Back to the Basics

Last night I was finally able to find some time to open the book I have been looking forward to beginning. "The Evolution of God" by Robert Wright is not at all what I thought it would be like. Wright starts out the introduction of himself by saying he was "denounced from the pulpit of my mother's church." The reason? His book "The Moral Animal," which talks about how human nature and the evolution of human nature complicates marriage.

As Wright talks about how he was found to be "godless" he explains that he thinks gods arose as illusions and that the subsequent history of the idea of god is the evolution of an illusion. This totally doesn't make sense to me. How is it that someone who grew up in the church his whole life, who became a born-again Christian, and who became baptized by the age of nine can honestly believe that God isn't real?

In his first chapter, "The Primordial Faith," Wright recounts the history of the Chukchee peoples of Siberia. The Chukchee had many different "gods," and like a lot of hunter-gatherer societies believed that every bad or good thing was from one god or another. The definition of "god" on dictionary.com is the ONE Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe and the definition of Supreme Being is God.

Sir John Lubbock, a late-nineteenth-century British anthropologist called these hunter-gatherer societies "savage" in their religion and way of life. Lubbock said, "The mental condition of a savage is so different from ours, that it is often very difficult to follow what is passing in his mind, or to understand the motives by which he is influenced." I have news for you Lubbock; we are all from the same species. You are no different from those "savages" except in the respect that you are educated and they are not.

A good observation that Wright made was that the word "religion" would be foreign to the Chukchee, not because they wouldn't understand modern English, but because "religion" simply didn't exist in their culture. Their society, everything that they were, that was their religion. 

I think we could all learn something from the Chukchee peoples. We are what we believe. That being said, shouldn't you know what you say you believe? Do you truly understand the extent of what you say? I hope this book opens my eyes to what I truly believe. And Robert Wright, I look forward to getting to know you through your book. 

Hebrews 11:1, 3 says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen." "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible."