[Note: This is a more limited review. For the full review, see blog link in profile]

Overview:
Religion provides a moral framework for how people should appropriately behave towards its members and others. Influencing behavior that enables social cohesion. Social cohesion used to coordinate between members of the religion, and others. Raising the costs of exploiting strangers, while providing members with benefits. Cooperation works within the dynamics of nonzero sum relationships, for cooperating would benefit each faction. But cooperation is difficult in zero-sum relationships, for each faction seems to take resources away from the other, which is a source of conflict and tension.

Religions have changed in reaction to social circumstances, to manage the sources of tension while providing members with benefits. Religion has been challenged, and has done more than just survive the challenges, for religion responded to the challenges. Religious ideas changed in the same way science does, by error correcting and adapting to improve ideas. Evolving the ideas used for social cohesion. Refining religious ideas, and moving them closer to truth.

Evolution Of An Idea, And Features:
Many social cohesion ideas were thought to be products of religion, but then could be explained by natural selection. Science, and evolution, seem to be in contrast with religion, but they do not need to be. Religion has survived the encounters with science. In response to discoveries the ideas have changed, much like in the domain of science which changes ideas relentlessly. Idea of gods arouse as illusions, and the illusions evolved. The story of how the illusions evolved is meaningful, and through the evolution became more plausible.

Cultures evolve in the same way biological species evolve. Cultural traits arise or perish, which creates different cultures. Changing the institutions, and belief systems. Religious ideas gain support when they appear to provide effective benefits. Monotheism evolved from primitive religion.

Religion came about from trying to understand the world, but without access to the tools of science. Religion evolved in reaction to more understanding about the world, which includes scientific understanding.

Many of the texts are thought to be wisdom literature. The teachings from wisdom literature, is accumulated astute observations on the human condition. Philo would advise accepting their authority, because it would save a lot of time. But the wisdom was available to everyone, to empirically test them by watching the consequences of behavior. Wisdom literature generalized that virtue is usually rewarded, and wrongdoing usually punished. Not that evil is always punished. Wisdom literature rests on the science of human behavior.

Two perspectives about religion dominate thought. A perspective claims that religion serves society and provides social cohesion. Another perspective claims that religion is a tool of social control, and exploitation.

When interpreting and writing many of the works, ethnic marking takes place. Ethnic marking works by creating biases that provide a constructive identity and the differences between others. Differences that become amplified and embedded in mythology that leads to massive distortion without anyone purposely distorting.

Religious doctrines always needed to provide benefits, out of self-interest. It is the benefits that provide a source of appeal. Self-interest that aligns with other interests. Interests that change with time. Self-interest link with other interests evolved and matured the religious ideas.

Belonging to a religious cult did not mean that the gods did favors, but that the cult members helped each other. Within a religious cult based on commerce, business information could be shared between the merchants and shippers. The cult was a network that created bonds and contacts. The more members in the cult, the more valuable the cult because more information could be accessed.

The Origins:
Ancient societies cannot actually be observed. The ancient religions from which contemporary religions evolved from. Beliefs could not be written down, because the peoples were illiterate. That leaves archeological findings, and records of observed contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Contemporary hunter-gather societies are not exactly like the ancient societies, especially because the process of observation involves contact with the society and potentially influencing the society. Genuine cultural aspects of hunter-gatherer society are usually characterized as widespread and strange (to others).

Within small societies like hunter-gatherer villages, everyone knowns everyone else. There are no anonymous relationships. Most relationships are enduringly cooperative via reciprocity or kin selection. Rivalry does occur, but the rivals can either figure out a way to cooperate or someone has to go to a different society. There is a lack of opportunity to purposely exploit other members of the group and get away with act. No need to for the small societies to preach virtues or require external threat to have the virtues, because they already inhabit those virtues and are implicitly reminded of them frequently. Those virtues need to be preached and externally enforced when people are in contact with larger society. When individuals need to adjust to people who are not close to.

Primordial religion was based on explaining why things happens, predict them, and potentially intervene. Even in non-religious institutions, such as the stock market, there are those who claim to have special insights and predictive powers. People who make such claims are mostly wrong, but the they still exist and profit. The reason is because people want to understand complex forces, and learn how to manage them. Convincing others that the individual does comprehend the complex forces, leads to statues within society. This is how it started with religion as well, for a belief in a supernatural force, created a demand for people to claim to understand it. There are some shaman which obtained a reputation for success, enabling them to become leaders and sustain the practice. Within some societies, shaman could improve the success rates of their interventions, and thereby protect their careers. The ways they did so was by turning down dire cases, or blaming destiny rather than the shaman, or even countervailing sorcery from another hostile shaman.

Gods of early civilizations, much like their ancestors, were humans but with supernatural powers. Even when taking on various nonhuman forms, they were mentally human. Even during the transition from chiefdoms and states, paragons of virtues for social organization have not yet been developed.

The Politics of Religion, and Politics:
Political and religious systems are deeply intertwined. Using special connection to the divine for political use. Ancient states relied on religion to provide a moral code to encourage appropriate behaviors between people. Moral codes existed even in smaller societies, but was depended upon in the large societies of states. Science, economics, law, government have evolved from cruder forms which were symbiotically intertwined with religious thought. Social institutions which might not have been possible without religion facilitating social organization.

Law has become secular and enforced by police without supernatural support, but early laws required divide authority to make and enforce. Unlike a state government which normally has a monopoly on legitimate use of force, within chiefdoms grievances can have violent retaliation. Recriminating acts are not lawless, but is limiting as a source of social order. Within small hunter-gatherer societies, temptation to exploit is so low because the costs of harming someone are large especially because everyone might be needed. Chiefdoms have many more people which include many remote peoples who’s costs to exploit is low. Religion facilitated in increasing the costs of exploiting remote peoples within the chiefdoms.

The chief was limited in the ability to use powers to exploit. Having to make sacrifices, and perform social services. The reason is that people do not appreciate exploitation and would have revolted. There are more less powerful people who will defend their interests. People might be susceptible to forces of social cohesion, but they are not easily blinded by them. An external limit on exploitation would be competition with alternative social systems.

Basic theology were partly based on governmental structures, which included a council. Many religions had a pantheon of gods, an assembly of gods. Canaanite tradition had a similar theme.

Polytheism And Commerce:
During the 3rd millennium BCE, contact was on the rise between cities not under a single regional government. Contact that was a combination of trade and war. Contact with different beliefs in different gods. But the people were polytheists, which meant that the gods were not making competitive claims about religious truths. More than just tolerating other gods, the cities began to cooperate with other peoples, each affirming the others gods in reciprocity. Within Mesopotamia, the gods were accepted into a pantheon and the cities determined their relations within the family. To unify Mesopotamia’s diverse peoples, there was an attempt to unify the concept of divinity.

Polytheism is seen as a tool to subdue masses, or can be seen as providing intercultural amity. As states expanded, they drew in different peoples and beliefs that had economic and cultural exchange. As monarchs wanted to cooperate with others, through trade or military alliance, they developed interfaith harmony out of self-interest. The different monarchs were each able to benefit from the cooperation, because economic interaction is non-zero-sum.

Intercultural connection would continue through technological evolution. Empires expanded with advances in transportation and communication, which would put more people in contact with other peoples. But contact that at times had hostility within religious doctrines and moral attitudes. War and other forms of antagonism foster a theology of intolerance, but because of non-zero-sum interactions between people, there is trend for tolerance and caring for the welfare of others.

Caveats?
The book contains a lot of historical analysis, which can be difficult to understand and put together. The confusion and uncertainty around many ideas is difficult to clarify because of the differences in translations, interpretations, and source history. Evolution of religion occurred within many ambiguities.

The dominant religions focused on are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and a variety of primordial religions. These religions were used because they’re interconnected within their heritage, making their evolutionary change more salient. This means that the book lacks in applying the concept of evolution to other religions.

The historical analysis uses many different examples. The examples have varying qualities, and interest in them will depend on reader’s background. ( )

Seems worth noting that the appendix was actually one of my favorite parts! ( )

This was an absolutely fascinating read. The research was so impeccably done, I was pretty much in awe of the effort it must have taken to put this book together. But I did have one problem with the book and that was that it focused almost exclusively on the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All the worlds other numerous religions were given so little mention which struck me as a rather serious shortcoming. ( )

If he'd just stuck to the evolution of the conception of God, this book would have actually been worthy of the prize it received. The half-ish about whether Christianity & Islam are doomed to fight never really got off the ground in any convincing way for me. ( )

O premiado autor conduz uma intrigante pesquisa, na qual revela como as doutrinas religiosas ― dos animistas primitivos às lendas dos primeiros deuses ― mudaram com a evolução do homem. Com base em conceitos da arqueologia, teologia, história e psicologia evolucionista, Wright derruba ideias preconcebidas e mostra que, ao contrário do que estabelece o senso comum, Moisés não levou o monoteísmo para o Oriente Médio e não foi um fanático religioso militante, nem um líder espiritual bondoso, mas um político frio e pragmático. Em uma abordagem otimista, revela que as religiões têm como vocação a reconciliação e aponta caminhos para uma união entre todas as crenças, a teologia moderna e a pesquisa científica.