New Book and a NYT Review by Paul Bloom

THE EVOLUTION OF GOD

By Robert Wright

567 pp. Little, Brown & Company. 2009

Except of the review.

“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.”

Book review by:

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.

New York Times, Books, June 26, 2009

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