robert wright’s new book the evolution of god sounds like a worthy read. its main thesis seems to be that over time, the abrahamic

god has mellowed

today’s god is gentler and morally superior to yahweh who in turn was gentler and kinder than the hunter-gatherers’ god.

it sounds like an optimistic book (the premise is extrapolated into the future). paul bloom in his ny times review says

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.”

wright dismisses the search for an inherent moral character of the monotheistic religions, instead claiming that

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.

bloom:

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.

i side with wright’s view that we are moving towards a society more inclined to empathetically inclusive interpretations and interrelations of monotheistic religions and away from the more common contemporary exclusive self-centeredness that surrounds us.

wright builds on god’s evolution and contemplates the evolution of divinity:

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.

bloom disagrees, he’s more inclined to see a god usurped than evolved as am i but i look forward to reading wright out.

he is interviewed in the ny times’ book review podcast:

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wright writing in the april issue of the atlantic displays the optimism that a globalized increasingly interconnected world will result in a happy ending:

But what about Zoroastrians, who came under Muslim rule with the conquest of Persia? Zoroastrians didn’t have scriptures devoted to the Abrahamic God—and so weren’t in any clear sense “People of the Book.” But, hey, the Zoroastrians did have a book of scripture—the Avesta—so they were in some sense People of the Book, or at least, People of a Book. So they could be tolerated, too! Later, as Muslim conquests spread deeply into Asia, the conquerors found a way to extend this basic idea—taxes in exchange for toleration—to Buddhists and Hindus. Muslim rulers in Africa decided that there, too, polytheists could be tolerated.And, just as Christians asserted that Jesus had said things conducive to cohesion on an imperial platform, Muslims dug up some helpful utterances from Muhammad. For example: “There is no compulsion in religion.”

This saying may well be accurate. It comes from the Koran, which seems to be a more reliable guide to the real Muhammad than the Gospels are to the real Jesus, and it jibes with the fact that tolerance was often in Muhammad’s strategic interest. Thus do Koranic attitudes toward Christians and Jews swing from belligerent to friendly. Indeed, more than once, Muhammad says that Jews and Christians are eligible for salvation. (At one point—by some interpretations, at least—he even seems to leave open the prospect of salvation for polytheists.)

But the hadith—sayings of the Prophet Muhammad as recalled in the oral tradition—remained fluid long after the Koran had congealed, so some parts of the hadith that are invoked to support tolerance fall in the “suspiciously convenient” category. For example: “If they convert to Islam it is well; if not, they remain [in their previous religion]; indeed Islam is wide.”

The hadith also came to the aid of an Islamic scholar who, more than a millennium ago, de-emphasized holy war by calling it the “lesser jihad” and said, “The greater jihad is the struggle against the self.” These two different meanings of jihad are consistent with the diverse uses of the term in the Koran, but on what basis could anyone say which was greater? Reportedly, Muhammad had himself told Muslims returning from war, “You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad.” This account was late to surface, but better late than never.

Globalization is the culmination of this trend, and it features so many non-zero-sum filaments that we lose sight of them. When you buy a car, you’re playing one of the most complex non-zero-sum games in history: you pay a tiny fraction of the wages of thousands of workers on various continents, and they, in turn, make you a car. Or, to take a more pertinent example: “the Muslim world” and “the West” are playing a non-zero-sum game; their fortunes are positively correlated. If Muslims get less happy with their place in the world, more resentful of their treatment by the West, support for radical Islam will grow, so things will get worse for the West. If, on the other hand, more and more Muslims feel respected by the West and feel they benefit from involvement with it, that will cut support for radical Islam, and Westerners will be more secure from terrorism.

If you trust the end-time scenarios laid out in any of the three Abrahamic scriptures, you can rest assured that there will eventually be, in one sense or another, a happy ending. But even for nonbelievers, the scriptures carry a modestly reassuring message, at least when read in light of the social and political circumstances that shaped them: people are capable of expanding tolerance and understanding in response to facts on the ground; and even mandates from heaven can change in response.

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• The Evolution of God by Robert Wright (kottke.org)
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• Decoding God’s Changing Moods (time.com)
• No Smiting (nytimes.com)
• No Smiting (nytimes.com)

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