Summary of Robert Wright's The Evolution of God

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The idea of comparing the religions of primitive peoples to the religion of civilized people is offensive to many Europeans. They believe that their religion is superior, and that it is impossible to understand the motives behind the actions of primitive peoples.

#2 The Bible, the oldest scripture in the Abrahamic tradition, contains traces of its ancestry. Monotheistic prayer didn’t grow out of Chukchee rituals or beliefs, but the logic of monotheistic prayer may have grown out of a kind of belief the Chukchee held, that forces of nature are animated by minds or spirits that you can influence through negotiation.

#3 The theory of animism, which was the dominant explanation of how religion began, was based on the idea that humans attribute life to the inanimate. It was promoted by Edward Tylor, a hugely influential thinker who believed that the primordial form of religion was animism.

#4 The animist view of the world is that it is inhabited by spirits that can be found everywhere. These spirits are what make up all of the things in the world, and they all have a soul. The animist view of the world began to evolve, and eventually became polytheism.

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Rafbók: 11 maj 2022