THE EVOLUTION OF GOD
Posted by princessxxx on August 19, 2009
NO SMITING
In sharp contrast to many contemporary secularists, Wright is bullish about monotheism. In “Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny” (2000), he argued that there is a moral direction to human history, that technological growth and expanding global interconnectedness have moved us toward ever more positive and mutually beneficial relationships with others. In “The Evolution of God,” Wright tells a similar story from a religious standpoint, proposing that the increasing goodness of God reflects the increasing goodness of our species. “As the scope of social organization grows, God tends to eventually catch up, drawing a larger expanse of humanity under his protection, or at least a larger expanse of humanity under his toleration.” Wright argues that each of the major Abrahamic faiths has been forced toward moral growth as it found itself interacting with other faiths on a multinational level, and that this expansion of the moral imagination reflects “a higher purpose, a transcendent moral order.”
This sounds pro-religion, but don’t expect Pope Benedict XVI to be quoting from Wright’s book anytime soon. Wright makes it clear that he is tracking people’s conception of the divine, not the divine itself. He describes this as “a good news/bad news joke for traditionalist Christians, Muslims and Jews.” The bad news is that your God was born imperfect. The good news is that he doesn’t really exist.
Wright also denies the specialness of any faith. In his view, there is continuous positive change over time — religious history has a moral direction — but no movement of moral revelation associated with the emergence of Moses, Jesus or Mohammed. Similarly, he argues that it is a waste of time to search for the essence of any of these monotheistic religions — it’s silly, for instance, to ask whether Islam is a “religion of peace.” Like a judge who believes in a living constitution, Wright believes that what matters is the choices that the people make, how the texts are interpreted. Cultural sensibilities shift according to changes in human dynamics, and these shape the God that people worship. For Wright, it is not God who evolves. It is us — God just comes along for the ride.
It is a great ride, though. Wright gives the example of the God of Leviticus, who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and he points out that this isn’t as enlightened as it may sound, since, at the time, “neighbors” meant actual neighbors, fellow Israelites, not the idol-worshipers in the next town. But still, he argues, this demand encompassed all the tribes of Israel, and was a “moral watershed” that “expanded the circle of brotherhood.” And the disapproval that we now feel when we learn the limited scope of this rule is itself another reason to cheer, since it shows how our moral sensibilities have expanded.
Or consider the modern Sunday School song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” (“Red and yellow, black and white, / They are precious in his sight.”) Actually, there is no evidence that he loved all of them; if you went back and sang this to the Jesus of the Gospels, he would think you were mad. But in the minds of many of his followers today, this kind of global love is what Christianity means. That certainly looks like moral progress.
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.
For Wright, the next evolutionary step is for practitioners of Abrahamic faiths to give up their claim to distinctiveness, and then renounce the specialness of monotheism altogether. In fact, when it comes to expanding the circle of moral consideration, he argues, religions like Buddhism have sometimes “outperformed the Abrahamics.” But this sounds like the death of God, not his evolution. And it clashes with Wright’s own proposal, drawn from work in evolutionary psychology, that we invented religion to satisfy certain intellectual and emotional needs, like the tendency to search for moral causes of natural events and the desire to conform with the people who surround us. These needs haven’t gone away, and the sort of depersonalized and disinterested God that Wright anticipates would satisfy none of them. He is betting that historical forces will trump our basic psychological makeup. I’m not so sure.
Wright tentatively explores another claim, that the history of religion actually affirms “the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity.” He emphasizes that he is not arguing that you need divine intervention to account for moral improvement, which can be explained by a “mercilessly scientific account” involving the biological evolution of the human mind and the game-theoretic nature of social interaction. But he wonders why the universe is so constituted that moral progress takes place. “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.”
It is not just moral progress that raises these sorts of issues. I don’t doubt that the explanation for consciousness will arise from the mercilessly scientific account of psychology and neuroscience, but, still, isn’t it neat that the universe is such that it gave rise to conscious beings like you and me? And that these minds — which evolved in a world of plants and birds and rocks and things — have the capacity to transcend this everyday world and generate philosophy, theology, art and science?
