Bog. Istoriia chelovechestva - Aslan Reza

What is God? Most of us think that God is an excellent version of ourselves, a human being with supernatural powers. People seek to know God by attributing to him the features of human nature, emotions and desires, not only positive, but also negative. A well-known religious scholar and deeply religious person Reza Aslan traces the history of mankind through the prism of perception of the image of God and shows that in one form or another such projection is characteristic of absolutely all religions. Exploring the representations of primitive people, the worldview of the ancient Egyptians, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the Greeks, the Romans, the Indians and the Persians, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, he concludes that the desire to humanize the divine in turn leads to the deification of the human and that it is time to reconsider those beliefs.
"We model religions and cultures, communities and governments in accordance with our human demands, while constantly convincing ourselves that these requirements are divine. This best explains why, throughout human history, religion has generated both infinite good and unspeakable evil; why the same belief in the same God gives birth to love and compassion in one believer, while in another, hatred and cruelty.
This book is not just a story about how we humanized God. It is also a call to stop imposing our human passions on God. Whether you believe in one God, several gods, or not at all, it is important to remember that we created God in our own image, not the other way around. And this truth opens the way for us to a more mature, more peaceful, primary form of spirituality." (Reza Aslan)