The Evolution Of God: The origins of our beliefs - Softcover

Wright, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349122466 ISBN 13: 9780349122465

Publisher: Abacus, 2010

Synopsis

In The Evolution of God, Robert Wright, award-winning author of the bestselling books Nonzero and The Moral Animal, takes us on a sweeping journey through religious history, from the Stone Age to the Information Age, unveiling along the way an astonishing discovery: that there is a hidden pattern in the way that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have all evolved.

Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, evolutionary psychology and a careful re-reading of the scriptures, Wright's findings repeatedly overturn conventional wisdom and basic assumptions about the great monotheistic faiths.

Looking at the forces that have moved the Abrahamic faiths away from belligerence and intolerance to a higher moral plane, Wright finds that this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism as the media would have us believe, but towards future harmony.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Wright is the author of Nonzero, The Moral Animal, and Three Scientists and Their Gods. He is a contributing editor to the New Republic, Time, and Slate, and he runs www.BloggingHeads.com, a rapidly growing Web site for intellectual discourse. He has also taught in the Philosophy Department of Princeton University and the Psychology Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in New Jersey.

From AudioFile:

Using evolutionary psychology, Robert Wright explores how the morality of societies changed as those societies became more complex and how monotheism is an outgrowth of personal morality. The material is deep and detailed, so it is essential that the narrator keep the book from becoming mind-numbing in audio form. Arthur Morey does a solid job. For instance, he breaks up long sentences into logical chunks, with appropriate pauses. He also varies his tone slightly to give emphasis to unusual or especially important points. His pronunciation is impressive, especially when he vocalizes sounds from African languages for which there sometimes are no English equivalents. But the book requires concentration on the part of the listener, especially in the early part, where the author describes early societies and their belief systems in intense detail. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0349122466
• ISBN 13: 9780349122465
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576