Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

God

A Human History

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of Zealot explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God.

In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large.
 
In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.”
 
But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments.
 
More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives.
Praise for God
“Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”HuffPost
“Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times
“A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”San Francisco Chronicle
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 1, 2017
      Seeing the concept of God as an expression of the self.Aslan (Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, 2013, etc.) takes readers on a historic journey to trace the idea of God from prehistoric times to the rise of Islam. His contribution to this well-trodden path is to see God as a mirror of the believer. Not only does he advocate for theories that humans anthropomorphize God because of genetic or evolutionary predispositions to do so, but he goes so far as to embrace this as a form of belief--pantheism--that "God" is indeed present in all creation. Aslan provides an intriguing glimpse into the history of primitive human belief systems, as evidenced by such archaeological remains as cave paintings, burial sites, and primitive temples. He goes further to explore psychological and physiological reasons for the birth of belief. The author notes how the humanized idea of God (or, more properly, gods) was stretched to its limits in Greek and Roman cultures and finally gave way to monotheism after the Babylonian conquest of Israel. In the remainder of the book, Aslan discusses Christianity (another example of humanized divinity) and Islam, in which the struggle to truly understand the concept of God as something more than a divine being reaches its limits. The author seems anxious to shock readers with his argument that God is in everything. "I am," he writes dramatically, "in my essential reality, God made manifest. We all are." Aslan's conclusion is not necessarily revolutionary, though to many believers, it may seem surprising. As a history, the book is a brief yet interesting, mostly engaging work, though it does not touch on the idea of God as manifested in Asian cultures. Though the two books have differing scopes and purposes, Karen Armstrong's 1993 classic, A History of God, is a better choice.Slightly shocking but not groundbreaking--a readable but minor addition to the body of knowledge about "God."

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 9, 2017
      Aslan (Zealot) addresses ideas about the nature of deities in this wide-ranging work that traces the history of divine beings from the beliefs of humans’ earliest ancestors to contemporary assumptions. The book showcases Aslan’s signature style—verging on academic but always accessible—and his methodological agnosticism as he sets aside claims of truth about “God” in order to explore theories on how humans have come to believe in gods, humanize them, deify humanity, and conceive of gods across the ages. Aslan is adept at translating serious academic theory into lay-reader friendly prose, but he also shares his own perspective as a person of faith and advocates for a renewed pantheism—though he says it can be called by many names. In making his case for pantheism, he barely mentions the voices of Hindu traditions, lesser known pantheistic philosophies, or specific indigenous traditions that have long held beliefs similar to those he advocates. Despite these issues, any general reader interested in religion will find much to learn about how the idea of God or gods has evolved and changed according to geographical, economic, political, and social contexts. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Cheney Agency.

    • Library Journal

      December 1, 2017

      As with Jack Miles's God: A Biography, which dealt solely with the development of the image of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, Aslan (creative writing, Univ. of California Riverside; Zealot) surveys the idea of the divine as it developed over the years in various religions, from the primitive to the revealed. He holds that we need to develop a more pantheistic notion of God and stop foisting our human attributes on the divine. Having himself passed through at least a couple of religions, Reza now mostly identifies with Sufism, the mystical sect of Islam, although he would not call it the "right" religion. Aslan seeks not to prove or disprove God's existence (which he holds to be impossible) but rather to encourage a more primal spirituality that recognizes that religion is part of human nature. Having read widely in anthropological, sociological, scientific, and religious works, the author sums up serious scholarship in an engaging manner, with crisp, lucid prose. VERDICT Written in language accessible to the layperson but based on wide reading in the relevant literature, Aslan's work will appeal to anyone interested in the history of religion, especially in theories that go against mainstream interpretations.--Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      November 15, 2017
      Aslan, who has written about Muhammad and Islam in No God but God (2011) and Jesus in Zealot (2013), now takes on his biggest subject. This is a reader-friendly overview of how God came to inhabit the minds and psyches of humanity, noting how, from the first go, people conceived Him (and Her) in their own images. Aslan calls this process of personification hardwired in our brains and is, thus, central to religion. At various points, he offers psychological analysis to bolster his theory. Aslan marches through history, beginning with ancient ancestors and including a stop to look at cave paintings. When organized religion comes into focus, Aslan describes how the concept of one god evolved from many gods. Surprisingly, he gives Judaism's role in that process rather short shrift. In the end, he circles back to the beginning of humans' search for God, concluding that there is a third way to think about God, beyond the belief that either God created us in His image or we created God in ours. A brisk, informative read backed by copious notes almost as long as the text.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

Loading