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    God: A Human History
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    God: A Human History
    Unavailable
    God: A Human History
    Audiobook5 hours

    God: A Human History

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zealot and host of Believer 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.

    Advance praise for God

    "Breathtaking in its scope and controversial in its claims, God: A Human History shows how humans from time immemorial have made God in their own image, and argues that they should now stop. Writing with all the verve and brilliance we have come to expect from his pen, Reza Aslan has once more produced a book that will prompt reflection and shatter assumptions."—Bart D. Ehrman, author of How Jesus Became God

    "Reza Aslan offers so much to relish in his excellent 'human history' of God. In tracing the commonalities that unite religions, Aslan makes truly challenging arguments that believers in many traditions will want to mull over, and to explore further. This rewarding book is very ambitious in its scope, and it is thoroughly grounded in an impressive body of reading and research."—Philip Jenkins, author of Crucible of Faith

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateNov 7, 2017
    ISBN9780525524656
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for God

    4.5/5

    51 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Reza succinctly and eloquently lays out a very human history for the idea of God. This book was way more thought provoking than I had anticipated, leaving me with a lot to ponder on the matter. I highly recommend it to believers and non-believers alike.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. I disagree somewhat with his conclusions, but it was a well written book. Definitely is making me think.
    • 5/5
      Loved the conclusions he comes to by the end of the book. Great read
    • 5/5
      Amazing book! Strongly suggest it. It has a very intellectual description of the history of religion
    • 1/5
      This is a disingenuous and biased speculative history which relies upon several discredited sources such as Freud. Someone may possibly believe this idiocy but it is hard for me to believe any educated westerner could fall for this vicious propaganda. His “history” of god is as filled with as many misunderstandings of true theology as any I have ever read. Aslan has very little appreciation for theology and gives himself away by referring to the “prophet.” The human attributes of god argument makes no sense at all given that Christians have always maintained that we humans can only love by participating in the love of God. God is love. Perhaps, Aslan would have picked up on that if he had bothered to study Christian texts rather than summarize Freud and Marxist criticisms.
    • 3/5
      For 90+% of this book, I was fascinated. It's an engaging history of the development of humankind's relationship to the divine, from prehistoric (i.e, neanderthal) times up to, roughly, the development and spread of the most recent major western religion, Islam. It ties in psychology and politics and sociology and trade, and makes logical connections between the development of all of them, in tandem.

      Where the book falls short for me comes in a trinity, if you will. First, its near sole focus on western religions, basically the developments of Judaism-Christianity-Islam, as a continuum of sorts. Yes, Hindu gods make an appearance at one point, but are more or less dismissed. Buddhism rates a momentary mention as something perfectly acceptable to believe in. But nothing outside the European/Middle Eastern religious development makes any real contribution to Aslan's theme and approach.

      Second, although understandably, given his focus on the trio of major religions, he basically ends the history of the development of our relationship with deities with Islam. In the prior chapters, as he details the histories of each of the new religions that arose, he pointedly includes the often violent clashes that accompanied these, and their opposition and oppression of the past religions that they are developed from. By stopping with the early development of Islam in his historical stretch, he more or less notes that Islam includes elements from all these previous religions, happily incorporating them into a new concept. And then he stops, leaving one, if they didn't know any better, with the idea that Islam is somehow the pinnacle of all things past, and with no conflict with any of those because it is all encompassing - not even any rivalries of the various sects of Islam find their way into the book - something that took very little time after the development of the religion to be dispelled.

      And third, in his conclusions, he basically announces that all views of the divine, including the non-belief in any sort of deity, be it atheism or a hard-science bent, are all equal, because all are unprovable and lack in any hard evidence, basically taking the tact that "scientific theories" are just theories, and not facts, a complete nonsensical statement, regardless of whether you do or don't also believe in some form of a god.

      As a history, during the earlier chapters, it's a fascinating read. As he winds up the book and comes to his conclusions, he devolves from historian into sort of, "my way is the way, and there's nothing you can say that will prove me wrong".

      2 people found this helpful