Thursday, May 27, 2021

In the Name of God - The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence by John Teehan

 Don't go with the title.

This is fairly limited to Judaism and Christianity with a small mention of the other religions. And this was very clearly mentioned as a scope of this work.

So, if you thought you're going to talk about everything than you may be disappointed.

This probes the current form as well as history of two monotheistic religions over a period of time in the light of how the human evolution affected these developments.

I may not be very convinced by all the arguments presented here, and in fact a few of them looked like a force fit into the narrative to drive the point backward. But this definitely gives some key points which we can use to understand how these two religions evolved.

One more thing that I noticed was that it was quite critical of Judaism but the Christianity got a bit lenient treatment. But this can be very personal perception because there were instances where the author openly mentions that he is not in favour or against any one religion.

Its quite scholarly read so will be more suited for the readers who are looking for some serious discussion around this topic.

Peace

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