Written records reveal religions evolving toward moralizing Big Gods with scale

Evidence

Once the written historical record begins, it becomes much easier to establish clear links between large-scale cooperation, elaborate and regular rituals, Big Gods, and morality. This cultural evolution is apparent in the case of the Abrahamic faiths. In Evolution of God, Robert Wright documents textual evidence that reveals the gradual evolution of the Abrahamic god from a rather quirky, temperamental, tribal war god among many, to the unitary, supreme, eternally watchful, and moralizing deity of Judaism, Christianity and Islam-the latter two being the world’s largest prosocial religious communities. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 432

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences the reader’s ‘Big God mechanism’ analytical bridge — Abrahamic faiths as prosocial scale-up, parallel to Norenzayan’s core thesis.