THE BIRTH
OF GOD
How the Human Mind Created the Idea of God
An inquiry, not a verdict. The book studies the historical and cognitive emergence of the God-concept — it does not claim to prove or disprove the existence of God.
This book does not begin by asking whether God exists. It asks a different question:
“How did the idea of God emerge in the human mind?”
THE BIRTH OF GOD traces how the idea of God may have formed across human evolution — through mortality awareness, dreams, imagination, agency detection, language, culture, religion, civilization, consciousness, science and philosophy. The book is an inquiry into the mind that asks, not a verdict on the divine that answers.
What the book studies
Twelve interlocking subjects that together form the cognitive and historical landscape of the God-concept.
Human Evolution
How the long arc of evolution shaped a brain capable of asking religious questions.
Mortality Awareness
Awareness of death — and the imaginative work of refusing it — as a seed of the God-concept.
Dreams
Why dreams may have given early minds their first image of an elsewhere.
Imagination
The cognitive capacity to think of what is not, and how it made the divine thinkable.
Agency Detection
The mind's tendency to detect intention — even where there is none — and its consequences.
Language
How naming, narrative and abstraction turned vague intuition into shared belief.
Culture
The way culture stabilises and transmits the God-concept across generations.
Religion
How ritual, myth and community turn private belief into public institution.
Civilization
The role of organised religion in the rise of cities, kings and empires.
Consciousness
The recursive mind watching itself — and mistaking the watcher for the divine.
Science
What happens to the God-concept when science becomes a competing way of knowing.
Philosophy
How philosophy refines, defends, doubts and re-asks the original question.
An inquiry, not a doctrine.
THE BIRTH OF GOD is a work of inquiry. It does not argue that God exists, and it does not argue that God does not exist. Its subject is the idea itself — how it came to be, how it changed, and how it continues to live in the human mind.
The book draws on what is known from human evolution, the cognitive sciences, the history of language and religion, and the long conversation of philosophy. It treats all of these as pieces of a single question.
The reader is invited to follow the question wherever it leads — without the pressure of a pre-decided answer.
- Title
- THE BIRTH OF GOD
- Subtitle
- How the Human Mind Created the Idea of God
- Author
- Shailendra Srivastava
- Language
- English
- Category
- Science & Philosophy
Read the question for yourself.
THE BIRTH OF GOD is available now. Buy it on Amazon, or browse the full catalogue of Shailendra Srivastava's books.