{"id":1138,"date":"2009-07-06T15:59:47","date_gmt":"2009-07-06T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2009-07-06T16:00:39","modified_gmt":"2009-07-06T20:00:39","slug":"non-zero-sum-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2009\/07\/non-zero-sum-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-zero-sum God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"The Evolution of God\" src=\"http:\/\/killingthebuddha.com\/wp-content\/articleimages\/evogod_book_cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"311\" \/>Recently I had the pleasure to talk with journalist and bloggingheads.tv founder Robert Wright about his new book, <em>The Evolution of God<\/em>. <a href=\"http:\/\/killingthebuddha.com\/mag\/exegesis\/the-what-of-god\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hear our conversation today at <em>Killing the Buddha<\/em><\/a>, in addition to a short essay of mine on the subject:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s easy to focus, as many reviews have, on Wright\u2019s theology of nonexistent god and triumphant moral progress that comes mainly in the concluding chapters. But the real meat and potatoes of the book is its meat and potatoes: a Wagnerian act of gnostic expose, slogging through verse after verse of ancient, holy writ, telling the story of Western religion as a political thriller\u2014albeit enacted by deluded nothing-worshippers. The hefty 500-pager starts to feel like a breezy, concise charge through the most titillatingly inversionary historical-critical readings of Hebrew and Christian and Muslim scripture. It\u2019s stuff that many people don\u2019t know is out there and available for hanging one\u2019s cosmic hat on: a vast anti-narrative provided by the wonders of modern scholarship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Listen closely, and you&#8217;ll learn what non-zero-sum means!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"The Evolution of God\" src=\"http:\/\/killingthebuddha.com\/wp-content\/articleimages\/evogod_book_cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"311\" \/>Recently I had the pleasure to talk with journalist and bloggingheads.tv founder Robert Wright about his new book, <em>The Evolution of God<\/em>. <a href=\"http:\/\/killingthebuddha.com\/mag\/exegesis\/the-what-of-god\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hear our conversation today at <em>Killing the Buddha<\/em><\/a>, in addition to a short essay of mine on the subject:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s easy to focus, as many reviews have, on Wright\u2019s theology of nonexistent god and triumphant moral progress that comes mainly in the concluding chapters. But the real meat and potatoes of the book is its meat and potatoes: a Wagnerian act of gnostic expose, slogging through verse after verse of ancient, holy writ, telling the story of Western religion as a political thriller\u2014albeit enacted by deluded nothing-worshippers. The hefty 500-pager starts to feel like a breezy, concise charge through the most titillatingly inversionary historical-critical readings of Hebrew and Christian and Muslim scripture. It\u2019s stuff that many people don\u2019t know is out there and available for hanging one\u2019s cosmic hat on: a vast anti-narrative provided by the wonders of modern scholarship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Listen closely, and you&#8217;ll learn what non-zero-sum means!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,38,54,79,11],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-atheism","tag-books","tag-conversation","tag-criticism","tag-existence-of-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1141,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions\/1141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}