Count on Robert Wright to place whatever he examines under the microscope of evolutionary theory.

That was his strategy in The Moral Animal for illuminating such topics as friendship, monogamy, and xenophobia. In Nonzero, Wright linked Darwinian thought to game theory to suggest that human history is moving inexorably toward “win-win” global amity, that hatred has lost its usefulness in an increasingly interdependent world.

Wright’s new book, The Evolution of God, springs naturally from these explorations as well as from his debut, Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning on the Age of Information. Not a scientist or a theologian, he’s nonetheless fascinated by innate social mechanisms that nudge people toward cooperation rather than conflict, and that point toward some trans-human entity that might be called God. ... (Read the full review)

The 21st century has not been kind to religion. It began with the mass murder of thousands of innocents by Muslim religious fanatics in New York city; it continued with the news that the Catholic hierarchy had operated and protected an international child abuse conspiracy for decades; and the Pew poll recently found that the Americans most likely to support torture of terror suspects were those who attended evangelical churches most frequently.

The intellectual onslaught has been just as severe, from Christopher Hitchens’s oddly persuasive massacre of a few fish in a small barrel, to the former believer Bart Ehrman’s detonation of scriptural accuracy and Sam Harris’s evisceration of religious moderates. It’s perhaps unsurprising that even in America, the most devout of all western nations, non-belief is soaring.

Worse, perhaps, the response of organised religion to all this has been not to take some self-confident steps in debating the validity of these critiques, but to dig in deeper and re-fundamentalise. From Pope Benedict’s attempt to freeze theological debate and reassert bald papal authority, to resurgent resistance to teaching evolution in America’s Bible Belt and the degeneration of Islam into the medieval madness of the Taliban, the polarisation seems to be gaining pace. ... (Read the full review)

God has mellowed. The God that most Americans worship occasionally gets upset about abortion and gay marriage, but he is a softy compared with the Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible. That was a warrior God, savagely tribal, deeply insecure about his status and willing to commit mass murder to show off his powers. But at least Yahweh had strong moral views, occasionally enlightened ones, about how the Israelites should behave. His hunter-gatherer ancestors, by contrast, were doofus gods. Morally clueless, they were often yelled at by their people and tended toward quirky obsessions. One thunder god would get mad if people combed their hair during a storm or watched dogs mate.

In his brilliant new book, The Evolution of God, Robert Wright tells the story of how God grew up. He starts with the deities of hunter-gatherer tribes, moves to those of chiefdoms and nations, then on to the polytheism of the early Israelites and the monotheism that followed, and then to the New Testament and the Koran, before finishing off with the modern multinational Gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Wright’s tone is reasoned and careful, even hesitant, throughout, and it is nice to read about issues like the morality of Christ and the meaning of jihad without getting the feeling that you are being shouted at. His views, though, are provocative and controversial. There is something here to annoy almost everyone.

In sharp contrast to many contemporary secularists, Wright is bullish about monotheism. ... (Read the full review)

Robert Wright has carved out a distinct niche in American journalism. While his essays range freely across the political landscape—from foreign policy to technology—it's his meaty, book-length forays into evolutionary psychology and the sweep of history that have set him apart. Now his latest book goes after bigger game: God Almighty. . . .

In our interview, we talked about the bloody history of monotheism, what a mature religion would look like, and Wright's own spiritual awakening at a meditation retreat.

At the very beginning of your book, you describe yourself as a materialist. This raises an interesting question: Can a materialist really explain the history of religion?

I tend to explain things in terms of material causes. So when I see God changing moods, as he does a lot in the Bible and the Quran, I ask, what was going on politically or economically that might explain why the people who wrote this scripture were inclined to depict God as being in a bad mood or a good mood? Sometimes God is advocating horrific things, like annihilating nearby peoples, or sometimes he's very compassionate and loving. So I wanted to figure out why the mood fluctuates. I do think the answers lie in the facts on the ground. And that's what I mean by being a materialist.

What do you mean by the facts on the ground?

My basic premise is that when a religious group sees itself as having something to gain through peaceful interaction with another group of people, including a different religion, it will find a basis for tolerance in its scriptures and religion. When groups see each other as being in a non-zero sum relationship—there's a possibility of a win-win outcome if they play their cards right, or a lose-lose outcome if they don't—then they tend to warm up to one another. ... (Read the full interview)