In his previous two books, The Moral Animal and Nonzero, Robert Wright argues that evolution—biological, social, and technological—has on balance, if imperfectly, moved humankind toward greater interconnectedness and moral inclusiveness.
He makes much the same argument about religion, stating that over time God has drawn “a larger expanse of humanity under his protection, or at least… his toleration.” Wright refuses to give in to easy either/or oppositions—whether that pertains to the relationship between religion and science, or between the Judeo-Christian world and the Muslim one. Because he views religions as living, evolving social institutions, he also resists reductive questions like, ‘Is Islam a religion of peace?’ What I like most is how the Evolution of God offers hopeful common ground on which people of different faiths, or of no faith, can talk sensibly about religion.
