The Evolution Of God Part 12

And this is what often fails to happen. The bulk of westerners and the bulk of Muslims are in a deeply non-zero-sum relations.h.i.+p, yet by and large aren't very good at extending moral imagination to one another.

So a machine that was designed to serve our interests is misfiring. The moral imagination was built to help us discriminate between people we can do business with and people we can't do business with-to expand or contract, respectively. When Americans fail to extend moral imagination to Muslims, this is their unconscious mind's way of saying, "We judge these people to be not worth dealing with." Yet most of them are worth dealing with.

We've already seen one reason for this malfunction. Technology is warping our perception of the other player in this non-zero-sum game. The other player is a vast population of Muslims who, though perhaps not enamored of the West, don't spend their time burning flags and killing westerners. But what we see on TV-and what we may conflate with this other player-is a subset of Muslims who truly, and perhaps irreversibly, hate the West. We accurately perceive the stubborn hostility of the latter and our moral imagination contracts accordingly, but in the process it excludes the former.

The Boat.

There is one other feature of the modern environment that can mislead a mental guidance system designed for a hunter-gatherer environment. In the ancestral environment-the environment our brains were built for-you weren't stuck in the same boat with your enemies. If conflict between two factions within a hunter-gatherer band got too intense, they might just split up and go their separate ways. And if the conflict was between two bands, one band might achieve lasting victory-either wipe out the other band or drive it over the horizon.

Today things are more complicated. For starters, you can't drive terrorists "over the horizon" without sending them to another planet; they can damage western interests from almost anywhere. Further, though you could in principle kill them all, in practice it's impossible to do that without creating more of them. So many of them are embedded in civilian populations that a frontal a.s.sault would kill innocents-and the ensuing publicity would be good news for terrorist recruiters. For that matter to even find all the terorrists (a prerequisite for killing them), you'd have to do such heavy-handed surveillance as to again generate animosity that played into the hands of recruiters.

This complex strategic environment isn't just different from our ancestral environment-it's different from the mid-twentieth-century strategic environment. Back then, when enemies came in the form of nation-states, total victory was possible. Witness World War II-unconditional surrender by both Germany and j.a.pan. The postwar world was pretty simple, too. You could be safe so long as every nation-state was either an ally or a cowed enemy, so long as every foreign leader either liked you or feared you.

Then things changed. Increasingly, as the end of the twentieth century approached, national security depended not just on how the leaders of nation-states felt about you, but on how ordinary people felt about you. Large swaths of gra.s.sroots hatred could produce small but consequential numbers of terrorists. And the reason wasn't just that historical circ.u.mstances happened to produce a movement known as radical Islam. The problem was deep and structural, originating in a confluence of technical trends.

First, the evolution of munitions technology-from plastic explosives to nuclear weapons and biological weapons-made it easier for a small group of highly motivated terrorists to kill lots of people. Second, information technology and other technologies made it easier for people to get hold of the recipes and ingredients for those munitions. Information technology also made it easier for interest groups to form-for people of like mind to find one another and, having organized, recruit others. When these interest groups are model airplane enthusiasts, this is not a problem, but when they're airplane hijackers, it is.

It is because of these three developments that amorphous, far-flung, gra.s.sroots hatred can easily coalesce and then morph into ma.s.sive violence. This "growing lethality of hatred" is an enduring, structurally driven trend. We might as well get used to it.

And its upshot takes us back to our starting point: if gra.s.s-roots hatred is indeed public enemy number one, then the West is definitely playing a non-zero-sum game with the great bulk of the world's Muslims. Things will be better for the West if things are better for the world's Muslims-if they're content with their place in the modern world and well disposed toward the West, and so don't exude the discontent that nourishes terrorism.

Reducing discontent in any population is a nontrivial engineering feat, and doing it in a group as large and diverse as the world's Muslims is especially challenging. But it may be that some of the blanks could be filled in by exercising moral imagination -by westerners doing the uncomfortable work of putting themselves in the shoes of people who don't especially like them and so starting to fathom the sources of the dislike. It's always possible to a.n.a.lyze people's psychology from the outside, but if you want a fine-grained appreciation for what things will needlessly antagonize them and what things will win their trust and respect, there's no subst.i.tute for being on the inside, actually relating their experience to experiences of your own.

What's more, this use of moral imagination will predispose westerners to actually act on the data once they've gathered it. They'll be more inclined to feel that addressing the grievances in question is the right thing to do-an intuition that won't be unerringly correct, but will often be a healthy counterbalance to a more common, more adversarial, impulse.

Of course, this sense of rightness will bring resistance: Does it mean that the victims of terrorism are to blame? Does it mean that the terrorists aren't to blame? The fact that the technical answer to these questions is no won't defuse them. Neither will exhortations to forget about the blame question and just focus on cool strategic calculation-just recognize when addressing grievances has a bigger payoff than ignoring them and when ignoring them is on balance cost-effective.

No, the best way to counter the visceral aversion to extending the moral imagination is through the viscera: fight fire with fire. Remember that what our true enemies-the terrorists themselves-dearly want is for most Muslims to harbor hatred and simmering grievance. So if addressing some of the enemy's grievances means addressing grievances of Muslims in general, that may be the best revenge against the enemies. The basic idea is vaguely reminiscent of the wisdom spread by the apostle Paul and derived from the Hebrew wisdom literature: "If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat." For by doing so you "will heap coals of fire on their heads." 2 2 Asymmetrical Sermons.

