Robert Wright (Nonzero, The Moral Animal) has a new book.

In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony.

Nearly a decade in the making, The Evolution of God is a breathtaking re-examination of the past, and a visionary look forward.

An extended excerpt was published in The Atlantic:

It’s increasingly apparent how analogous a globalizing world is to the environment in which Christianity took shape after Jesus’ death.

If you view Paul not just as a preacher but as an entrepreneur, as someone who is trying to build a religious organization that spans the Roman Empire, then his writings assume a new cast.

In the days before modern anesthesia, requiring men to have penis surgery before they could join a religion fell under the rubric of disincentive.

Paul grasped the importance of such barriers to entry.

In the Roman Empire, the century after the Crucifixion was a time of dislocation. The situation was somewhat like that at the turn of the 20th century in the United States, when industrialization drew Americans into turbulent cities, away from their extended families. Indeed, Roman cities saw a growth in voluntary associations. The familial services offered by these groups ranged from the material, like burying the dead, to the psychological, like giving people a sense that other people cared about them.

If some people find it dispiriting that moral good should emerge from self-interest, maybe they should think again.

Decius, from an earlier Robert Wright thread:

There are two reasons that people act: Carrots and Sticks. Lowering the barrier to entry might be a carrot, but the sticks are much more effective and come when the political situation makes it impossible for people to go about their lives without acting.

Paul Graham:

It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.

From Inside Al-Qaeda's Hard Drive:

I send you my greetings from beyond the swamps to your country, where there is progress and civilization ... You should excuse us for not calling. There are many reasons, the most important of which is the difficulty of calling from this country. We have to go to the city, which involves a number of stages. The first stage involves arranging for a car (as we don't have a car). Of course, we are bound by the time the car is leaving, regardless of the time we want to leave. The second stage involves waiting for the car (we wait for the car, and it may be hours late or arrive before the agreed time). The next stage is the trip itself, when we sit like sardines in a can. Most of the time I have 1/8 of a chair, and the road is very bad. After all this suffering, the last stage is reaching a humble government communication office. Most of the time there is some kind of failure—either the power is off, the lines out of order, or the neighboring country [through which the connection is made] does not reply. Only in rare cases can we make problem-free calls ...

From Andrew Sullivan's review of the new book:

Fundamentalism, in this reading, is a kind of repetitive neurotic interlude in the evolution of religion towards more benign and global forms.

Wright’s core and vital point is that this is not a descent into total relativism or randomness. It is propelled by reason interacting with revelation, coupled with sporadic outbreaks of religious doubt and sheer curiosity. The Evolution of God is best understood as the evolution of human understanding of truth — even to the edge of our knowledge where mystery and meditation take over.

Warren Buffett:

Do what you love, or your boss will decide for you.

The Evolution of God