In his provocative and thoughtful new book, The Evolution of God (Little, Brown), Robert Wright, author of The Moral Animal (1995) and Nonzero (2001), offers a new look at the ways in which science can offer compelling insights into the nature of religion and the keys that religious communities hold to opening the doors to harmony among the world’s religions.

RBL: What prompted you to write this book?

Robert Wright: I had this book in mind before 9/11, but the events of that day brought this subject to the foreground. I’m mainly interested in how the world’s religions might peacefully co-exist. I wanted to see what circumstances make believers emphasize benevolence and compassion and what circumstances make them emphasize violence and belligerence.

RBL: The title is provocative. How does God evolve?

RW: People often think of a given religion’s God as if that God’s character is eternal and unchanging. I argue that God’s character changes a lot and that what changes it is the facts on the ground. So, for example, after the Babylonian exile, when the Israelites are at peace with their neighbors, their God is less belligerent than before the exile.

RBL: You talk about the scriptures of Christianity, Islam and Judaism as maps of the “landscape of religious tolerance and intolerance.” How can contemporary followers of these religious communities read their scriptures?

RW: Well, the scriptures of all three Abrahamic faiths give believers a menu of options—there are intolerant, belligerent scriptures, and there are tolerant, benevolent scriptures. In principle, believers can choose to emphasize either. What my book tries to do is reveal the circumstances that tend to foster an emphasis on the tolerant scriptures.

RBL: You write often about the failure of the moral imagination, especially as it applies to the three monotheistic religions. How can religious people in these communities recover that?

RW: Members of the three Abrahamic religions need to get better at extending their moral imaginations toward one another. The good news in my book is that all three religions have shown themselves capable of fostering this growth in moral imagination, and thus are capable of constructively adapting to a world like the modern globalizing world. The other bit of good news is that, on balance, the direction of history has moved religion toward an expanded moral imagination, though not without some backsliding.

Photo credit: Barry Munger