This has been an asymmetrical sermon in at least two senses. First, I've focused on "perceived American arrogance" as if it were the sole cause of terrorism. But that was just a rhetorical convenience. There are many such causes, involving many behaviors by many nations, and this is just one example.

Second, I've asked how westerners can employ their moral imaginations to appreciate the perspective of Muslims. Why didn't I ask how Muslims can exercise their moral imaginations to appreciate the perspective of westerners-which, after all, would be a development of comparable value?

For one thing, because there probably aren't many people in Indonesia or Saudi Arabia reading this book. The Muslim world, like the West, could use some sermonizing, but the most effective sermons will come from within.

Besides, making westerners better at seeing the perspective of Muslims is just a roundabout way of making Muslims better at seeing the perspective of westerners. The idea is to figure out what things make lots of Muslims view relations with the West as zero-sum, decide which of those things can be changed at acceptable cost, and thus make those relations more conspicuously non-zero-sum. The more conspicuously non-zero-sum the relations.h.i.+p, the better Muslims will be at seeing the western perspective; the more expansive their own moral imaginations will become.

Moral Progress, Then and Now.

This chapter marks the first appearance in this book of the term "moral imagination." But, actually, moral imagination is what much of the book has been about. The expansion and contraction of the moral imagination lies behind the pattern that has pervaded the history of religion: when a religious group senses an auspicious non-zero-sum relations.h.i.+p with another group, it is more likely to create tolerant scriptures or to find tolerance in existing scriptures; and when it senses no prospect of a win-win outcome, it is more likely to summon intolerance and belligerence. Humans have innate equipment for spotting people they can do business with and doing business with them, and the moral imagination is a major part of that equipment. When it opens up to a people, religious att.i.tudes can change accordingly. That's what we've seen again and again.

So how is it that the moral imagination, which right now is so badly malfunctioning, worked so well during Abrahamic history, reliably expanding to exploit non-zero-sum opportunities? Actually, it didn't. Though I've emphasized the successes, there have been miscalculations aplenty, leading to lose-lose outcomes. (How many Christians and Muslims died fighting over Jerusalem during the Crusades, and what lasting profit came to either faith? And how many religions that we've never heard of went extinct out of a failure to skillfully play non-zero-sum games?) What's more, many of the successes haven't resulted from the moral imagination working on autopilot. Ever since social organization evolved from hunter-gatherer societies to chiefdoms, the moral imagination has been working in an environment that it wasn't designed for-so you would expect that it has often, as today, needed some coaxing to do its job well. And indeed, among the more commendable achievements of religion has been to sometimes step in and provide just that.

This coaxing goes back to the religion of chiefdoms-to the age when religion first acquired a distinct moral dimension - and it was well under way by the time Abrahamic history comes into clear view. Consider Israel's formative stages. If you are going to build a confederacy of tribes, you need people to extend their moral imagination farther than instincts built for a hunter-gatherer milieu might dictate. Hence the Ten Commandments, and the idea that you should "love" your Israelite neighbor. An essential property of love is to be able to share in the perspective of the beloved. Similarly, if you are the apostle Paul, and you're going to build a vast multinational religious organization within the Roman Empire, you need to stress that brotherly love should extend across ethnic bounds. And if you are building Islam, an intertribal religious organization that will then become an expanding imperial government, you have to emphasize both of those things, extending affinity beyond the bounds of tribes and of ethnicities.

These thresholds in the history of the Abrahamic faiths-and in the evolution of G.o.d-have consisted of expanding the moral imagination, carrying it to a place it doesn't go unabetted. This expansion is religion at its best. Religion at its worst is... well, there are too many examples these days to bother elaborating.

Has the best outweighed the worst? Certainly there has been a kind of net moral progress in human history, if only in the sense that moral imagination today routinely extends farther than the circ.u.mference of a hunter-gatherer village. And certainly religion has played a role in this progress. Even when the Abrahamic religions are defensive and inward-looking, you see Muslims identifying with Muslims half a world away, and Christians and Jews doing the same. In all cases, that's a bigger moral compa.s.s than existed anywhere on this planet 20,000 years ago, when all religions were "savage" religions. Moreover, within all three of those faiths you see some people working to extend the moral imagination beyond the bounds of their particular religion.

Obviously there's room for more progress. In fact, there's an urgent need for it. Maybe it's not too much to say that the salvation of the planet-the coherence and robustness of an emerging global social organization-depends on this progress. That's what happens when the zone of non-zero-sumness reaches planetary breadth; once everybody is in the same boat, either they learn how to get along or very bad things happen. If the Abrahamic religions don't respond to this ultimatum adaptively, if they don't expand their moral imaginations, there is a chance of chaos on an unprecedented scale. The precursors of these religions-the ancient religions of Mesopotamia and Egypt-had it right when they depicted the triumph of chaos as the failure of the religious enterprise.

But Is It Truth?