So I share Wright’s wonder at how nicely everything has turned out. But I don’t see how this constitutes an argument for a divine being. After all, even if we could somehow establish definitively that moral progress exists because the universe was jump-started by a God of Love, this just pushes the problem up one level. We are now stuck with the puzzle of why there exists such a caring God in the first place.
Also, it would be a terribly minimalist God. Wright himself describes it as “somewhere between illusion and imperfect conception.” It won’t answer your prayers, give you advice or smite your enemies. So even if it did exist, we would be left with another good news/bad news situation. The good news is that there would be a divine being. The bad news is that it’s not the one that anyone is looking for.
obama the antichrist said
God is perfect, btw, there is nothing anywhere to prove God isnt perfect!
“Or consider the modern Sunday School song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” (“Red and yellow, black and white, / They are precious in his sight.”) Actually, there is no evidence that he loved all of them; if you went back and sang this to the Jesus of the Gospels, he would think you were mad” HA thats a laugh wasnt it jesus who surrounded himself with children and told the people to have a child like faith isnt jesus the one who talked to samaritans when he was a jew (which if you didnt know wasnt socially accepted) sure he didnt me every single race but his practices still are part of this song. “they are precious in his sight” if you have read the gospels just for any little bit you would notice that Jesus never denied the ones that were hated like the lepers or the adulterer that was about to be stoned. EVERYONE WAS PRECIOUS IN JESUS’S sight.
Now God destroyed the world or the city because it was full of sin, not to show off his power like a bully on the playground, and each time he gave them a chance for salvation. HE ALWAYS GAVE THEM A CHANCE TO CHANGE!
God has never changed, since he always gave a chance of salvation he gave us Jesus the ultimate salvation!
I find this funny that this review comes from the nytimes the most liberal and denounced paper HA!
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princessxxx said
i saw this guy on “The Colbert Report” and you can’t get more right wing than Stephen Colbert!
Colbert served in Iraq.
or Afghanistan, i don’t remember,
it was one of the two.
BINGO 60 SECONDS
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obama the antichrist said
stephen colbert on comedy central? right wing? thats a false and i googled anything i can think of and none of it said that he served only that he reported there
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Geir (Gerhardt) Smith said
spread the word that obama is the antichrist
sweep the world like a tsunami
NOW
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dorian said
good read, p!
‘For Wright, it is not God who evolves. It is us — God just comes along for the ride.’
God might have a long ride ahead of him, i hope he brought a lot of snacks.
p – you confused stephen colbert with stephen baldwin again. one served in cable, the latter in hollywood.
pop goes my eggos
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Princessxxx said
well, i’m going to need to see those googles that you could not find.
Geir, is that copyrighted already? that obama is the antichrist?
dorian, you should snatch up those rights right now. make some money, sell some t shirts.
christians will buy any damn thing.
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Princessxxx said
dorian, you misspelled ‘egos’
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dorian said
too late i ate them anyway. they’re small this morning. hehe
yeah, geir, nice one! i thought maybe haiku but princess, good capitalist thinking. we’ll print a few out and sell some here and some in walmart sunday after service, i’ll catch them before they head to the casinos.
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Princessxxx said
town hall meetings packing heat.
bring your credit card scanner,
your gonna be rich.
god promised he would take the money from the evil,
and give it to the righteous.
praise the lord.
copyright, now.
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Geir (Gerhardt) Smith said
princess, it’s widely seen that obama is the Antichrist
If you want to talk about it OK but I fear you’re closed-mind types who blindly believe in pipe dreams
Are you talking or just spewing ignorance ?
If not, then tell me what part you object to.
I did not perceive any idea in what you shat on your posts.
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Geir (Gerhardt) Smith said
Dorian, Obama’s being ripped to shreds out there and he’s a coward. He’s not stood up once to his opponents.
He’s afraid because if he shows himself in public anyone can ask him “Why not send the long-form certificate ?”
You morons may not know but on MySpace, Oba Mamabo wrote on his own bio there that he was in fact 52 now.
His mom was not even in HAWAI when he was born !!!!!
When do you guys realize it’s TOO LATE ?
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Princessxxx said
that’s why we gotta sell those t-shirts and get the message out there. now before the government steals our right to copyright and make money off the bible. blessed and be healed.
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Anonymous said
http://barackobamakoolaid.com/
you can order some T-Shirts there.
or get the full story here:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2008/12/barack-obama-is-the-antichrist/
princess, you are a douche
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche
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princessxxx said
sorry, anonymous was me.
