Survival of the nicest

As they evolve, religions promote greater tolerance and peace

June 28, 2009|Dan Cryer, Globe Correspondent

THE EVOLUTION OF GOD
By Robert Wright
Little, Brown, 576 pp., $25.99

Count on Robert Wright to place whatever he examines under the microscope of evolutionary theory.

That was his strategy in “The Moral Animal’’ for illuminating such topics as friendship, monogamy, and xenophobia. In “Nonzero,’’ Wright linked Darwinian thought to game theory to suggest that human history is moving inexorably toward “win-win’’ global amity, that hatred has lost its usefulness in an increasingly interdependent world.

Wright’s new book, “The Evolution of God,’’ springs naturally from these explorations as well as from his debut, “Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning on the Age of Information.’’ Not a scientist or a theologian, he’s nonetheless fascinated by innate social mechanisms that nudge people toward cooperation rather than conflict, and that point toward some trans-human entity that might be called God.

As a lively writer, supple thinker, and imaginative synthesizer, Wright is bound to attract attention. His sprightly style deprives his subject of any solemnity. “Among the Aranda of central Australia,’’ he writes, “one of the shaman’s jobs was ensuring that solar eclipses would be temporary - nice work if you can get it.’’

As a bold formulator he’s also a lightning rod for controversy. “The Evolution of God,’’ which explores permutations in our concepts of the deity, will please neither hard-core atheists nor fundamentalists of any faith. It’s too open to theism for the former, too rooted in scientific rationalism for the latter.

Wright assumes from the outset that religions change. And the most trustworthy means of explaining why is to trust “the facts on the ground’’ - that is, the economic-social-political context. In the final analysis, he emerges as an optimistic materialist. For he concludes that change will eventually tilt toward a more benign global religious environment. Now before you can shout “9/11’’ or “jihad,’’ listen to his argument.

The author traces the growth of gods from the animism of hunter-gatherers (where spirits rule over natural phenomena) to the polytheism of chiefdoms and ancient states (where multiple gods govern every aspect of life). These gods are hardly paragons of right living; they are capricious and often cruel. Over millennia, these models give way to a hierarchy of gods, with a powerful sovereign in charge, and, later yet, to monolatry, in which a city-state or nation bows to a single god considered superior to all others.