Aστραίᾱ reviewed God: A Human History by Reza Aslan
Review of 'God' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
- What is religion? What is the origin of this impulse towards belief that we humans possess?Is religion truly something detached from our physical and material reality? Are these different sets of guiding beliefs truly transcendental and beyond the influence of human action and need?
These are all questions addressed in some way or another in the book “God, A Human History of Religion” by Reza Aslan, a book that not only surprised me by its capacity of clearly and effectively explaining complex religious ideas but also by its flow from addressing said religious aspects to its connections with ancient history and politics.
I think most of us are familiar with what many historians consider to be the first appearances of religious belief during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic era, that being animism, a belief centered around the idea of an underlying connection between every physical or non physical manifestation, an ancient …
- What is religion? What is the origin of this impulse towards belief that we humans possess?Is religion truly something detached from our physical and material reality? Are these different sets of guiding beliefs truly transcendental and beyond the influence of human action and need?
These are all questions addressed in some way or another in the book “God, A Human History of Religion” by Reza Aslan, a book that not only surprised me by its capacity of clearly and effectively explaining complex religious ideas but also by its flow from addressing said religious aspects to its connections with ancient history and politics.
I think most of us are familiar with what many historians consider to be the first appearances of religious belief during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic era, that being animism, a belief centered around the idea of an underlying connection between every physical or non physical manifestation, an ancient connection between nature and the human that would lead to the worship and eventual humanization of various natural factors, the consequential creation of gods adequate and useful according to the situation and environment of their worshippers.
- But what is the origin of this religious impulse? What pushed man towards belief in some entity beyond the palpable?
There have been many different theories formulated in order to aid us in reaching an answer to this crucial question, some of them tell us that religion and religious belief are a consequence of man’s dreams, a realization of something beyond the reality they inhabit during their conscious hours, others tell us that they came about as a useful social tool for control and the maintenance of said authority, if we wish to bring our guy Freud (even though most of his religious theories have been debunked) into the mix we can even say that this religious impulse of ours came about from our need to repress our libido and guilt from wishing to cause harm to those that surround us leading therefore to a set of rules that would force us out of suffering the societal consequences of the fulfillment of our devious desires.
But can we be certain of these theories? Much research has shattered our previous certainty that religion as we know it arose from the settlements of human beings after some stability provided by the results of the agricultural revolution (even though this revolution in itself was capable of bringing as much harm to the human constitution as the dangers of the life as hunter gatherers), having as a main example Gobekli Tepe, an archeological site that contains various different ancient temples that date as far back as the Pre Pottery Neolithic period, finding there an amalgamation of circular structures with stone pillars that possess various human like characteristics while also containing various natural motifs.
Why is this important you ask? Well the construction of this site predates the settlement of human beings in agricultural societies, and not only that but the nearest source of water from Gobekli Tepe is around 5km of distance which would make it quite irrational to create a settlement so far away from a vital resource for human survival, which as lead to the conclusion that at least in the situation of Gobekli Tepe we don't find a case of religion surging and developing through the stability of a settlement but rather we find the creation of an eventual human settlement thanks to the religious motifs in the creation of a temple.
- But what about something beyond this first appearance of social utility of religion in relation to community and survival? What can, for example, our brains tell us about this religious impulse of ours? More specifically, what can evolution tell us about our inclination towards religion?
One hypothesis quite well known at the moment is that instead of this religious impulse being a trait passed down to us from our ancestors due to its aid in their survival against an unforgiving and harsh world, rather this impulse is a consequence that results from an amalgamation of effects from different traits that through human evolution have been passed down to us.
Some examples mentioned in this book are HADD and The Theory of Mind.
HADD, or Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device is an inclination that we humans possess to give agency to various happenings around us, we assign this agency nearly automatically and unconsciously for this reaction would have helped our ancestors to survive in the wild, if a human living in ancient times were to find themselves in a forest during the night and they happened to hear a sound from a certain distance behind them wouldn't it be wiser for them to assume the presence of a predator and be alert (giving therefore to this occurrence some form of agency) than to presume to it simply being the wind and get mauled to death due their ingenuity? Perhaps I should find better examples…
It is this Agency detection that would eventually allow the human ability to formulate a Theory of Mind, where we through the detection of human-like features in non-human entities end up in a way projecting our humanness onto these entities due to our sole human way of perceiving the world.
Perhaps it is better if I explain it with an example present in the book, we possess 2 important characters in our story that being Adam and Eve, both of them are members of a human tribe that most probably practices some sort of animism alongside some ancestor worship, one day Eve comes about a tree, but this tree possesses something that attracts Eve’s attention and that is that upon its body there is a certain pattern that resembles a human face. In the beginning this resemblance to humanness puts Eve in a state of alertness that eventually fades away as she comes to logically come to the conclusion that since this physical entity resembles her in a matter of appearance it must too in a way experience the world in a style similar to hers, in this process Eve is projecting her own humanity upon the tree which could lead to the eventual association of said tree with possible religious motifs. One day Eve brings Adam to see the tree and informs him that this tree not only resembles the face of a human but it has also spoken to her, now this slight deviation from normality is what leads to the eventual worship of the tree, you must give to your object of worship enough characteristics for it to be remembered and survive the test of time, but not too many to the point where it is utterly unbelievable, if Eve had told Adam that the tree not only talked with her but could also walk around and some complex pirouettes that would not only have been more unbelievable but it also would have brought no use to Adam. What can he do with a dancing tree? Exactly nearly nothing. But with a talking tree? The tree could tell him of the past, present, future and beyond. And that leads us to another crucial characteristic that a religion\practice must possess in order to survive, that is its utility to its worshippers.
There is much more to be covered, I still wish to talk about the religion in Ancient Mesopotamia and its interconnectedness with the political and social necessities of civilizations like the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and beyond. How from the cradle of civilization that is Mesopotamia came forward the worship in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Rome and much more.
I could talk about Akhenaten’s Sun centered religion where the worship of the sole god Aten was forced upon the Egyptian Empire while prohibiting the worship of any other deity from the Egyptian Pantheon (probably the first example of monotheism), I could talk about Zoroastrianism and its dualism that is crucial to modern beliefs of the earth as a battle ground between good and evil, and the possibility of heaven and hell after judgment by a higher entity, I could go on and on about how the imposition of the Christian Trinity came about not from teleological reasoning and genuine debates but from political necessity of a Roman Emperor to consolidate and maintain his power in an unstable empire, “One God, One Emperor”.
One of my favorite themes to converse about is Gnosticism and its belief of an imperfect world created by an imperfect God, the Demiurge, and also of course the oneness of Allah in Islamic religion and the debates that came about in relation to the description of Allah in The Quran and the incompatibility of an indivisible God in a universe where it exists a division between creator and creation. (and don't even get me started on Sufism, ill personally bring my copy of Rumi’s poetry and make you analyze them with me while drinking unhealthy quantities of coffee)
Yet I won't be able to address them all in one single review for that would be exhausting and it's already 1 am and my brain is functioning off of 2 cans of Monster energy ultra, so I hope my unorganized rambling served as some form of entertainment for any of you.