At the outset of this chapter I said that successfully playing the great non-zero-sum games of our time would require a closer approximation of moral truth. In what sense would the expansion of the moral imagination-the thing that, I contend, is a prerequisite for this success-bring us closer to moral truth? Two senses, one a bit cold and clinical, perhaps even cynical sounding, and one more warm and fuzzy.

First, the expansion of moral imagination can bring it into closer alignment with its original Darwinian purpose. The moral imagination was "designed" by natural selection to help us exploit non-zero-sum opportunities, to help us cement fruitfully peaceful relations when they're available, to help us find people we can do business with and do business with them. If it is going to do that today, it has to grow. It has to grow in the western world, and it has to grow in the Muslim world.

Of course, these opportunities are exploited for the sake of self-interest, and it may sound ironic to say that we move closer to moral truth by doing a better job of serving our own interests. But in this case-and here we start drifting toward the warm and fuzzy-the pursuit of self-interest has some by-products that are moral in a more traditional sense.

To begin with, the exploitation of these non-zero-sum opportunities-notably the one between the western and Muslim worlds -would serve the interests of both parties, and human welfare would grow in the aggregate. (That's the magical thing about non-zero-sumness; it translates rational selfishness into the welfare of others.) Making humankind on balance better off may not intrinsically involve moral truth, but it does const.i.tute a kind of moral progress. Moreover, in this case it does does involve a kind of moral truth. For its prerequisite, the expansion of the moral imagination, forces us to see the interior of more and more other people for what the interior of other people is-namely, remarkably like our own interior. Like our own interior, it is deeply colored by the emotions and pa.s.sions that are our Darwinian legacy; like our own interior it in turn colors the world with self-serving moral judgment; like our own interior it possesses intrinsic value. involve a kind of moral truth. For its prerequisite, the expansion of the moral imagination, forces us to see the interior of more and more other people for what the interior of other people is-namely, remarkably like our own interior. Like our own interior, it is deeply colored by the emotions and pa.s.sions that are our Darwinian legacy; like our own interior it in turn colors the world with self-serving moral judgment; like our own interior it possesses intrinsic value.

To say that other people are people, too, may sound like an unremarkable insight. But it is one that is often ignored, and one that is in some sense unnatural. After all, any organism created by natural selection is, by default, under the illusion that it is special. We all base our daily lives on this premise-that our welfare is more important than the welfare of pretty much anyone else, with the possible exception of close kin. Indeed, the premise is that our welfare is much much more important than the welfare of others. We work hard so we can afford dessert while other people don't have dinner. We see our own resentments as bona fide grievances and we see the grievances of others as mere resentments. And we are all like this-all of us walking around under the impression that we're special. Obviously, we can't all be right in any objective sense. The truth must be otherwise. The extension of moral imagination brings us closer to that truth. more important than the welfare of others. We work hard so we can afford dessert while other people don't have dinner. We see our own resentments as bona fide grievances and we see the grievances of others as mere resentments. And we are all like this-all of us walking around under the impression that we're special. Obviously, we can't all be right in any objective sense. The truth must be otherwise. The extension of moral imagination brings us closer to that truth.

So, in the end, the salvation of the global social system entails moral progress not just in the sense of human welfare; there has to be, as a prerequisite for that growth, a closer encounter by individual human beings with moral truth. And this is an inevitable outcome of human history. It isn't inevitable that we'll prevail-that our species will get close enough to moral truth to attain salvation. But it was an inevitable outcome of history's stubborn drive toward growing non-zero-sumness that we would at least face this predicament: either move closer to moral truth or descend into chaos.

I said in the previous chapter that this book isn't the place to mount a full-fledged argument that human history has some larger purpose. But certainly one fact that would figure in such an argument is this: history has driven us closer and closer to moral truth, and now our moving still closer to moral truth is the only path to salvation-"salvation" in the original Abrahamic sense of the term: salvation of the social structure.

For Abrahamics of the Christian and Muslim variety, especially, the question of salvation doesn't end with this Hebrew Bible sense of the term. They may ask: Does the growth of moral imagination conduce to salvation in the sense of individual salvation? Will it save my soul? That is a question for them to answer as their doctrines continue to evolve. But we can say this much: traditionally, religions that have failed to align individual salvation with social salvation have not, in the end, fared well. And, like it or not, the social system to be saved is now a global one. Any religion whose prerequisites for individual salvation don't conduce to the salvation of the whole world is a religion whose time has pa.s.sed.

Even if time does pa.s.s them by, all Abrahamic religions will always be able to say this much: their prophets were right. Things may look bad, but salvation is possible so long as you understand what it requires. Still, it will be a shame if they don't manage to ill.u.s.trate the point.

Chapter Twenty.

Well, Aren't We Special?

Among the things Muslims, Christians, and Jews have had in common over the years is a tendency to exaggerate their past specialness.

Hebrew scripture depicts the Israelites as theological revolutionaries: they marched into Canaan backed by the one true G.o.d and vanquished the ignorant polytheists. In truth, as we've seen, Israelite religion emerged from the Canaanite milieu and was itself polytheistic; monotheism didn't prevail in Israel until after the Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE.

