How God has shown the way, particularly when the needs of our society change
Review Essay on The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
Robert Wright likes to take on the big questions. In this book, he looks at God, or rather, how God has evolved in the minds (and political institutions) of men. There are a few basic ideas he wants to get across. First, he explores how the conception of God – as wrathful and intolerant or as promoting universal brotherhood, etc. – evolved in response to events on earth. Second, in using the languages of economics and Darwinism, he attempts to demonstrate that there are practical, indeed “scientific”, reasons behind our changing conceptions. Finally, he describes the evolution of human morality and empathy as an advancement of the truth, a clearly discernible progression, at least as measured by how we have to get along in an ever-more complex society. While there are many problems and issues with these notions, this is a very stimulating reading experience.
Wright sees two poles from which to view religion. On the one hand, there is the cynical view, as articulated by HL Mencken. This version is self-serving, believing because of what you can get (and how you might manipulate other believers). On the other hand, there is the idealistic functionalism of William James, i.e. the “belief in unseen order to which we must adjust harmoniously in order to achieve supreme good”, so you adjust to our idea of the supreme being. Wright favors the idealistic view, that religion has evolved and matured to get closer to spiritual truth.
The developmental stages of religion that Wright sees are a fun tour of our social and institutional history. In hunter-gatherer societies, the absence of sanction (beyond perhaps ostracism or exile) reflected the fact that all members lived in an intimate, transparent group, with a maximum of 50 people, basically an extended family. With everyone knowing everyone personally, wrongdoing was simply impossible to conceal. (If you stole something, your victim would easily see it in the meager possessions one could carry around.)
Natural selection, Wright continues, designed the human mind during the hundreds of thousands of years of living in hunter-gatherer societies; in particular, it favored kin selection and reciprocal altruism as keys to group survival. Decency to those who belonged to the extended family. Notably, ethics and empathy didn’t extend to strangers, who were not even seen as people. They could be killed with impunity and wars between small groups were incessant.
Religion in hunter-gatherer societies was simple: to explain why bad things happened and offer a way to make things better. There were no deities as such, just mysterious forces and some ancestor worship.
The next stage was shamanic religions, which appeared when humans began to agglomerate in larger, more permanent dwellings. In wanting to understand the “puzzling, momentous force” of nature, the shaman represented a link to the earliest real religion – an amalgam of beliefs, a variety of spirits – and a distinct body of belief and practice under an authoritative leader or institution. Wright argues that it started with telling stories, with the more successful raconteurs becoming leaders. Credibility depended on ongoing displays of supernatural power. They could easily lose it, which often led to trickery. The shaman might also be psychotic, a bridge to another plane of existence that the insane alone might be equipped to access. Finally, shamanism was used, Wright believes, as the first means to wield political power.
Functionalists portray shamanic religion as serving society as a whole. Communion is vitality, conformance to beliefs and mores a cooperative exercise that enhanced survival skills. Cynics see it as serving the powerful to hoard resources.
The age of chiefdoms arose prior to wholly agricultural societies: more urban, more complex, with groups up to thousands of people. Rulers relied on the supernatural, boasting a special connection to the divine that fuses with larger-scale political leadership. These societies were polytheistic, with gods for every task and purpose; the chief was often a “direct descendant” from them. Taboo (tapu) set things or behaviors apart and forbid them, a power that the chief decided. Mana, or magical/divine power that favored efficiency and success, was what made the chief special.
The society needed stricter rules because in an urbanizing setting, there were more possibilities of misbehavior and exploitation. Stolen goods could easily be hidden in a city; everyone around you was not a family member or even a personal acquaintance, so wrongdoing easily went unpunished. To address this conundrum, Wright observes, religion for the first time took on a moral dimension: gods would punish those who violated their taboos or dictates, perhaps even with an afterlife in hell or paradise as recompense for righteousness. Belief in this would encourage self restraint, according to Wright. The gods guarded political power, supervised the economy, and supported social norms. Of course, the chief’s subjects and inferiors were gauging their behavior and effectiveness. Moreover, competition with other chiefdoms offered a concrete comparison, indeed a benchmark of their performance – if they didn’t measure up, they could be out very quickly.
The rise of ancient states in Mesopotamia was the next stage. Defending order against chaos, with mutual awareness of other states in shrinking world, their gods came to understand interdependence; they also tended to be like humans (anthropomorphized), only with supernatural powers. This led to explicit acceptance of the existence of other gods in other states: to get along, this gave them the incentive to find common ground, an “elixir of intercultural amity”. Leaders often brought relatable gods into the same pantheon via syncretism, that is, a melding of beliefs and concepts.
