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Edition: |
pb |
| ISBN: |
9781583671337 |
| Publisher: |
Monthly Review |
| Release Date: |
2006-08-15 |
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ITEM OVERVIEW
Since September 11, 2001, religion has been at the center of debates about the global future. Religion And The Human Prospect relates these issues systematically to a path-breaking interpretation of the history of religion, its part in human development, and its potential role in preventing or enabling global catastrophe.
Religion has made possible critical transitions in the emergence and development of human society. At the moment when our humanoid ancestors became aware of the inevitability of death, religion interposed the belief in spiritual beings who gave it new significance. When individual self-interest and collective survival conflicted, religion defended collective survival by codifying its requirements as morality. When inequalities of wealth and power developed, religion extended moral codes to include obligations of dominance and submission. Religion enabled a species facing constant hunger and scarcity to adapt and spread.
Today, however, facing ecological disaster, exhaustion of essential natural resources, and the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, religion no longer provides a collective defense mechanism for the human species. Instead, the solutions it has provided have now become central to the problem of human survival. This magisterial and compelling work weaves together evolutionary theory, anthropology, reflection on theological treatments of the problem of evil, and ideas from literature and philosophy into an account of the human prospect that is truly epic in its ambition and explanatory power.
"In this astonishingly learned study, the great historian and novelist Alexander Saxton illuminates the central questions of human existence and of our time. Brilliantly applying materialist methods, even when departing from specifics of Marx's conclusions on religion, Saxton's work ranges widely from anthropology to history, from revolution to theology, from Milton to the faith?based brutalities surrounding us. Alive to contradiction, this book is among our best and most spirited guides to what Saxton calls the 'common-law marriage' of science and religion and, we might add, of capitalism and fundamentalisms."
—David Roediger
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