Christians think of Jesus as a man who brought the Jews a radically new message of personal salvation and was determined to carry it to the peoples of the world. But Jesus was himself a Jew, preaching to other Jews, and his essential message was probably a familiar one-a message of national salvation, a message about the coming restoration of Israel to greatness. His agenda probably didn't include transethnic outreach or its moral corollary, a brotherly love that knows no national bounds. That doctrine entered Christianity in the decades after his death-a reflection not of his true teachings, but of the cosmopolitan, multiethnic milieu of the Roman Empire. His teachings were then reshaped accordingly, and the resulting distortion became the gospel.

Muslims think of Muhammad as a man who carried two revolutionary messages: he told Arab polytheists that there was only one G.o.d, Allah, and he explained to Christians and Jews that their G.o.d and Allah were the same G.o.d. But the chances are that when Muhammad arrived on the scene Allah was already known to be the G.o.d of Christians and Jews, a fact that helps explain why so much Christian and Jewish belief and ritual survive in Islam. And as for the question of whether Allah was the only G.o.d -here Muhammad was equivocal. In deference to the political power of Arab polytheists, he seems to have at one point granted the existence of other G.o.ds, only later settling back into permanent monotheism; and even then he was careful to preserve such originally polytheistic customs as the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Islam was born not with a starkly new and firm character, but as a fluid compromise among Judaism, Christianity, and Arab paganism.

So if neither Moses nor Jesus nor Muhammad arrived on the scene with breathtaking news, and if indeed the origin of all three Abrahamic faiths can be viewed as a kind of cultural synthesis, an organic recombination of preexisting elements, what becomes of the claim that they are religions of revelation?

Scripture as Revelation.

Certainly things are looking bad for the traditional claim that they're religions of special special revelation. But there is still a sense, if a less dramatic one, in which the Abrahamic scriptures can be validly viewed as revelation. revelation. But there is still a sense, if a less dramatic one, in which the Abrahamic scriptures can be validly viewed as revelation.

For starters, these scriptures reveal the arrow of moral development built into human history. This revelation is cryptic, because moral progress has been fitful, with lots of backsliding-and, to compound matters, the scriptures aren't arranged in chronological order. So messages of tolerance and belligerence, of love and hate, are mixed in seemingly random fas.h.i.+on. But seen in context they fall into a pattern: when people face win-win situations and think they can work together, they are open to one another's worldviews, not to mention one another's continued existence. So as technological evolution expands the realm of non-zero-sumness-one thing it has stubbornly done throughout history and shows every sign of continuing to do-there is incentive to acknowledge and respect the humanity of an ever widening circle of humans.

Of course, this kind of scriptural "revelation"-the revealing of a pattern in history-wouldn't by itself make most Jews, Christians, and Muslims beam with pride. After all, the most secular historical doc.u.ments could be revelations in this sense. Scriptures are supposed to emanate from a divine source, from the revealer. And they're supposed to confirm not just some vague claim about a moral pattern in history, but specific theological claims-in this case claims about whether it's Christians or Muslims or Jews who have the details right about G.o.d and his will.

Still, there's one way this less dramatic kind of revelation could be welcome ammunition for Abrahamics who find themselves in a theological debate-namely, if the debate finds them all on the same side. If you step back from the differences they have with one another and with other religions, you'll see a bigger divide in modern thought. It's between people who think there is in some sense a divine source of meaning, a higher purpose in this universe, and people who think there isn't.

On one side are people like Steven Weinberg, the n.o.bel Prize winning physicist who famously wrote, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." In his view, there is no transcendent source of meaning or moral orientation. "It's not a moral order out there," he once said. "It's something we impose." 1 1 But what the Abrahamic scriptures ill.u.s.trate, however obscurely, is that there is is a moral order out there-and it's imposed on us. Built-in features of history, emanating from the basic logic of cultural evolution, give humankind a choice between progressing morally and paying a price for failing to. Hence the pattern, over the millennia, of people placing larger and larger numbers of other people within their circle of moral consideration. And hence the bursts of suffering for failing to. And hence the current, culminating moment in that pattern, a moment when the only way to avoid great and possibly catastrophic harm is to expand that moral circle across the whole planet. The march of history challenges people to expand their range of sympathy and understanding, to enlarge their moral imaginations, to share the perspective of people ever farther away. Time has drawn us toward the commonsensical-sounding yet elusive moral truth that people everywhere are people, just like us. a moral order out there-and it's imposed on us. Built-in features of history, emanating from the basic logic of cultural evolution, give humankind a choice between progressing morally and paying a price for failing to. Hence the pattern, over the millennia, of people placing larger and larger numbers of other people within their circle of moral consideration. And hence the bursts of suffering for failing to. And hence the current, culminating moment in that pattern, a moment when the only way to avoid great and possibly catastrophic harm is to expand that moral circle across the whole planet. The march of history challenges people to expand their range of sympathy and understanding, to enlarge their moral imaginations, to share the perspective of people ever farther away. Time has drawn us toward the commonsensical-sounding yet elusive moral truth that people everywhere are people, just like us.

To say that this signifies a moral order doesn't mean order will prevail; it doesn't mean that we'll embrace this truth, pa.s.s the test, and usher in an age of tranquillity. Enough people may resist the truth so that, instead, chaos ensues. The moral order lies in the fact that this price will indeed be paid if moral truth doesn't dawn widely. The moral order is the coherence of the relations.h.i.+p between social order and moral truth.