Wright sees this as the beginning of international law. God “would evolve to reflect and reinforce geopolitical logic”. Even conquerors were theologically flexible, employing subject gods as imperialist tools.
Finally, with the hierarchical leadership of the autocrat, the polytheistic pantheon got hierarchy, a step towards monotheism and a “unified theory of nature” under an executive god. Wright believes that the present is the same, if more so: we are bound together in multiple, mutually dependent networks that force ever-closer cooperation, hence we need all our gods to be tolerant of each other.
Wright then turns to the development of monotheism. Monolatry was a step along the way; not quite monotheism, it claimed that others’ gods were merely less deserving of respect. It was at first a rejection of inter-faith amity that would require embrace of foreign gods.
Ancient Israel was polytheist, but gradually accepted Yahweh exclusively. Morphed from a primitive hunter-gatherer god among many, Yahweh became not a force of nature but the lord over all nature, in a realm apart; he was supernatural: an intervener, anthropomorphic, a warrior god. Transcendent, remote, hidden. Early scriptures warned Israelites not to serve other gods, tacitly acknowledging their existence. Yahweh was more powerful, yet less conspicuous than his competitor gods.
As Israelites melded its tribes and ethnic variations closer together, they had to unite to face common enemies, which made friendship and cooperation useful under a patron god, Yahweh. He conquered the forces of nature and absorbed other gods, supposedly all-powerful. He showed no weakness and experienced no humiliation or desire, in contrast to polytheist mythologies.
In historical terms, according to Wright, this Yahweh (as expressed in prophet Hosea’s theology) reflected resistance to demeaning alliance terms and appealed to a nationalist and isolationist spirit. As Wright expresses it, the ascendance of Yahweh was “zero-sum” in its relations to others (what they gain, others lose and vice versa). This made sense to a small state in a region dominated by the superpowers of Mesopotamia and Egypt. There was a class aspect to Hosea, too: the rich liked trade and were cosmopolitan, the poor were less so.
Monolatry supported the legitimacy of the king, with Yahweh as master and guide of state affairs, a political rallying point that would mobilize as it promised victory. In this context, supernatural pluralism became an enemy to royal power. In the 9th century BCE, King Josiah deposed the priests linked to other gods and centralized the cult of Yahweh. Elijah’s portion of Deuteronomy took Josiah’s nationalism and constructed a cohesive Hebrew identity against others, highlighting intolerance.
Wright notes that it was not all smooth sailing. In the Babylonian exile (586 BCE), Yahweh was humiliated by Marduk. Paradoxically, failure intensified devotion as the Israelites tried to make sense of the catastrophe. If God were omnipotent, suffering something like this was his will, so his choice represented a mystery. In the end, theologians concluded the Israelites were not devoted enough – the real cause of the calamity was spiritual infidelity! This intellectual jiujitsu was an attempt to transmute suffering into enhanced religious commitment, as the path to redemptive power. At some future time, perhaps in the afterlife, those who caused the pain would be forced to acknowledge Israel’s superiority.
Monolatry slowly transformed into monotheism, which flatly denied the existence of other gods. In its righteous vengeance, monotheism represented the ultimate promise of justice, however violent. The philosopher Philo (a Greek of Alexandria) added a new wrinkle. He saw tolerance in Yahweh, who was offering a way to moral growth. Intolerance, he argued, led only to intolerance. He worked a higher purpose than revenge and a universalist divine plan into his theology – it was retributive justice that was good news for everyone.
As Wright notes, the flexibility of scripture helped: Philo found what would meet his needs and purpose in them. As many did before him, he took ambiguous passages, retained a selection that suited his argument, employed misleading paraphrases, and used metaphor/allegory to make his point, even when they clearly contradicted the scriptures. Pragmatic as well as a self-serving reason to co-exist, it would be the first step to a non-zero sum mentality. Philo’s ideas appeared in a time of globalization: multinational empires (Persia) had emerged, for which tolerance and collaboration could result in opportunities for mutual gain.
Philo believed that Judaism and Greek philosophy were compatible. This led him to introduce Logos at the dawn of the new millennium, a kind of divine algorithm and wisdom, as Wright puts it. God, in this view, was a programmer rather than anthropomorphic and interventionist. Logos referred to the rules that keep the world operating, that was what God created. (This was an obvious precursor to Enlightenment deism.) Of course, God also gave history a direction toward the good, a blueprint for greater harmony to create unanimity, fellowship, and reciprocity of good feeling. The material world served as a medium for this to play out. In Philo’s theology, trying to understand Logos as God’s will could bring enlightenment. Compliance was virtue. The human mind was also a piece of Logos.