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dorian said
princess your last one’s your best so far. everything is ⓒ and ® and † (blessed)
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obama the antichrist said
but God is omnipotent omniscient and omnipresent…so he already knows what is going to happen and when it is going to happen and the how its going to happen…so God isnt on any ride because he already knows what is going to happen
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Geir (Gerhardt) Smith said
Obama the antichrist is a false christ
he says how things will happen
that’s what false prophets will do
that’s written in the bible
he says what is right and what is wrong
that’s wrong
princess that website is crap crapola
none of those links in it refer to the meaning of the Marks of the Beast which were drawn
all the rest is lies of people just shooting their mouths
you and Dorian are ignoramuses royale
I made a big explanation about the meaning of the Marks of the Beast here
http://tinyurl.com/kw4zru
the links you gave don’t even ADRESS THE TOPIC for christ’s sake !
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Hors Service said
I don’t think the topic here is wherever Obama is the antichrist…
Obama don’t pretend to save people’s soul: wasn’t the antichrist supposed to do so?
Anyway, it’s fun to meet someone who really believes this^^
“His mother wasn’t even in HAWAI”
Of course, she was in Hell :p
Oh, Obama is lacking all those horns and red spikes and stuff, so sad… I’m sure it would suits him! He would look so cute.
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Geir (Gerhardt) Smith said
u’re not very intelligent hors service
u’re an ugly morality
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Hors Service said
At least I don’t pretend it.
In fact I am… THE DEVIL INCARNATES! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! And all this site, with people having licencious and poisonous liberal ideas, all this corrupted debates, all the ones who doubt, they’re all doomed!
It’s nice how you judge my morality with two posts^^ Or perhaps you’ve read the other ones?
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dorian said
geir we are not here to trade insults. if you want to share your Kalachakra expertise and post university research then educate us. but cut the insults. i don’t really want this blog to have the same environment as your http://tinyurl.com/kw4zru . it’s just not enjoyable to me, personally.
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Geir (Gerhardt) Smith said
where’s kay then dor
i wanted to talk and exchange
i have the facts to unroll
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Geir (Gerhardt) Smith said
if someone wants to talk that is
but if it’s just the usual
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Geir (Gerhardt) Smith said
dorian, about that page you sent the link to http://tinyurl.com/kw4zru
let’s just start by that
are you throwing that as an insult or what ?
that’s replete (that means “full of”) with info
where do yu want to start ?
it’s not all crap like you say so stupidly sorry of that cramps ur style i say that too
what’s so bad about “that environment” as you say ?
i wish you to have a twenty-eight year university research ENVIRONMENT
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Hors Service said
Well, just looking at the way you write, did you only went to elementary school?
(Sorry I know that I shouldn’t mock the way of writing of anyone, but as you seem so proud of your 28 years university research…)
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obama the antichrist said
Hors are you like legit from france or did i read one of your posts wrong….(random i know) and geir your tactics of debate are turning people off including me and a somewhat support your claims
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dorian said
ota hors if from france and i just saw that one of geir’s comeback to hors went directly to the spam bucket with the four letter word in it. geir, this is a pg-rated site and wordpress automatically directs posts with certain words to spam. while youtube does not have spam filters, wordpress does.
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Hors Service said
OTA, I’m sorry I didn’t understood, by “legit” you mean “really” from France? If it’s the case, then it’s true, I am really french, studying in Germany though, at the time.
Oooh, sad, I won’t have the pleasure of being verbally agressed by a troll… Kind of masochist, I know.
But it’s like… If Obama makes something, and Ahmadinejad says it’s evil, it’s a good hint that Obama is doing something right. Not a proof, but still a good hint…
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obama the antichrist said
yes i shortened legitimately to legit…sorry habit i formed
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Hors Service said
No problem, it’s just that I’m not bilingual, so I have difficulties with expressions, sayings and abbreviations.
It’s enterely my fault 😉
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obama the antichrist said
you are completely fine hors i was in panama for a mission trip and i had an idea of what spanish was but i didnt understand a thing anyone was trying to say to me
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bettyslocombe said
I do enjoy it when a new fundamentalist nutter shows up. They are all a bit alike though: buying into any weird theory, touchy about their education.
