God, A Human History.

A week ago:
God, a Human History by Reza Aslan is a the last book I finished and while it is most fresh in my mind, compared to all times in the future, I'll do my best to write about it. This subject is so intimate that I was caught off guard by the first few pages. This subject of how we view god and his will, how some people claim so much confidence in that knowledge while so many 'versions' of god exist as you go across religions, as you go across people of the same religion, or people who don't choose to follow a religion at all, is one that has taken a considerable amount of my mental space, and still does. So after finishing the Harry Potter books, feeling I've had such quality adventure time I felt I want to hold in my mind for a while, I wanted a non-fiction book to read so I listened to the samples on audible, and I found my pick.

Today: I guess I was lying, that wasn't my best. Here I try again.
This book is about the evolution of the image of god. It is a historical account embedded with interpretations of various scholars, and of course Reza himself of the journey the human kind took to reach the present view of god. If one chooses to believe, or chooses not to, he conveyed, it is important to be clear on what exactly is it you are choosing to believe or not believe in, and that is, a man-made image of god, and for many people this image is what he calls 'a humanized god'. What hooked me was the beginning, I had a good feeling that I won’t be doing a lot of cringing embarking on what was then an unknown adventure in pages.

"This is not to claim that there is no such thing as God, or that what we call God is wholly a human invention. Both of these statements may very well be true, but that is not the concern of this book. I have no interest in trying to prove the existence or nonexistence of God for the simple reason that no proof exists either way. Faith is a choice; any-one who says otherwise is trying to convert you." 

He begins really early on, by that I mean earlier than agriculture when humans hunted for food. His first argument for belief in afterlife was burial. Preserving the body could mean that humans believed in something that came next, it may, not necessarily I thought. As time goes the certainty that a certain community believed in higher powers increases, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, although the Greek gods were 'too human' to be taken seriously, he described them as characters in some soap opera. In order for the image of god/(s) to propagate and still preserve some reverence from the community, the god/(s), should not be too much human, only human enough to feel relatable. 

One interesting this about the book is his accounts of attempts at monotheism, of which the first surprisingly* was in ancient Egypt by Echnaton, to worship the sun and the sun only; and of which the first one to actually endure was Judaism. Judaism, Christianity and Islam take on the last three chapters of the book; God is One, God is Three, God is All. 

Now if you shuffled  those titles and told me to choose the title for the one to talk about Islam, God is One would be my choice, because I admit to my ignorance of Judaism and maybe God is All is a thing. God is One, the image that was handed to me since I was young, the One image. Not like that in this book, he takes kind of a Sufist approach on here. Because this book turns out to be equally about Reza's journey as it is about the history and evolution of it all. He doesn't talk about himself a lot, actually only in the introduction chapter, but because he concludes with it, it is like he has been carrying this message in every page. 

Reza was born Muslim, then converted to Christianity, then came back to Islam, but perhaps not the same one, definitely not the same image of god, he transitioned through many and now sees god in all, sees that god is all, by all I mean all living things, and may be non-living things, he did not elaborate on that; not monotheism, but pantheism. If this does not make sense, I will not fight for it to do so. Such abstract concepts about spirits and contentedness of the universe I suppose would be least efficiently communicated through words, assuming one has the material to be communicated to begin with.


There are so many details that I didn't mention here, mainly because I forgot them. When it comes to reading books, I've come to believe that timing is the most important thing. When you get exposed to the book is maybe more important of a factor that whether the book is objectively good or not. I have been getting lucky lately, picking up things in good timing. I guess that's the universe giving me what I am looking for, or maybe god.

This last chapter sparked my interest in Sufism, but I wanted fiction again, so I chose the most famous fiction book that involves Sufism; The Forty Rules of Love. It was famous years ago, and in my adolescent years, wanting to be 'real cool' I had a strong tendency to reject vastly popular things. I let go of that now, I embrace my love for cliches and mainstream material if my feelings towards them as genuine.

*Surprising to me because I am so uneducated in ancient Egyptian mythology, such a disappointment to my derasat teachers in middle school.

Friday, February 22, 2019
4:04 am