God A Human Story By Reza Aslan

Impressions

A monotheism experiment – the climax of the fairly recent belief in a single, singular, nonhuman, and indivisible creator God as defined by postexilic Judaism, as renounced by Zoroastrian Dualism and Christian Trinitarianism, and as revived in the Sufi interpretation of tawhid; God is not the creator of everything that exists. God is everything that exists. ~ God A Human Story

Nothing prepared me for this uplifting treatise on the intelligence of our evolution. We may be nature’s experiment, but humanity has always initiated its own exploration of the neural pathways that explain not only who we are but also how we are to each other.

The author Reza Aslan offers an explanation of how religions are constant constructs in the evolution and creation of our civilizations.  So, I ask, have we engineered religions as guideposts to our evolution? Or is religion an organic living thing that progresses with civilizations?

This essay is not a read for those who understand or live religious dogma as an unchanging thing written on stone tablets. Rather, this author explains concepts of the many religions we’ve embraced in clear and unambiguous terms. And his book is the brilliant product of much work. It comprises mountains of organized, substantive research and a discourse on the evolution and sometimes devolution of humanity’s faiths.

Divine humanization

From Lord of the Beasts to a redefined god stripped of carnal form to become a dehumanized god…” without shape or form – utterly transcendent and apersonal.” From God A Human Story

It is reasonable to surmise that the growth of religions becomes part of a learned pattern of thought that manifests through cellular memories. The disparate events in discoveries of cave art depicting similar objects of deity in other times and spaces beg the question, are there cellular memories embedded in our DNA?  And, do these objects contain a formula for organized religions necessary for humanity’s socialization?

Although bioresearch has evolved to the point where it aggressively challenges what we don’t know about the cell and the intelligence that fuels its organelles, it is safe to say that they may harbor information about the origin of the phenomenon we call organized religion.

For me, the most compelling argument Mr. Aslan makes about how we struggle to raise awareness is the advent of Marduk.  He was central to one of the longest-lasting religions that emerged during Babylonian times, when humanity was grasping for inclusivity. In a society led by Cyrus the Great, when Judaism was still new, and Yeshua ben Joseph (Jesus) hadn’t been born yet, the kernels of a culturally changeable society began to take shape.

The preponderance of evidence suggests that Cyrus the Great constructed an inclusive nation that respected the values of a culturally fluid civilization.   While slowly dehumanizing its center of worship, a god named Marduk.

Our imagination, driven by what we understand, dictates our need to make gods in images and traits we know best…ourselves.

It requires a brave heart

 

One must enter into the labor of religious research with an open mind and heart.  Reza Aslan owns both with a healthy dash of skepticism and bravery.

In my opinion, to argue the relevance of the constructs of our belief systems requires extreme courage. The evolution of religion is the tender underbelly of all human cultures.  They compose the most personal self-identification of societies and sovereignty. It comprises what we understand as collective reasoning.

I wouldn’t, shouldn’t, and couldn’t comment on this, as I read it as an essay on opposing religions. Rather, it’s a talk on how our ‘systems of faith” evolved to reflect our relative truths.

This author delves very little into the nature of the societies that constructed these religions. In my opinion, Mr. Aslan’s course of study and this book are centered on the far more important stuff of explaining how religions work and their mind-numbing effects on human progress.

Survival

Our objects of worship served to explain the unexplainable while aiding our survival as a species.  Are we in the midst of embracing and expanding the precepts of a dehumanized religion? 

This is genius writing on comparative religions and the processes of its creators and inheritors.

Story/Plot/Conflict

An extremely ambitious book becomes an easy read on the roots of religions and a thoroughly researched story of comparative ideologies.

The cultural timelines and borders appear almost a blur.  The author clarifies the lines that seem to disappear in the miasma of disparate scholars' teachings, separated or compromised by secular belief systems.

The book explains, in simple terms, how the conflict lies in man’s reason for living and in the need to look elsewhere for guidance and comfort.

The human story preaches that the varied forms of deification and religious fables have endured and colored our experience of religion. This author makes this 12,000- to 14,000-year tale seem like mere steps in the discovery of who we are and how beliefs have informed our lives.

Main Character

God

My Critique: Even the most august of theologians can experience epiphanies in this read. This writing has the rare flavor of pure objectivity.

Genre: General audiences and an enlightening read.