How’s God Doing?

The Evolution of God
Robert Wright
Little, Brown. 567 pp. ISBN: 9780316734912

In his earlier books, The Moral Animal and NonZero, Richard Wright insisted that humans are maturing morally, and his new book continues that argument. Human beings are expanding “the circle of brotherhood,” neighborliness, and care for others, he claims. They’re learning to play “non zero sum games.” Taken from game theory, that’s a fancy way of saying that when human beings on opposite sides of a question see themselves as beneficiaries of an arrangement, everybody wins.

In The Evolution of God, Wright argues that, despite all the evidence of the violence done in the name of religion and the direct exhortation to kill those who stand in the way of God as defined in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, our concept of God actually is becoming more compassionate and inclusive.

The ancient gods were typically feuding nature spirits, and it was the job of humans to placate them with prayers and sacrifices. Tribal leaders from Polynesia to aboriginal America allied themselves with their gods and “drenched themselves in authority that emanated from Ôthe divine.'” A chieftain’s word became an expression of a something transcendent, superhuman. In the wars between tribes, the gods chose sides (or perhaps more accurately, their followers chose for them).

As tribes and federations began to centralize, so did religion, as seen when the early gods of the tribes of Israel moved from tribal deities to a single dominant god, Yahweh. This took place in stages. There were plenty of pagan deities, like Baal, in the Old Testament. But the Hebrew god was a jealous god, as indicated by the First Commandment: to have no other gods but him.

Yahweh starts life as a “warrior god” who urges the Children of Israel to massacre their enemies as they move from wandering in the desert to invading Canaan, the Promised Land. But with victory and the growth and evolution of these desert tribes, the Lord begins to moderate his ways. He becomes, in Wright’s words, “the chairman of the board and the chief executive.”

The Lord of All proves to be nothing if not a good manager and businessman. After all, it’s easier to run a government by taxing your enemies than by constantly fighting and killing them, Wright reminds us. So, with his added responsibility to govern broadly, Yahweh becomes smarter and more empathetic. Old enemies come in for new consideration, and god the conqueror becomes mellower.

Take the biblical story of the prophet Jonah. People (if they know the story at all, nowadays) remember that he was swallowed by a whale (actually it was a “big fish”). But Jonah’s story is a more complicated tale of sin and forgiveness. God sends Jonah to reprimand the people of Nineveh for their evil ways. At first Jonah resists the assignment. He flees, and is then swallowed by this whalelike fish. Chastened by this near-death experience, he goes to Nineveh and warns the people and their king. Surprisingly, the king relents and agrees to repent (unlike the earlier inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, who refused to stop their sinful ways and were destroyed for their transgressions). God is consciously making Nineveh part of his dominions. However, the city of Nineveh has been a traditional enemy of Israel, and the prophet Jonah is revolted by God’s mercy.

God, no longer just a savage tribal deity, admonishes Jonah for his lack of compassion. The Book of Jonah ends with God explaining to his disappointed prophet, who’s eager to see the blood of his enemies: “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, [where the inhabitants] don’t know their right hand from their left?” God, it seems, is “tolerant of [their] moral confusion,” Wright tells us. “This is a God capable of radical growth,” no longer merely angry at humanity’s sins, but capable of understanding and empathy.

Nevertheless, his evolution doesn’t occur in a straight, unbroken progression. Like the rest of us, God does the moral-improvement jig: two steps forward and a half-step back. The general movement though, argues Wright, is ever onward, toward a new morality of tolerance and compassion.

In Wright’s view, the growing moral maturity of God and his people is a logical development. For instance, accepting others’ customs makes sense because it allows disparate folk to live together, and good governance and commerce require a citizenry at peace. “What starts as a tactical ploy, as grudging coexistence, can for various reasons evolve into a truer, more philosophical appreciation of tolerance—an appreciation even of the beauty of diverse belief,” he argues.

The benefits of tolerance and peace can be traced through history. The Romans, though brutal when crossed, were quite indulgent with the people they conquered, allowing them to keep their customs and gods, as long as they paid taxes and didn’t revolt. The Islamic empire, which spread quickly after Muhammad’s death in the 7th century, conquered vast tracks of land in the name of Allah and acquired many nonbelievers as subjects. These Muslim rulers then had to figure out a way to keep their new empire together. They, too, determined it was better to tax than fight (though they still did plenty of that), argues Wright. It makes sense, he adds, that over the centuries the savviest empire builders are those who evolve morally and learn to support a vigilant peace. In fact, the Golden Rule (Do Unto Others) of many religions, especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is the perfect adage for a liberally minded imperial administrator.

Another savvy empire builder was Paul of Tarsus, whom Wright calls the “CEO of Christianity.” A brilliant religious entrepreneur, Paul removed the new religion of Jesus from the confines of traditional Judaism and introduced the sect to converts across the Roman world. Soon people of many origins began to flock to Christianity, particularly women and people of lower status, who were all included in the growing circle of “ethnic egalitarianism.”

After Constantine made Christianity the dominant religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, there was an increasing consolidation of power in the church hierarchy. Wright spends little time on this era, but the reader is encouraged to fill in the blanks. The moral seesaw proceeds. A religion that was once open to women closes its moral blinds and then becomes oppressive, tyrannical, and—despite the credo the gospels—violent, spawning crusades against fellow Christians and Muslims (not to mention its notorious episodes of anti-Semitism). But Wright no doubt would encourage us to keep the forward movement in mind: even if there are still fundamentalist hardliners today, there’s also a flourishing liberal Christianity that even allows women to be ministers. A new attitude toward gays is now liberal Christianity’s latest moral frontier.

If you argue God isn’t behind any of this—that the idea of God is merely a human construction—Wright won’t disagree. He acknowledges that “if you’re a traditional believer” the concept of an evolving god is hardly “inspiring.” Traditional believers insist god was born perfect—it’s humans who grow to meet his standards. He tells us, though, that it doesn’t really matter whether a god implants some idea that expands our tolerance and care for others or we come up with it ourselves. He even admits he doesn’t know whether there’s a being called God. He does believe, however, that there’s some principle in the universe that gives human history a moral
purpose and that human consciousness progresses toward “moral
enlightenment.”

In a way Wright’s god resembles the force in Star Wars—a principle of universal energy, quite Eastern—more holy spirit than supreme being. His notion of God resembles that found in 12-step programs or Alcoholics Anonymous: God as the “Higher Power,” mediated by our own understanding of the concept.

Wright goes out of his way not to appear dogmatic or prescriptive. He’s always temporizing and wrestling with himself, sometimes twisting himself into a rhetorical pretzel in the process. Here’s a typical formulation: “Maybe the growth of God’ signifies the existence of God.’ That is: 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.” That’s a lot of maybes! Sometimes reading this book is like reading a transcript of a Gestalt exercise, with top and bottom dogs squabbling for rightful position. That’s actually part of the fun and, yes, humanity of it.

Wright is always second-guessing himself, anticipating counterarguments. He knows the history of religion is full of backsliding, because the moral imagination has to be encouraged constantly and “hatred blocks comprehension.” But for Wright, the spirit of moral improvement isn’t some arcane, perfectionist illusion. The “moral axis of the universe” (a phrase he particularly likes) is idealistic, pragmatic, and in accord with evolutionary theory, he says, because it serves humanity’s survival instinct. Call it humane Darwinism.

From small hunter-gatherer clans who fought with each other, to larger, federated political bodies, the circle of trust and even friendship, in Wright’s optimistic view, is always enlarging. One-time bitter enemies, like Japan and the U.S., now are intertwined in an embrace of globalism. The ever-cheerful Wright can see the good news even in bad news: “Transnational environmental problems, like overfishing the seas to global warming, are in themselves unfortunate, but at least these negative-sum prospects give humanity an interest in cooperating to head them off.”

Reading this book was like participating in my own internal Fight Club, where I was witnessing a battle between my Mr. Reality Principle and my softer, liberal conscience. The wary cynic in me sneers at the backtracking, and reminds me of the bad news that fills our media, families, and personal lives. The more hopeful, “Spirit of History” guy in me is thrilled by the rising tide of optimism I find in Wright. Sometimes, reading him, I want to celebrate (to use Lincoln’s phrase) the “better angels of our nature,” while something else in me also wants to slap him. So put on your boxing gloves, readers. Wright certainly gives you a moral and spiritual workout.