Logos was later adopted in the Gospel of John of the New Testament, with Jesus incarnating generosity, tolerance, universal love. To evaluate Bible’s claims, Wright wryly notes, scholars turned evidence on its head: the less sense it made, the more likely it had occurred. Of course, crucifixion was a problem: if Jesus was the Messiah, why would he have to sacrifice his life for humanity? How, born of a mortal human, could he have divine power? It appears Jesus’ message of love and solidarity was for Jews only, hence not at all intended to be universal. In this way, according to Wright, Jesus was solidly in the tradition of Jewish apocalyptic prophets, to rise above dominant neighboring peoples via inversion of power, in the triumph of the weak, in protest against the Roman Empire. Very much like Reza Azlan’s Zealot.
On the political front, as Wright expresses it, Paul was the entrepreneurial evangelist who brought inter-ethnic brotherly love into Jesus’ message. He advanced 4 core beliefs: 1) Jesus was messiah; 2) he had died as atonement of humanity’s sins; 3) believers of faith could find eternal life; but 4) Judgment Day was coming, so don’t tarry. Paul’s theology played directly into pressing societal needs: Rome at the time was in severe upheaval and the dislocation of civil war. There was also a cosmopolitan mixture of peoples that required a nuanced political hand.
As Paul probably recognized, Rome was well networked and had commercial currents that Christianity could harness into the cause. In their type of monotheism, Christians could give a sense of family and belonging to anybody, though with strict behavioral standards. Meanwhile, as Wright describes it, Paul set up congregations like franchises, with Paul as the CEO who sent epistles to ensure cohesion, i.e. that they didn’t deviate too much from brotherly love. Moreover, Paul lowered barriers of entry by jettisoning many precepts of Jewish law unacceptable to Romans, such as circumcision. He hired people of higher social position (the business class) who could provide meeting places and extend hospitality and reliable lodging to traveling Christians. His push toward moral improvement represented, Wright argues, the surest way to grow.
In their zealous new practices, Christians quickly began to alienate people; conservative Romans were particularly incensed by their refusals to worship state gods or participate in pagan festivals. Nonetheless, as a network, membership in the Christian church offered advantages (“positive network externalities”) even as it became increasingly anti-Semitic. It did mean exclusion as well (of similar monotheist competitors), but was relatively in synch with the ethnic-amity needs of the Roman Empire and so eventually might appeal to the Emperor. Wright believes it was the “fittest” monotheism on offer.
50 years after his death, Jesus became a savior, the gatekeeper to paradise (similar to Osiris) of the redeemed. With original sin from Adam, man had known death. Now, it was claimed, Jesus delivered us from this. “For the born again,” there was a dramatic sense of release from fear of damnation via moral purity and ritual. This was the good news side of retributive justice. Universalist, the appeal was designed by Luke to attract pagans into Christian conversion.
Originally, the evil were going to burn on Earth, which would then become a paradise for the righteously saved. When Paul’s apocalypse failed to imminently materialize on his timetable, the afterlife moved effortlessly to heaven – the payoff wouldn’t be until after death, hence beyond worldly political orders.
Christianity attracted people and got them to behave in ways that sustained the religious organization and expanded it to other congregations they created. Rules kept people from harming neighbors (theft, murder) and discouraged behavior bad for the individual (overindulging, etc.). Earth became impure. As expressed again in Wright’s anachronistic vocabulary, the Roman Church was a non-governmental organization, not the state, so had to stay intact – it linked individual salvation to social one (i.e., Luke got the Christians to adopt Osirian cosmology from Egypt).
Wright treats Islam as an interesting supplement to his argument. The Koran was written at various times in the 7th century CE, closer to Muhammed’s life time than the New Testament was to Jesus’. It was ritually recited, with an aim to memory retention.
As a resident of Mecca, a trading city with polytheistic accommodation to foreign business partners, Muhammed had gone against the interests of the wealthy when he preached monotheism and offered his apocalyptic vision. He took the God of Abraham (renamed Allah) and remade him, transforming the Judeo-Christian theology into an institution of his own making. He was aware that his experience of exile and return were similar to that of Moses and openly compared himself to Jesus. Taken together, this made the life of his followers very harsh; to keep the faithful on board, he offered a sensual paradise. He also preached tolerance and made alliances with local Jews and some Christians, who were like-minded monotheists, even as his long-term goal was to subsume them (Allah was the “one and only God”).
Exiled to Medina, the prophet Muhammed took on the role of politician and military leader. To demonstrate the legitimacy of Allah, he led raids on Meccan caravans, then conquered Mecca. As he built the institutions of Islam, he accepted elements of the other monotheisms to create an eclectic blend potentially acceptable to all (much as did Paul).