Antichrist? What we must remember is that Revelations was written by someone like Geir or Scharfy.
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dorian said
they do have their prototypes, eh? there are a few more Geir revelations sitting in the bucket that i’m not bothering to read. it’s piling up, i’d better hit delete. i’ll have to put some pretty pictures up to disinfect.
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dorian said
there were troll droppings in the thicket, betty. i’m glad i nipped this one in the bud. i’ll become a good gardener yet. oh, since princess and ota are writing poems i gathered up as much as i can of the old poems and put them all on a Poems? page here.
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obama the antichrist said
revalations was written by a man who saw the end times and what God told him to write down he wasnt a nut he was a man used by God
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bettyslocombe said
What is the method you use to determine the difference, OTA?
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dorian said
okay alright but the ones betty and i were talking about didn’t speak with God. i just deleted 5 comments from the moderation bucket that were pretty nasty smelling with insults for all and one for the white house that reminded me of that apeboy in SNL. remember him? he was nasty. this is the second one this year. those types not interested in real debate they just want to attack and insult everybody.
from http://www.bloggersblog.com/blog/1210052
Blog comment trolls are nothing new and have been around since comments on blogs existed. Webopedia offers the following definition of trolls which works well for blog comment trolls.
(v.) (1) To deliberately post derogatory or inflammatory comments to a community forum, chat room, newsgroup and/or a blog in order to bait other users into responding.
Blog comment trolls are a continual pest just like they continue to be on message boards. Google shows over 11,000 results for blog trolls. Trolls and spam are one reason some bloggers started moderating their comments.
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bettyslocombe said
Hey Hors: that latest troll lives in France!!! I’d stay in Germany for while…….
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bettyslocombe said
And just in case there’s any doubt who we are/were dealing with:
http://forums.phayul.com/index.php?showtopic=8294&mode=threaded&pid=32761
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Princessxxx said
great link betty, haha ha. i especially liked this line:
“Geir smith is just an old perverted forker but he´s spreading a lot of krap and doing damage slandering HHDL and everyone that is a true follower !
He should be banned from every forum!
the guy is sick !”
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dorian said
adkob gets not just the ordinary ones. we get the supertrolls. i should’ve shared those 5 comments i dumped out yesterday- i just didn’t want to give him any more space or time. he wanted audience.
i did see that his ip address was in the vicinity of hors’ ip address. i think he’s american.
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dorian said
geir i know you’re reading us still. i see 3 more comments from you in the garbage bin. don’t waste your time, no one will see them. all i do is hit the ‘delete all spam’ button. anything coming from you goes straight to the garbage bin, with or without profanity.
take your medication.
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Hors Service said
Gee, he has an IP adress close to mine? I feel dirty^^
I deny all links, support or idea-sharing with this… thisness. Just in case that it’s Bill Ayers in disguise, and that Kay will blame me for talking with him^^
If he’s french, then it’s a rare object: if frenchs have a long-established tradition of moaning, grumbling, protesting and spurious accusations, which they translate into some of the most magnificent trolls I’ve ever read, they habitually stick to French.
As most of them are also xenophobic, it would be contradictory that they use a foreign language…
But yes, the grammar and the language used by geir denote maybe a non-english speaker…
If ADKOB attracts the most combative battle-trolls of the net, then it’s a kind of recognition. A compliment^^
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dorian said
hors, non-english speaker could be american. heheh
he’s probably a foreign-born american, bilingual. there was enough american colloquialism in his rants and insults going down the deleted forever hole.
just a guess. i don’t know if i want too many more warrior trolls. it’s tiring
having to delete stuff. i’m a lazy person. oh the next troll will get kay’s big bat.
i’ll borrow her bat after she’s done using it on you.hehe. stick around, hors, i love reading yours and kay’s debates. good with popcorn.
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obama the antichrist said
betty the way i tell the difference is by having faith and by using what i use best and that is math and numbers. i used numbers to determine the bible true (in my case). its like me asking you how can you tell if darwin was insane or completely true.
little personal testimony. i didnt believe in God at all in during my HS years but my grandma actually introduced me to how the numbers matched up and i was fascinated by that and i began matching things up and i believed and now here i am
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