But this sounds like the death of God, not his evolution. And it clashes with Wright’s own proposal, drawn from work in evolutionary psychology, that we invented religion to satisfy certain intellectual and emotional needs, like the tendency to search for moral causes of natural events and the desire to conform with the people who surround us. These needs haven’t gone away, and the sort of depersonalized and disinterested God that Wright anticipates would satisfy none of them. He is betting that historical forces will trump our basic psychological makeup. I’m not so sure. Wright tentatively explores another claim, that the history of religion actually affirms “the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity.” He emphasizes that he is not arguing that you need divine intervention to account for moral improvement, which can be explained by a “mercilessly scientific account” involving the biological evolution of the human mind and the game-theoretic nature of social interaction. But he wonders why the universe is so constituted that moral progress takes place. “If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe — conceivably — the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.” It is not just moral progress that raises these sorts of issues. I don’t doubt that the explanation for consciousness will arise from the mercilessly scientific account of psychology and neuroscience, but, still, isn’t it neat that the universe is such that it gave rise to conscious beings like you and me? And that these minds — which evolved in a world of plants and birds and rocks and things — have the capacity to transcend this ­everyday world and generate philosophy, theology, art and science? So I share Wright’s wonder at how nicely everything has turned out. But I don’t see how this constitutes an argument for a divine being. After all, even if we could somehow establish definitively that moral progress exists because the universe was jump-started by a God of Love, this just pushes the problem up one level. We are now stuck with the puzzle of why there exists such a caring God in the first place. Also, it would be a terribly minimalist God. Wright himself describes it as “somewhere between illusion and imperfect conception.” It won’t answer your prayers, give you advice or smite your enemies. So even if it did exist, we would be left with another good news/bad news situation. The good news is that there would be a divine being. The bad news is that it’s not the one that anyone is looking for. Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale, is the author of “Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human.” His book “How Pleasure Works” will be published next year.