The fact that there's a moral order out there doesn't mean there's a G.o.d. On the other hand, it's evidence in favor of the G.o.d hypothesis and evidence against Weinberg's worldview. In the great divide of current thought-between those, including the Abrahamics, who see a higher purpose, a transcendent source of meaning, and those, like Weinberg, who don't-the manifest existence of a moral order comes down clearly on one side.

What's more, though believing in this moral order doesn't make you a believer in G.o.d, it may make you, in some sense, religious. In the first chapter, when we were looking for a definition of religion broad enough to encompa.s.s the many things that have been called religion, we settled on a formulation by William James. Religious belief, he said, "consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." Presumably one thing that would qualify as "our supreme good," in James's view, is clearly perceiving, and abiding by, moral truth. And if the unseen order is a moral one, then harmoniously adjusting yourself to it entails as much.

Of course, you could interpret James's "supreme good" in more practical terms. Our supreme good, you could say, is our survival and health, our flouris.h.i.+ng. But even under this interpretation, the moral order revealed in the Abrahamic scriptures complies with James's formulation. After all, the way history draws people toward moral truth is by rewarding them for moving toward it and punis.h.i.+ng them for resisting. As technological evolution brings larger and larger swaths of people within shouting distance, they either muster the tolerance and mutual respect to do business with one another or fail to flourish. The moral order offers us the prospect of social health-salvation in the Hebrew Bible's sense of the term-but only if we abide by its logic; only if we "harmoniously adjust ourselves" to the "unseen order."

We saw in the last chapter that the Abrahamic prophets were right at least in the sense of believing that salvation is possible so long as you know what it requires. Now we can say they were right in a deeper sense-in believing that salvation requires closer alignment with the moral axis of the universe.

Of course, they didn't put it like that. They didn't use phrases like "the moral axis of the universe." They just said salvation required aligning yourself with G.o.d's will. Then again, they believed that G.o.d's will was was the moral axis of the universe. In that sense, even if we a.s.sume that all their specific ideas about G.o.d were wrong-even if we a.s.sume that they were wrong to think there the moral axis of the universe. In that sense, even if we a.s.sume that all their specific ideas about G.o.d were wrong-even if we a.s.sume that they were wrong to think there is is a G.o.d-they were closer to the truth about the essence of things than Steven Weinberg is. Either there is a moral order or there isn't. They said there is, he said there isn't. They seem to have been right. a G.o.d-they were closer to the truth about the essence of things than Steven Weinberg is. Either there is a moral order or there isn't. They said there is, he said there isn't. They seem to have been right.

The Growth of G.o.d So Far.

In chapter 8, when I talked about the "growth" of the Abrahamic G.o.d, it wasn't because I feel confident that this G.o.d, or any G.o.d, exists (a question I'm unqualified to answer). It was because the G.o.d of the Abrahamic scriptures-real or not - does have a tendency to grow morally. This growth, though at times cryptic and superficially haphazard, is the "revelation" of the moral order underlying history: as the scope of social organization grows, G.o.d tends to eventually catch up, drawing a larger expanse of humanity under his protection, or at least a larger expanse of humanity under his toleration.

So when the tribes of Israel coalesced into a single polity, Yahweh expanded to encompa.s.s them all, reflecting a kind of moral advance-mutual acceptance among those tribes, the acceptance that allowed the Israelite nation to form. And after the exile, when Israel gained a secure place in the multinational Persian Empire, the fierce nationalism of an earlier Israel abated. Now Hebrew scriptures emphasized kins.h.i.+p with other nations of the empire and downplayed past enmities.

The Christian G.o.d, like the G.o.d of Israel, drew moral nourishment from the multinational nature of empire, in this case the Roman Empire. Salvation was granted to all believers without regard for nationality. Vestiges of a narrower G.o.d-the G.o.d reflected in Jesus's calling a woman a "dog" because she wasn't from Israel-were left behind.

Islam's formation, in a sense, telescoped a millennium or so of G.o.d's Judeo-Christian history. First, Allah transcended tribal distinctions, as he had done under the name Yahweh in ancient Israel. Then Islam, toward the end of its formative period, acquired the multinational perspective of empire, admitting, like Christianity (and like modern Judaism), people of all nations to the community of belief. But Islam went further than the Christianity of the Roman Empire; in places its scripture granted the possibility of salvation to people outside the fold-to Christians and Jews and even to Zoroastrians, who fell within the realm of empire upon Islam's conquest of Persia.

Of course, this progressive-sounding list of theological milestones was selected with a bias. I could just as easily have listed the downsides of imperial affiliation-the doctrine of jihad, a product of early imperial Islam, or the Christian doctrine of holy war, both of which smoothed slaughter during the Crusades. Throughout human history, as zones of non-zero-sumness have expanded, and with them the extent of polities and religions, amity within the zones has often been matched by enmity between them. The movement toward moral truth, though regionally significant, has been globally modest, at best.

Now we've reached a stage in history where the movement toward moral truth has to become globally momentous. Technology has made the planet too small, too finely interdependent, for enmity between large blocs to be in their enduring interest. The negative-sum side of the world's non-zero-sumness is too explosively big to be compatible with social salvation. In particular: in any envisioned "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West, neither side can realistically hope for conquest.

