Reading Group Guide THE EVOLUTION OF GOD. by ROBERT WRIGHT

Transcription

1 Reading Group Guide THE EVOLUTION OF GOD by ROBERT WRIGHT EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 569 3/19/10 12:48:07 PM

2 A conversation with Robert Wright In The Moral Animal you track the evolutionary psychology of such things as friendship, monogamy, and xenophobia, arguing that natural selection furnished us with basic moral intuitions but also with a tendency to deploy moral reasoning in a self- serving way. In Nonzero, you link Darwinian thought to game theory to suggest that human history has a moral direction and has led people to expand their conception of community, acknowledging the fundamental humanity of more and more people from more and more ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds. In The Evolution of God you tell a similar story from a religious perspective, proposing that the increasing goodness of God refl ects the increasing goodness of our species. What prompted you to write this book and how has your notion of what a mature religion could look like changed? Is it still evolving? Religion is so important to so many people that it seems to me unlikely that we can forge a global community without its help. So I wanted to go back and see whether religion has shown the ability to help people expand their conception of community. And, happily, the answer is yes: I argue in the book that ever since their birth, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all proved benignly adaptive in that respect (notwithstanding their undeniable bad patches). In that sense they ve all grown morally. Whether they will take the culminating step in their maturation do the things necessary to forge a truly global community is yet to be seen. But their evolution continues, and I m hopeful. EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 570 3/19/10 12:48:09 PM

3 READING GROUP GUIDE 3 You were born in Oklahoma and raised predominantly in Texas. What was your religious upbringing like? Did you attend church as a child? My parents were Southern Baptists. They weren t fanatical, but they were devout, and going to a Southern Baptist church was a fairly intense experience, I guess, at least in the sense of filling me with a very potent sense of God s existence. When did you begin to think critically about religion? My parents accepted the literal creation story in Genesis. So once I started hearing about evolution and, in particular, once I learned the theory of natural selection in tenth grade I started to feel tension with my religious faith. Eventually, my religious faith had to recede. Do you ever pray now? If so, what form does your prayer take? I meditate, and occasionally my meditation morphs into a kind of prayer to become a better person, but so far as I can tell I m just talking to myself or, you might say, one part of me is talking to another part of me. The Evolution of God seems a welcome antidote to the spate of books by atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, to name a few, that have become huge bestsellers in recent years. Do you believe that atheism has become its own form of fundamentalism? What do you think of these writers work? They re smart guys, but I think that to varying degrees they commit the same mistakes: overestimating the amount of bad religion has done, underestimating the amount of good; and (therefore) thinking that the salvation of the world depends on the eradication of religious faith. One point of my book is that in fact the further EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 571 3/19/10 12:48:10 PM

4 4 READING GROUP GUIDE evolution of religions can abet the salvation of the world that is, can help usher in a time of world peace. Do you think religions share certain core principles? I think all religions are capable of fostering really beautiful values and really horrible values. Love, hate, heal, kill, and so on. Which values prevail depends on the circumstances in which believers find themselves, and this relationship between circumstance and scriptural interpretation is one thing I tried to illuminate in The Evolution of God. You write often about the failure of the moral imagination, especially as it applies to the three monotheistic religions. What in your mind would it take to inspire these communities of religious people to be more imaginative? By moral imagination I mean the capacity to put yourself in the shoes of other people, especially people in circumstances very different from your own. And I think the fate of the world depends on our ability to expand our moral imaginations. As for what forces would aid this process right now: I think the main thing is for people in the different faith communities to see (a) that people in other communities are fundamentally like themselves, driven by the same basic set of human needs and aspirations; and (b) that the people in the world s various communities are increasingly in the same boat; the world is becoming a pretty small place, and our fortunes are increasingly intertwined. The Bible is a collection of books written by multiple people, whereas the entire text of the Qur an is said to have been uttered by Muhammad. Do you think that this infl uences the ways in which these two texts are interpreted today? Well, I think this sometimes leads people to judge the Qur an unfairly. Comparing the Bible to the Qur an is like comparing a EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 572 3/19/10 12:48:11 PM

