Reza Aslan

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The 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. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle

A Human History

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In God, Reza Aslan sheds new light on mankind's relationship with the divine and challenges our perspective on faith and the birth of religion. From the origins of spiritual thought to the concept of an active, engaged, divine presence that underlies all creation, Aslan examines how the idea of god arose in human evolution, was gradually personalized, endowed with human traits and emotions, and eventually transformed into a single Divine Personality: the God known today by such names as Yahweh, Father, and Allah. Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, God challenges everything we thought we knew about the origins of religious belief, and with it our relationship with life and death, with the natural and spiritual worlds, and our understanding of the very essence of human existence.

rumbledethumps

The journey Aslan takes us on is fascinating, and I admire his writing and his storytelling. But at the end we see that he has basically been setting up the dominoes to explain his personal faith. If I had known that going in. I might have read it differently. Overall a good book for people interested in the subject.

Elda Mengisto

There was a video on social media with Reza Aslan discussing about how we project our images of humanity onto God, saying that we created God in our own image, rather than vice versa. This was an interesting argument; as an agnostic from a religious family, I though that would imply that we created the concept of God itself--and therefore it wasn't real.

The book introduces the main concepts of Aslan's religious journey and how he conceived of God in the introduction, which is important to give a feel about where this book is going. It then goes into how people throughout time interpreted the divine, from "embodied souls" to the humanized gods of antiquity to a monotheist view of God, divided through the three Abrahamic religions.

The way Aslan writes is very clear--the chapters flowed well together into a cohesive narrative into how God is perceived. I especially liked the use of "Adam and Eve" in the beginning chapters, combining the creation story with how they "began their evolution between 300,000 and 200,000 B.C.E. as the final branch in the human family tree" (4). It combines the differing perspectives on the existence of a divine to begin the story of how Adam and Eve established certain beliefs of spirituality.

There were a bunch of things I learned in this book I never knew previously--in the earlier chapters, he notes "...scholars now believe that the majority of handprints found in the caves of Europe and Asia belong to women. This puts the lie to the notion that these caves...were primarily a male affair" (13). In addition, Aslan puts psychology into how religion evolved. The vast usage of resources, from religious texts to archeology, puts a more complete picture of how this concept evolved.

I'm still intrigued about the conclusion--in which he eventually accepts pantheism, where everything has God's essence, albeit dehumanized. He acknowledges this is a god which confuses and is rejected by the mainstream, through past and present.

One of the paragraphs put this well: "As a believe and a pantheist, I worship God not through fear and trembling but through awe and wonder at the workings of the universe--for the universe is God. I pray to God not to ask for things but to become one with God. I recognize that the knowledge of good and evil that the God of Genesis so feared humans might attain begins with the knowledge that good and evil are not metaphysical things but moral choices" (169).

Aslan offers us the opportunity to make a choice in the end--but one thing remains is that I'm unsure. I will continue to seek knowledge, mostly through the lenses of what I grew up with, and what I want to become through whatever belief I decide to chase. And this book poses a lot of interesting questions on getting there. (8/10)

Karim Nas

This book starts with how our psyche introduced us to the concept of soul. From there it takes us through animism, polytheism, and finally monotheism. This book is an interesting journey through our understanding of God. And the conclusion is no less controversial than it is mind-blowing.

Truman M Halladay

This book was a really interesting history lesson on how the world's image of God came to be. There are so many key points in our history that I never knew about that were really key to our development and relationship with God. I think this book does a great job at not pushing or preaching any faith or religion. I believe that no matter what you believe, if you love history and thought provoking nuggets, this book is for you. 

God A Human History

Reviews