The Case for God is a 2009 book by Karen Armstrong. It is an answer to the recent atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and focuses on the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam from the paleolithic age to the present day. Also included are Buddhism and Hinduism.
Among the themes of the book are apophatic theology and intellectualism versus practice. Armstrong claims that the fundamental reality, later called God, Brahman, nirvana or Tao, transcends human concepts and thoughts, and can only be known through devoted religious practice. In 2009, the book was awarded the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize by the University of Tübingen in recognition of its contribution to the fields of theology, philosophy and intellectual history, and for improving international understanding and tolerance between faiths. [Wiki]
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The Case for God: What , religion really means, Book By Karen Armstrong, Reviewed by Simon Blackburn.
This is an eloquent and interesting book, although you do
not quite get what it says on the tin. Karen Armstrong takes the reader through
a history of religious practice in many different cultures, arguing that in the
good old days and purest forms they all come to much the same thing. They use
devices of ritual, mystery, drama, dance and meditation in order to enable us
better to cope with the vale of tears in which we find ourselves. Religion is
therefore properly a matter of a practice, and may be compared with art or
music. These are similarly difficult to create, and even to appreciate.
The Case for God: Karen Armstrong at St Paul's Cathedral - YouTube
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But nobody who has managed either would doubt that
something valuable has happened in the process. We come out of the art gallery
or concert hall enriched and braced, elevated and tranquil, and may even fancy
ourselves better people, though the change may or may not be noticed by those
around us.
This is religion as it should be, and, according to
Armstrong, as it once was in all the world’s best traditions. However, there is
a serpent in this paradise, as in others. Or rather, several serpents, but the
worst is the folly of intellectualising the practice.
This makes it into a matter of belief, argument, and
ultimately dogma. It debases religion into a matter of belief in a certain
number of propositions, so that if you can recite those sincerely you are an
adept, and if you can’t you fail. This is Armstrong’s principal target.
With the scientific triumphs of the 17th century,
religion stopped being a practice and started to become a theory — in
particular the theory of the divine architect. This is a perversion of anything
valuable in religious practice, Armstrong writes, and it is only this perverted
view that arouses the scorn of modern ‘militant’ atheists.
So Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris have chosen a
straw man as a target. Real religion is serenely immune to their discovery that
it is silly to talk of a divine architect.
So what should the religious adept actually say by way of
expressing his or her faith? Nothing. This is the ‘apophatic’ tradition, in
which nothing about God can be put into words. Armstrong firmly recommends
silence, having written at least 15 books on the topic.
Words such as ‘God’ have to be seen as symbols, not
names, but any word falls short of describing what it symbolises, and will
always be inadequate, contradictory, metaphorical or allegorical. The mystery
at the heart of religious practice is ineffable, unapproachable by reason and
by language. Silence is its truest expression.
The right kind of silence, of course, not that of the
pothead or inebriate. The religious state is exactly that of Alice after hearing the nonsense poem
‘Jabberwocky’: ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas — only I don’t
exactly know what they are.’ If Alice
puts on a dog collar, she will be at one with the tradition.
Armstrong is not presenting a case for God in the sense
most people in our idolatrous world would think of it. The ordinary man or
woman in the pew or on the prayer mat probably thinks of God as a kind of large
version of themselves with mysterious powers and a rather nasty temper.
That is the vice of theory again, and as long as they
think like that, ordinary folk are not truly religious, whatever they profess.
By contrast, Armstrong promises that her kinds of practice will make us better,
wiser, more forgiving, loving, courageous, selfless, hopeful and just. Who can
be against that?
The odd thing is that the book presupposes that such
desirable improvements are the same thing as an increase in understanding —
only a kind of understanding that has no describable content. It is beyond
words, yet is nevertheless to be described in terms of awareness and truth.
But why should we accept that? Imagine that I come out of
the art gallery or other trance with a beatific smile on my face. I have
enjoyed myself, and feel better. Perhaps I give a coin to the beggar I ignored
on the way in. Even if I do so, there is no reason to describe the improvement
in terms of my having understood anything. If I feel more generous, well and
good, but the proof of that pudding is not my beatific smile but how I behave.
As Wittgenstein, whose views on religion Armstrong
thoroughly endorses, also said, an inner process stands in need of outward
criteria. You can feel good without being good, and be good without stretching
your understanding beyond words. Her experience of ‘Jabberwocky’ may have
improved Alice .
Silence is just that. It is a kind of lowest common
denominator of the human mind. The machine is idling. Which direction it then
goes after a period of idling is a highly unpredictable matter.
As David Hume put it, in human nature there is ‘some
particle of the dove, mixed in with the wolf and the serpent’. So we can expect
that some directions will be better and others worse. And that is what, alas,
we always find, with or without the song and dance.
[The Case for
God: What , religion really means By
Karen Armstrong Knopf, USA ,
ISBN 978-0307269188, 432pp. $27.95 . Dawn/Guardian Service, Courtesy Dawn,
Books and Authors, 12 July
2009 ]
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