So if the G.o.d of the Abrahamic faiths is to keep doing what he has often managed to do before-evolve in a way that fosters positive-sum outcomes of non-zero-sum games-he has some growing to do. His character has to develop in a way that permits, for starters, Muslims, Christians, and Jews to get along as globalization keeps pus.h.i.+ng them closer together.

If the modern world offers cause for pessimism on this front, at least cause for optimism can be found in the ancient world. As we saw in chapter 8, the closest thing in that world to globalization were periods of incipient empire, when nations were thrown together in new combinations and new avenues of contact were opened. And, as we've just seen, the G.o.d of all three faiths pa.s.sed the imperial test in the ancient world; when put in the multinational context of empire, he summoned enough broad-mindedness to facilitate the playing of non-zero-sum games. G.o.d's character may not seem to be growing at the moment, but he has it in him.

Of course, G.o.d's character is a product of the way Muslims, Christians, and Jews think of him. So to say the Abrahamic G.o.d must grow means they must start thinking of him in a slightly different way-as a G.o.d who is less inclined to play favorites among them. In other words, they need to start thinking of themselves as a bit less special.

For starters, they could think of the different Abrahamic faiths as having been involved, all along, in the same undertaking. And it's true: all three faiths have been struggling to make sense of the world in ultimate terms, in terms of the meaning of it all and the point of it all. And this struggle has in a sense succeeded: the struggle itself has evinced a pattern that strongly suggests there is is a point to it all-a higher purpose, a transcendent moral order. What's more, this evidence corroborates a conclusion their prophets had all reached in their own ways-that salvation is possible if we know what it requires, and that what it requires is closer alignment with the moral order of the universe. The Abrahamic religions should pat themselves on the back, or better yet, pat each other on the back. a point to it all-a higher purpose, a transcendent moral order. What's more, this evidence corroborates a conclusion their prophets had all reached in their own ways-that salvation is possible if we know what it requires, and that what it requires is closer alignment with the moral order of the universe. The Abrahamic religions should pat themselves on the back, or better yet, pat each other on the back.

This may sound like advice, but it isn't meant that way. If there's one thing this book shows, it's that advising religious people on what stance to take toward other religions will, by itself, get you nowhere. The facts on the ground have to be conducive to reconciliation for reconciliation to happen. But we can see forces at work that could have this effect, and we know that such forces can work in fairly short order.

Only four decades ago, the difference between Catholic and Protestant was no small thing in many parts of America. "Inter-marriage" was a term applied to Catholic-Protestant weddings, and such weddings weren't widely welcomed. Today "intramarriage" better captures the aura of such weddings. The reasons-that is, the sources of non-zero-sumness-are many, including an economy that has brought Protestants and Catholics into everyday work-place interdependence, and a sense that secularism threatens their common beliefs and values. Maybe comparable forces can move the world's Abrahamic faiths closer together. Certainly the religious sensibility writ large is under a.s.sault, and they have a common interest in meeting that challenge.

How to Be Humble: Lesson Number Two.

Another way to make the Abrahamic religions feel less special would be to point out that, in trying to make sense of the world in ultimate terms, they haven't been alone. Non-Abrahamic religions have been involved in the same task, and some of them have arguably done a better job.

Consider this idea that social salvation-averting chaos-requires closer adherence to moral truth. This is in a sense the ultimate validation of the enterprise in which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been involved. It's an idea, I've argued, that the basic direction of history bears out, and it's an idea expressed in all three faiths. Yet in none of these faiths has it found so central and so explicit an expression as it found long before any of them was born, in the religion of ancient Egypt.

In chapter 13 we saw that a morally contingent afterlife, an idea famously central to Christianity, was antic.i.p.ated in Egypt well before the time of Jesus: at the court of the G.o.d Osiris, the moral record of the deceased was judged and the fate of the deceased thus determined. But we didn't get into the symbolic richness of the adjudicatory process. When the deceased made their professions of moral purity, their veracity was checked by placing their heart on a scale and balancing it against a feather that represented Maat, the G.o.ddess of truth. (This was a tense moment. Standing nearby was Ammut the devourer, a hideous G.o.ddess who would eat the deceased if the heart was found corrupt.) 2 2 Then the question would be settled: Was it true, as they claimed, that they had respected the property and persons of their fellow Egyptians, even including servants and the poor? Then the question would be settled: Was it true, as they claimed, that they had respected the property and persons of their fellow Egyptians, even including servants and the poor?

But the feather on that Judgment Day scale was more than a symbol of Maat, the G.o.ddess of truth, and thus more than a gauge of truthfulness. For Maat herself embodied maat maat-a kind of metaphysical substance composed of truth, order, and cosmic harmony. 3 3 One job of the pharaoh was to present One job of the pharaoh was to present maat maat to the G.o.ds and thus sustain the world's precarious order. Egyptian writings taught people how to "live in to the G.o.ds and thus sustain the world's precarious order. Egyptian writings taught people how to "live in maat maat"-live a moral life-and thus give the pharaoh a hand. So when Egyptians, mindful of their coming day of reckoning, cultivated maat, maat, they were struggling not just against personal mortality but against social dissolution. And Osiris-sometimes called "the lord of they were struggling not just against personal mortality but against social dissolution. And Osiris-sometimes called "the lord of maat maat"-precisely symbolized this dual struggle. 4 4 For he (in this and so many other respects like Jesus) was a G.o.d who had been raised from the dead, and Seth, the G.o.d who had killed Osiris in the first place, the G.o.d over whom Osiris triumphed through resurrection, was the G.o.d of chaos. For he (in this and so many other respects like Jesus) was a G.o.d who had been raised from the dead, and Seth, the G.o.d who had killed Osiris in the first place, the G.o.d over whom Osiris triumphed through resurrection, was the G.o.d of chaos.

