Aslan has a way of framing his ideas about religion that I find really compelling, so after reading and loving Zealot, I decided to pick up this volume and hear his thoughts on God. Because I’m interested in history, I really loved all the threads Aslan followed from prehistory to the early middle ages. I also really liked that his arguments were well-grounded and explained in a straight-forward manner. Most of my complaints are less a criticism on how Aslan goes about his argument than a request for more, and while I am always loathe to ask for more work from a scholar, I think in this case, more would have benefited the thesis of the book.

Because this book is a work of non-fiction, my usual review format won’t apply. I hope what I have below is sufficient enough to communicate my thoughts.

Aslan’s prose is styled in such a way to make his scholarly work accessible to a non-specialist audience. It’s personable and flows well, combining narrative with history to make cultures different from our own feel familiar and human. He never uses academic jargon and achieves a good balance of respecting the reader’s intelligence and explaining basic terms and concepts so as not to leave anyone feeling confused.

The premise of his argument is also very compelling. Even before I got to the supporting evidence, the idea that humans project themselves onto God was convincing - we tend to see it happen all the time in the USA, so I didn’t feel like Aslan was making an outlandish claim. Instead, it felt like he was articulating something we sort of know inherently, but aren’t sure how to talk about, and I think he does a good job of making this claim without saying that humans invented God. In other words, you can still read this book if you’re a believer in any deity because the claim is about human behavior rather than about the nature of the divine.

The structure of the book as a whole followed a fairly logical progression. Section one, “The Embodied Soul,” provided an overview of how religion arose in our hunter-gatherer ancestors with a special emphasis on exploring how religion is rooted in cognition. I was quite convinced by Aslan’s claim in this section that religious belief stems from the initial belief that human beings have a soul separate from (but still dwelling within) their physical body. Section two, “The Humanized God,” takes readers through the development of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, sorting through theological problems such as how Christ can be God and how God can be all.

In terms of things that didn’t work for me, I personally found the narrative elements (which were meant to illustrate Aslan’s points) more distracting than enlightening. I much preferred the “harder” evidence, drawn from psychology and archaeology, but I’m an academic, so the narrative technique might be helpful for those who don’t regularly engage with academic writing. I also am not sure how centering the narrative examples around Adam and Eve helps if the argument is about all religions (not just Abrahamic ones), but I did think it was a good idea to portray “Adam and Eve” as homo sapiens living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, rather than some proto-modern version of human.

I also wish this book had gone a little further than the early middle ages. In the intro, Aslan alludes to modern-day politicians and their tendency to depict God in their political image. I think another section which tracts the development of modern religion would have been beneficial here, though I realize that such a topic would be a book in itself.

Recommendations: I would recommend this book if you’re interested in the history of religion/religious studies, psychology and cognition, prehistory, and early Church history.