The Evolution of God

2009-06-27 08:59 AM

Frank K
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 27

Paul Bloom reviews Robert Wright's new book, The Evolution of God, in this NYT article.

"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 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.”"

However, Bloom doesn't see how Wright's premise "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". Even if God exists, "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".

Worth reading Bloom's entire article at the above link.

2010-01-27 05:08 AM

Blaze Armstrong
Quezon City, Philippines
Posts: 10

The concept of a god does evolve. The same way any culture evolves.