When Muhammed’s followers had to fight, they did so in jihad. This notion of holy war has been transmogrified on right-wing websites to say that Muhammed gave license to kill anyone, which Wright argues is a mistranslation of a verse that limited the killing to “polytheists not on your side in this particular war.” Wright concludes that the modern, violent offshoots of Islam do not reflect the intentions of Muhammed, whom he nonetheless sees as a leader who “deftly launched an empire”, an ongoing struggle to expand. When under threat, Muslims could be deadly, but as governors of a large, multi-ethnic empire, they became tolerant and more “brotherly”. Once many non-Muslims were conquered, governance was modified to allow them to pay a tax to retain their faiths – worshipping as they wished – though they lost access to certain career paths.
In other words, Wright portrays Islam as very similar to Judaism and Christianity in evolution. There were periods of zealous apocalyptic prophesy (Jesus when under threat), exile (Moses and the definition of a new faith), and finally the building of institutions and empire (Paul’s evangelical entrepreneurialism) that could at times be cruel but predominantly was accepting and brotherly in order to govern the differing peoples who made up their empires.
Of course, the religions and theologies Wright examines are by no means exclusive categories, but share elements and are ever-changing in their eclecticism and syncretism. Nonetheless, looking in his longitudinal way at the history of religion, Wright argues in favor of the growth of a moral imagination, which he also defines as the truth. This is very similar to Steven Pinker’s claim that things are getting better – much better – than they were in the past, supported in his case by statistics rather than Wright’s theologies. They have a point, but a lot of it smacks of cherry-picking to me.
Indeed, as Wright acknowledges, today’s global system, with its unprecedented and intimate inter-dependence, seems threatened by chaos, with stridently intolerant fundamentalists as a big part of the problem. Scriptures can advance both tolerance and reciprocity (“win-win solutions”) and intolerance and selfishness (“zero-sum” option). What we need, he argues, is to see the advantages in non-zero sum situations and develop the trust required to take advantage of them to universal benefit. Of course, with the human mind designed (by natural selection in hunter-gatherer environment) to feel antipathy to known foes, this works against comprehension and empathy. Hatred blocks moral imagination, Wright recognizes. Therefore, to achieve comprehension (of the motivations of others, of the legitimacy of their grievances), we must overcome our socio-biological programming.
As societies got more complex (or “modern”), Wright concludes, we are often able to transcend this socio-biological legacy. Chiefdoms see mutual benefits in trade and peace. When banding together tribes or creating multi-ethnic societies, we get brotherly love as in Paul’s Rome. Extension of moral imagination brings us closer to moral truth because we must conform to new social conditions. We need to align individual salvation with social salvation – without this alignment, religious movements will probably fail. When people face win-win opportunities and reflect on how much they have to offer, they can work together and open up to each other’s world views.
Some people imagine divine origins in this. Regardless of whether the divine exists or not, Wright concludes, God did grow morally, if fitfully. Allah transcended tribal distinctions, then took on the multinational perspective of empire, though also launched jihad. We need to be humble. Indeed, we should accept idea of godhead, the similarity of all religions, and learn to cooperate and work together to build the future. This is Wright’s message, in my reading.
These ideas are very interesting, a kind of sociology of God as enabler. If you agree that we all must find a way to get along, they are also hard to argue against. In Wright’s view, the character of God continually adapted to address the principal societal needs of their time. Gods emerged when the conditions of hunter-gatherers changed as cities grew, requiring judgmental gods to maintain standards of honesty and city-scale security. Uncompromising and inflexible warrior gods worked for the defense of small, besieged states: they unified their people via religious fanaticism, a species of jihad. Then, as multi-ethnic empires brought together very different peoples into a socially functional whole, the gods became more tolerant, absorbing those of others and concentrating on the commonalities of all humanity. While the monotheistic forms of redemption remain exclusive, they offer salvation to those who join and can be tolerant of those who don’t.
There can be no doubt that there is a lot of truth to this, but Wright’s use of ideal types to make his generalizations makes me uneasy. For example, the hunter-gatherer culture that is supposed to represent a kind of template for our evolutionary makeup – kinship with insiders, hatred for outsiders – strikes me as tenuous at best. Were they really all so similar? Did hunter-gatherer culture shape human nature in the deep evolutionary sense that Wright assumes? I don’t think it was that deterministic. Not by a long shot. Indeed, it is impossible to prove from the available evidence, which puts socio-biology in the realm of metaphysics in my opinion.
Finally, I was disappointed that Wright did not attempt to address atheism and the increasingly secular character of modern urban societies. Perhaps we are reaching the moment when the gods can die out, to be replaced by science and a new version of Enlightenment rationalism. I know that’s unlikely, but I hope some new kind of eclectic religion (or culture or sensibility) can emerge, one that would respect the findings of modern science alongside our needs for spirituality, redemption, and love.
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