Book Review – ‘The Evolution of God,’ by Robert Wright – Review – NYTimes.com.
Robert Wright is an interesting thinker with a journalistic approach to exploring philosophy. He thinks that science is hinting at an immanent Cosmic Purpose in the outcomes of the world’s processes, which isn’t such a crazy idea. Naive Darwinism is wedded to the operationally defined idea that natural selection doesn’t ‘plan ahead’ and instead tinkers with what’s already present. Quite so, but there seems to be a certain attractor towards which societies of interacting Darwinnian Agents are evolving towards, an attractor which ‘opens the process up’ to greater and greater novelty/complexity. Wright suggests we can call that ‘attractor’ God or something like God. Wolfhart Pannenberg, one of the 20th Century’s greatest theologians, also sees God in the processes of history. Apparently G.W.F. Hegel thought so too. They all produced quite different theologies, but with the common thread of evolution in God as well as the World.
But just what is God?