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Since September 11, 2001, religion has been at the center of debates about the global future. Religion and the Human Prospect relates these issues systematically to a path-breaking interpretation of the history of religion, its part in human development, and its potential role in preventing or enabling global catastrophe. Religion has made possible critical transitions in the emergence and development of human society. At the moment when our humanoid ancestors became aware of the inevitability of death, religion interposed the belief in spiritual beings who gave it new significance. When individual self-interest and collective survival conflicted, religion defended collective survival by codifying its requirements as morality. When inequalities of wealth and power developed, religion extended moral codes to include obligations of dominance and submission. Religion enabled a species facing constant hunger and scarcity to adapt and spread. Today, however, facing ecological disaster, exhaustion of essential natural resources, and the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, religion no longer provides a collective defense mechanism for the human species. Instead, the solutions it has provided have become central to the problem of human survival. This magisterial and compelling work weaves together evolutionary theory, anthropology, reflection on theological treatments of the problem of evil, and ideas from literature and philosophy into an account of the human prospect that is truly epic in its ambition and explanatory power.… (more)
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Saxton starts his discussion of religion with a series of assumptions. The first is that humanity is in a great crisis the likes of which have been never seen, because of the threat of "nuclear/biological" destruction. The second is that religion in human development is old enough to be the product of biological evolution, and therefore must have had some sort of necessary purpose. These two ideas form the basis of the rest of Saxton's arguments.
Those proceed as following: religion is the form in which morality appears, and in ancient societies morality is what kept people from pursuing their self-interest at the expense of the tribe. Therefore, tribes with more religion had more chance to survive, and this made religion the more succesful 'meme', so to speak (Saxton doesn't actually use that word, but might as well have). For the many millennia following, religion kept serving the double purpose of keeping society together, which is a necessary thing, and of supporting "class and gender privilege", which is also a good thing, because without it we'd never have achieved the level of development we are now. However, because we are now in a situation where the threat is not from one society to another but from all of humanity against all of humanity, religion is no longer useful to serve this protective purpose, and on the contrary inhibits solving this problem, because religious people (with thoughts of the afterlife etc.) are less likely to create rational solutions for this issue.
The whole book is couched in the jargon of "cultural evolution", which makes for very superficial and annoying discussions of culture. Additionally, the chapter attempting to refute the Marxist view of religion is very poorly done and misses the point of the Marxist critique entirely - it is as if Saxton isn't aware of the existence of "On the Jewish Question", the best Marxist (and in my view altogether) discussion of religion there is. Some of Saxton's arguments regarding the possible origins of religion in prehistorical societies are persuasive, if somewhat short on proof, but for that he may be forgiven considering the little material we have to work with. But he ignores fundamental issues such as the possibility of morality without religion, the increasing relative amount of atheists in the world (he quite incorrectly assumes the opposite is true), and his dismissal of the negative role of religion as ideology by claiming that oppression is necessary to achieve development is completely ridiculous.
I'm frankly a bit surprised at Monthly Review and Brenner for apparently supporting this. It's not a terrible book but I can't see what it has to offer for a socialist when the traditional socialist critique of religion is so much better.