5 READING GROUP GUIDE 5 library of great books collected over a millennium or more with a single book written within a couple of decades. And, actually, some of the books within the Bible Psalms, for example are themselves the work of many people working over many centuries. (Of course, Muslims believe the Qur an emanated ultimately from God, not from Muhammad, and for that matter some Christians and Jews have comparable beliefs about the ultimate source of biblical scripture, but here I m making the basic scholarly assumption that scriptures are the work of human beings.) You talk about the scriptures of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as maps of the landscape of religious tolerance and intolerance. How can contemporary followers of these religious communities read their scriptures? Well, they should understand that both the belligerent scriptures, espousing violence, and the benign scriptures, espousing tolerance and mutual understanding, were written under particular circumstances that were conducive to those respective themes. In a certain sense both themes were appropriate to their circumstances at least, both themes grew naturally out of the perceptions that were prevalent at the time. And what I want to emphasize is that we re at a time in history when, if our perceptions of our situation are true, they will lead us to emphasize tolerance and understanding, because that s what s in our interest. In a time when prejudice is as rampant as ever and when religion appears, at least on the surface, to be the cause of this unrest how can people incorporate your theories about religion into their daily lives? I would encourage people who observe the so- called religious conflicts in the world to consider the possibility that religion isn t really the problem. In other words, underlying these conflicts are disputes or resentments or grievances that aren t themselves grounded in EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 573 3/19/10 12:48:11 PM

6 6 READING GROUP GUIDE religion. The Israel- Palestine conflict is a good example. It started as an essentially secular dispute over land, and, as the dispute went unresolved, extremists on both sides started justifying their extremism in religious terms. One basic point of The Evolution of God is: religion isn t the source of the world s tensions; there are deeper causes, and if we address them, religion will adapt benignly in response. EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 574 3/19/10 6:54:54 PM

7 Questions and topics for discussion 1. Near the beginning of The Evolution of God, Robert Wright states that he is a materialist. What does he mean by this and can you explain what a materialist view of the scriptures might look like? In your opinion, can a materialist explain the history of religion? 2. Discuss the origins of religion from Wright s point of view. How do they alter the commonly perceived order of events? 3. Does it matter to you that the modern incarnation of a religion might be so dramatically different from what it was when it came into being? If so, why? 4. According to Wright, religion develops mainly in response to political and economic events. Discuss Wright s theory on the connection between the political power of a people and the god that they believe in. 5. What does Wright mean when he talks about the moral imagination of a people? 6. Discuss the different meanings of salvation in the three Abrahamic faiths. In Wright s view, what one thing does salvation require according to the prophets of all three faiths? What distinctions are made between social salvation and personal salvation? EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 575 3/19/10 12:48:12 PM

8 8 READING GROUP GUIDE 7. What is the difference between a zero- sum versus a non- zerosum view of the world? What is the relationship, according to Wright, between non- zero- sumness and globalization? Do you think that combining religion and economics could be problematic? Why or why not? 8. What, according to Wright, are facts on the ground and how do they influence how and why religions evolve? 9. Some people have been skeptical about Wright s claim that religious history seems to be going somewhere, as if guided by an invisible hand, and that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (as well as other religions) appear to have a moral direction and that the direction is on balance toward the good. Do you agree that the invisible hand metaphor accurately captures Wright s view? Do you agree with Wright s view? 10. Do you believe that religion has become more ethical over time and that morality within societies dominated by Abrahamic faiths (or, for that matter, morality within other societies) has increased? If so, do you believe that this increase came from faith and did it involve non- zero- sum logic? Is this, in your opinion, evidence for the existence of God? 11. At the end of the book Wright begins to wonder whether the evolution of God, the concept, might provide evidence for the existence of God, the reality. Were you surprised by this line of thought? 12. Do you believe that there s room for religion and notions of divinity and higher purpose in a modern scientific world? EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 576 3/19/10 12:48:13 PM

9 About the Author ROBERT WRIGHT is the author of Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (2000), The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (1994), and Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information (1988). He has taught philosophy at Princeton and religion at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a contributor to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, Slate, Time, and The New Republic. He has won the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism, and his books have together sold hundreds of thousands of copies and been translated into more than a dozen languages. He is currently a Bernard Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation. EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 577 3/19/10 12:48:14 PM

10 now in paperback great for reading groups The Ornament of the World How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by María Rosa Menocal Foreword by Harold Bloom An illuminating and even inspiring work.... The rich and remarkable landscape that we behold in The Ornament of the World dates all the way back to the so- called Dark Ages, but the book itself could not be more timely or more encouraging. María Rosa Menocal shows us a rare moment in history when Muslims, Christians, and Jews found a way to live with each other in peace and prosperity.... By showing us what was lost, Menocal reminds us of what might be. Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Engaging and accessible.... This study of medieval Spain shows that a powerful Islamic society and its committed Christian opponents were once capable of contending in arms, for a mastery of rich territory, without losing their sense of mutual respect.... It is a valuable contribution. Stephen Schwartz, National Review Menocal tells the story exceptionally well.... She successfully drives home an important lesson for a multicultural America fighting fanaticism externally and internally. Anne Bartlett, Miami Herald It is no exaggeration to say that what we presumptuously call Western culture is owed in large measure to the Andalusian enlightenment.... This book partly restores to us a world we have lost. Christopher Hitchens, The Nation Back Bay Books Available wherever paperbacks are sold EvolutionOfGod_TPtextF1.indd 578 3/19/10 12:48:15 PM