A book and its cover
In the New Orleans airport yesterday, I was surprised to see my current reading material displayed on the rack of ‘inspirational reading’ books. The book is The Evolution of God by Robert Wright, which as the title suggests is about the history of religion from the perspective of evolutionary theory — and although it affirms some universal aspects of religious belief, it challenges more orthodox beliefs about the process of divine revelation. The book is hardly ‘inspirational’ in the traditional sense. The author is certainly agnostic, perhaps atheist, and with no intention of offering spiritual inspiration.
I initially thought that this was a mistake made by a lazy stocking clerk, until I noticed the same categorization mistake made in several airport bookstores. My conclusion was that somehow the book’s cover led to its ‘inspirational’ classification, because the word ‘God’ is repeated several times in capital letters. It may be unwise to judge a book by its cover, but lots of people do it anyway. Even if they’re wrong.
Anyway, the book is terrific and comes highly recommended. For the right person, it may even be inspirational.