It may well be that this plotline-whose basics were laid down several millennia ago-has never been surpa.s.sed as a mythic a.s.sessment of our situation: either we strive toward moral truth, which centrally entails respect for the other, or we dissolve into chaos.

For that matter, no religion has since surpa.s.sed ancient Egyptian religion in the strength of its incentive to encourage this striving: only if you strive do you get to spend eternity in bliss. As we've seen, pretty much all religions link social salvation to some sort of individual salvation, but eternal bliss has to rank near the top of the heap of individual salvations in terms of motivating power. Christians and Muslims matched this power, but they didn't surpa.s.s it.

These days this incentive isn't available to everyone. Lots of people don't believe in an afterlife-an increasing number perhaps, and certainly an increasing number of well-educated people. Lots of people don't think of themselves as pursuing personal salvation in any other sense, either. Which raises a question: in the modern age, how do you employ the time-tested formula for strengthening the social fabric-forging a link between individual salvation and social salvation? If many people don't seek salvation in the first place, how do you make closer adherence to moral truth a prerequisite for it?

Fortunately, it turns out that everyone does seek salvation. The word "salvation," remember, comes from a Latin word meaning to stay intact, to remain whole, to be in good health. And everyone, atheist, agnostic, and believer alike, is trying to stay in good mental health, to keep their psyche or spirit (or whatever they call it) intact, to keep body and soul together. They're trying, you might say, to avert chaos at the individual level.

So the basic challenge of linking individual salvation to social salvation can be stated in equally symmetrical yet more secular language: the challenge is to link the avoidance of individual chaos to the avoidance of social chaos. Or: link the pursuit of psychic intactness to social intactness. Or: link the pursuit of personal integrity to social integrity. Or: link the pursuit of psychic harmony to social harmony.

Or whatever. The exact language depends on the context: devout Abrahamics will use different language from New Age "seekers," from agnostic neo-Buddhists, from secular humanists, and so on. Some people will take heart from the idea that to seek a personal salvation linked to social salvation is to align yourself with a cosmic purpose manifest in history, and some won't (either because they don't agree that the purpose is manifest or because they don't care). But however you describe the linkage, whatever the nature of the incentive structure, the linkage will have to be made in a fair percentage of human beings around the world for it to work. Social salvation may or may not be at hand, depending on the extent to which individual people, in working out their own salvations, expand their moral imaginations and hence expand the circle of moral consideration.

The Future of G.o.d.

At the risk of seeming to harp on the nonspecialness of the Abrahamic faiths: this expansion of the moral circle is another area in which non-Abrahamic religions have sometimes outperformed the Abrahamics.

Consider Buddhism under the influence of the Indian emperor Ashoka of the third century BCE, whom we briefly encountered in chapter 12. Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism, like Constantine's later conversion to Christianity, a.s.sured his new religion a solid place on an imperial platform. And Buddhism's emphasis on brotherly love and charity, rather like comparable Christian emphases in ancient Rome, was presumably good for the empire's transethnic solidarity. Yet, like the early Islamic caliphates -and unlike Constantine-Ashoka insisted on respecting other religions in the empire; he never demanded conversion.

In short, Ashoka combined the best of the Abrahamic tradition's two imperial religions. And then he did them one better. Whereas Christianity and Islam were both enlisted in imperial holy war, Ashoka renounced conquest, horrified by the event that had preceded and triggered his conversion to Buddhism-his own b.l.o.o.d.y conquest of a neighboring region. "The most important conquest," he announced, is "moral conquest." Thus "the sound of war drums" would be replaced by the "call to Dharma," to the path of moral truth. 5 5 What if the Abrahamic religions really did relax their sense of specialness-with respect to one another and even, eventually, with respect to non-Abrahamic faiths? No doubt it would feel to many Christians, Jews, and Muslims like an injury to their faith. Yet it would amount to a kind of vindication. At the core of each faith is the conviction that there is a moral order, and for the Abrahamic conception of G.o.d to grow in this fas.h.i.+on would be yet more evidence that such an order exists. For Jews, Christians, or Muslims to cling to claims of special validity could make their faiths seem, and perhaps be, less valid. As Ashoka put it in a different context: "If a man extols his own faith and disparages another because of devotion to his own and because he wants to glorify it, he seriously injures his own faith." 6 6 Is it crazy to imagine a day when the Abrahamic faiths renounce not only their specific claims to specialness, but even the claim to specialness of the whole Abrahamic enterprise? Are such radical changes in G.o.d's character imaginable? Changes this radical have already happened, again and again. Another transformation would be nothing new.

