Product Description

The enormous popularity of books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and others shows that despite the religious revival that is under way in many parts of the world, there is widespread confusion about the nature of religious truth. For the first time in history, a significantly large number of people want nothing to do with God. In the past people went to great lengths to experience a sacred reality that they called God, Brahman, Nirvana or Dao; indeed religion could be said to be the distinguishing characteristic of homo sapiens. But now militant atheists preach a gospel of godlessness with the zeal of Christian missionaries in the age of faith and find an eager audience. What has happened? Karen Armstrong argues that historically atheism has rarely been a denial of the sacred itself but has nearly always rejected a particular conception of God. During the modern period, the Christians of the West developed a theology that was radically different from that of the pre-modern age. Tracing the history of faith from the Palaeolithic Age to the present, