God: A Human History Paperback – January 1, 2018

Reza Aslan in God: A Human History describe the human preoccupation with God across time. Much attention as would be expected is given to the axial age. Aslan’s book is directed toward a relatively educated audience who wants to examine a very complex topic to expand a knowledge base for understand. The extensive notes section of the text from pages 175 to 279 shows his book to be a rather good distillation of scholarship. I was somewhat surprised to see Karen Armstrong’s scholarship not included, but I must say that he has done his research carefully and has been able to translate what can be very arcane material typically presented at scholarly conference such as the American Academy of Religion and/or published in scholarly journal for those engaged in various aspects of religious studies into a readable book for non-specialists.Long ago, it was thought that animism was the most ancient religion and that other religions in some sense were evolutionary developments of that principle. Aslan adds to the discussion with the emergence of cognitive science as a way of understanding the God concept as originating in the mind itself. Humans are “wired” that way. If there is a kind of evolutionary development—and he does see one of a different sort—it can be seen in this way:What seems clear, however, is that belief in the soul may be humanity’s first belief. Indeed, if the cognitive theory of religion is correct, belief in the soul is what led to belief in God. The origin of the religious impulse, in other words, is not rooted in our quest for meaning or our fear of the unknown. It is not born of our involuntary reactions to the natural world. It is not an accidental consequence of the complex working of our brains. It is the result of something far more primal and difficult to explain: our ingrained, intuitive, and wholly experiential belief that we are, whatever else we are, embodied souls. (47)Much attention is given in his study to the beginnings of civilization in the region of the Fertile Crescent, along with developments in Greek thought. Much in the early chapters seems oriented toward an anthropology of religions and also to the history of religions approach that have written a good deal of our background knowledge of religion in the Ancient Near East. Particular attention is given to the impact of the movement from a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural-based society and the implications in terms of religion. Many readers will find this discussion fascinating.His tracing the development of the Abrahamic religions will be the most intriguing part of his book for many readers. He investigates ancient Hebrew traditions in light of the cultural milieu of Canaan and Egypt and suggests how the Hebrew tradition uses and develops those traditions—all of which are older than the Hebrew traditions. The traditions of El and YHWH and the fusing of those traditions in chapter 7 suggest the way that monotheism or actually monolatry—the better term—was born. For those who believe that the biblical text completes an understanding of God, he demonstrates the role of various Church Fathers and church councils in establishing the nature of doctrinal “orthodoxy” for Christianity. At the end of his discussion on Islam—the religion of his earliest years and the religion to which he returned in adulthood—he describes Sufism and the mystical notions of God.In the final analysis, Aslan calls himself a “pantheist,” but I think instead he may mean “panentheist.” He concludes, “Believe in God or not. Define God how you will. Either way, take a lesson from our mythological ancestors Adam and Eve and eat the forbidden fruit. You need not fear God. You are God” (171).No doubt humans have shaped their images of God in keeping with themselves. Believers in one religious tradition often charge other traditions with having done precisely that. Aslan demonstrates across time the tendency to do just that shaping, and then he charts attempts to make God less human and more remote. Thus humans attribute to God human aspects, both positive and negative. Aslan has provided a prism for examining that work across time. For those who have read the extensive bibliography of his book, there will be little new learning. For those who would like to see a distillation of scholarship on the anthropology of religion, God: A Human History can be a fascinating beginning for further study.

Each of Reza Aslan’s previous books made a lasting impression on me. God: A Human History is no different. It is an empowering study that relies on impeccable scholarship and yet reads with the lyricism and emotion of great literature. All the while, Aslan maintains a page-turning narrative that shows how we have made sense of God throughout history by assigning human attributes to our divine beliefs.Aslan starts with the first humans of “Adam and Eve.” He explains how they performed burial rituals that sought to embrace an afterworld where the deceased took on spiritual forms. He shows how this idea of a transcendent soul in the afterlife has been part of every culture throughout human evolution. Then, with the birth of agriculture, the humanization of gods intensified as it was fitting to transfer the powers of the gods from heaven to earth so that humans could fulfill the harvest.With the Sumerians’ invention of writing, humans had the ability to chronicle history, and with the power of writing came the “compulsion to humanize the divine.” This led to the widespread worship of idols. Each idol became a type of adobe where a spirit dwelt, often with a degree of superhuman powers. However, this super humanization of the gods reached a point of folly with the Greeks, casting doubts on the legitimacy of the divine.The idea of monotheism didn’t emerge until the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and later on the Iranian priest Zarathustra (founder of Zoroastrianism) experienced singular visions of god as a ubiquitous creator of the cosmos. Even though ancient civilizations believed in a “High God” that governed among their many gods, they had a hard time accepting the concept of an all-encompassing god.Only by stripping the gods of their human qualities could the idea of a single god be elevated as the “creative substance underlying the universe.” But the evolution of a singular god depended on merging Abraham’s High God named “El” with Moses’s Midian God named “Yahweh.” With the upstart of Christianity, the “god-man” of Jesus only complicated the notion of how to understand the abstract, eternal, and divine essence of God. Such complication required the inception of the Trinity. It wasn’t until Muhammad received God’s final instruction to humankind that he was able to put a seal on Zoroastrian Dualism and Christian Trinitarianism in order to identify God/Allah as the only god.For Aslan, Islam represents the totality of monotheism through the idea of tawhid, which seeks to understand God’s essence as a divine unity of oneness. The God of Islam resembles no created thing, nor do created things resemble God. This unified belief in God seeks to satisfy a oneness with Him, a starting and returning to God’s divinity, which is the sum of all things. To achieve this divine relationship, believers must dehumanize God and become one with the pure existence of an entity without name, essence, or personality.Aslan arrives at a brilliant point where he makes clear that whether you believe in science or God, you rely on an understanding of the “animating spirit that underlies the universe.” Both science and God are essentially the same, both offering plausible or impossible platforms from which to carry out one’s belief, depending on your choice.God: A Human History is provocative, fascinating, and earnest. Aslan steers us towards a more appreciative view of God’s origins and how we can develop a deeper relationship with God. He enables us to construct a picture of God that almost seems to take on the same direct access to the divinity in which Sufism strives to achieve. This is a book that reflects scholarship at its finest, but it’s also a brilliant piece of literature to understand God in a clearer and more inspiring way.

Yay! I finally got it! Well outside the shipping time frame window listed on the seller’s site, but with all the budget cuts from congress, I guess that might be a new normal of sorts.I borrowed this book from a friend and appreciated it so much I needed my own copy. I guess it can be hard to get a hold of or something. The book is worth the wait.

This is a nice well-rounded study and examination of where our ideas about 'God" have come from. Not what you heard in Sunday School but the psychological and physical-survival elements that went into creating the myths and sacred writings and cultural customs whereby humans have tried making sense of the deepest mystery of all: where did we really come from and what does it all mean. Are these 'god ideas' relevant? Actually helpful? Supernatural? Or does the god idea in fact mean anything beyond the aesthetic playful pleasures of human inventions.This is a high-quality very-informative and very-entertaining book.

I highly recommend this book if you're curious about the evolution of religion. The author reveals a fascinating history, going back to prehistoric times, of the development of religion, why humans are predisposed to believe in gods, how religion may have been the impetus for civilization, and culminating in the God of the Bible, where the book discusses how this God came to be, who wrote the Pentateuch, and (me looking ahead to the last part of the book I have yet to read) concludes with chapters on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There is a section with extensive notes in the back of the book for digging further. This is the book I was looking for.