There is a proven theological formula for dissolving the specialness of different faiths. It's most famously a.s.sociated with Hindus, who seem to have used it as a way to unite different regions that emphasized the wors.h.i.+p of different Hindu G.o.ds. The idea is that all G.o.ds, with their different names, are manifestations of a single "G.o.dhead." As an ancient Vedic text put it: "They call it Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and Agni, and also heavenly, beautiful Garutman. The real is one, though sages name it variously..." 7 7 This idea may also be reflected, if obscurely, in Abrahamic scripture. As we saw in chapter 8, the Hebrew Bible often refers to G.o.d as "Elohim"-a term that seems to have entered Hebrew via a lingua franca that was used well beyond Israel's borders. As we also saw, some scholars think this word, with its international aura, was in some cases used as a way of suggesting that the G.o.ds of the region, including the G.o.d Israel called Yahweh, were all the same G.o.d.

If so, this would help make sense of something that has long been puzzling: the last two letters of Elohim Elohim give it the form of a plural noun. Indeed, the Bible sometimes uses it that way, as in referring to the "G.o.ds" of another nation. give it the form of a plural noun. Indeed, the Bible sometimes uses it that way, as in referring to the "G.o.ds" of another nation. 8 8 But when applied to the G.o.d of Israel, this superficially plural noun behaves as if singular. Maybe this grammatical anomaly, like the word's international pedigree, was a way of driving home the idea that the various G.o.ds in Israel's vicinity-various elohim-were different faces of the one G.o.dhead. But when applied to the G.o.d of Israel, this superficially plural noun behaves as if singular. Maybe this grammatical anomaly, like the word's international pedigree, was a way of driving home the idea that the various G.o.ds in Israel's vicinity-various elohim-were different faces of the one G.o.dhead.

As it happens, the word Elohim Elohim looks a lot like early names for G.o.d in the Christian and Islamic traditions: looks a lot like early names for G.o.d in the Christian and Islamic traditions: Elaha Elaha in the Aramaic that Jesus would have spoken, and in the Aramaic that Jesus would have spoken, and Allah Allah in the Arabic of Muhammad. in the Arabic of Muhammad. 9 9 This is probably no coincidence but rather, as suggested in chapter 14, a result of common linguistic ancestry; This is probably no coincidence but rather, as suggested in chapter 14, a result of common linguistic ancestry; Elaha Elaha and and Allah Allah share some of share some of Elohim Elohim's DNA. In that sense, glimmers of the notion of the G.o.dhead are visible in ancient names for divinity in all three Abrahamic faiths. Maybe these three faiths can together use that notion to find harmony with non-Abrahamic faiths, should they ever evince an enduring ability to get along with one another. But first things first.

Afterword.

By the Way, What Is G.o.d?

In this book I've used the word "G.o.d" in two senses. First, there are the G.o.ds that have populated human history-rain G.o.ds, war G.o.ds, creator G.o.ds, all-purpose G.o.ds (such as the Abrahamic G.o.d), and so on. These G.o.ds exist in people's heads and, presumably, nowhere else.

But occasionally I've suggested that there might be a kind of G.o.d that is real. This prospect was raised by the manifest existence of a moral order-that is, by the stubborn, if erratic, expansion of humankind's moral imagination over the millennia, and the fact that the ongoing maintenance of social order depends on the further expansion of the moral imagination, on movement toward moral truth. The existence of a moral order, I've said, makes it reasonable to suspect that humankind in some sense has a "higher purpose." And maybe the source of this higher purpose, the source of the moral order, is something that qualifies for the label "G.o.d" in at least some sense of that word.

The previous sentence is hardly a fervent expression of religious faith; in fact, it's essentially agnostic. Even so, I don't recommend uttering it at, say, an Ivy League faculty gathering unless you want people to look at you as if you'd started speaking in tongues. In modern intellectual circles, speculating seriously about G.o.d's existence isn't a path to widespread esteem.

Indeed, the first decade of the twenty-first century made G.o.dtalk an even graver breach of highbrow etiquette than it had been at the end of the twentieth. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, antireligious att.i.tude was central to a slew of influential cultural products (books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins, a film by Bill Maher, a one-woman act by Julia Sweeney). In the s.p.a.ce of only a few years, the more-or-less official stance of intellectuals toward believers moved from polite silence to open dismissal if not ridicule.

So is there any hope for the believer who would like to be considered cool-or, more realistically, not too uncool? Maybe. After all, the version of G.o.d being ridiculed by the cool people is the traditional, anthropomorphic G.o.d: some superhuman being with a mind remarkably like our minds except way, way bigger (indeed, a G.o.d that, in the standard rendering, is omniscient, omnipotent, and, as a bonus, infinitely good!). And this isn't the only kind of G.o.d that could exist.

Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that some superhuman version of a human lies above and beyond the universe. Philosophers seriously discuss the possibility that the universe is some kind of simulation, and in one version of that scenario our creator is a computer programmer from a very advanced extraterrestrial-or, rather, extrauniversal-civilization. (And certainly if the human predicament is the creation of an adolescent hacker, that would explain a lot!) But we have no reason to a.s.sume as much, and there is precedent in theology for using the word "G.o.d" in a nonanthropomorphic way. For example, the twentieth-century Christian theologian Paul Tillich described G.o.d as "the ground of being."