How and Why God Evolved: An Alternative Perspective

by Babar Shah Khan

Overview

Focusing on some of the more unusual verses from the Bible, the Qur'an, and Gita, author Babar Shah Khan highlights certain facts about holy book verses and clarifies some misguided interpretations about these verses, and he shares his ideas on God's evolution by comparing these spiritual texts.

How and Why God Evolved highlights the link among pagan, polytheistic, and monotheistic beliefs. Khan points out misrepresentations of Holy Scriptures and discusses some of the political reasons involved. He brings to the forefront the importance of understanding how the notion of God evolved throughout history, in keeping with the human brain's development. He also shows how God and humans have fashioned each other in an attempt to understand and reach one another.

Khan exposes the textual commonalities among Holy Books and shows how modern-day religions spring from previous religions. How and Why God Evolved discusses why no one religion is truly unique or separate from others. They are all connected deeply by similar rites, rituals, and reasons; all religions share more commonalities than differences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491768839
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/13/2015
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

Editorial Reviews

2015-10-28
A clinical assessment of the human origins of organized religion. Khan's nonfiction debut tackles the fundamentally mundane origins of the broad concept of invisible deities. He looks at sacred texts of the major modern monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and sets them in the broader historical context of the polytheism from which they sprang, leading to various structural and thematic similarities. The goal is to bring these and all faiths in the supernatural down to Earth, linking them with the power-related needs of human rulers and societies. "Mighty empires," he writes, "propagated the myth of religion and mediator god-kings to keep a heavy-handed grip on innocent people." In interpretive and rhetorical moves that will be familiar to readers of so-called New Atheist texts—e.g., Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Sam Harris' The End of Faith—Khan systematically picks apart the absurdities of major religions. "If God insists on proving His existence through angels," he asks, "why not send angels that can be seen and heard on the witness stand?" Or: "What if an atheist hits the jackpot without any supplication to God?...Do we call it God's mercy? No, we call it luck." He looks at a wide spectrum of later, interpretive stories from the likes of Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and various commentaries on the Quran. Khan's tone throughout is calm and approachable, but his larger purpose is serious: while illuminating the arbitrary and man-made nature of organized religion, he simultaneously underscores the tremendous and often harmful power those organized religions still wield in the world, altering national policy and sometimes severely affecting daily lives (he points out, for example, that the constitutions of seven U.S. states forbid government office to atheists). Atheists will appreciate this unified, readable treatise on the choice to renounce religion, while religious readers with questions about the validity of their faiths will also find a great deal of thought-provoking material. A bracing, comprehensive deconstruction.

Kirkus Reviews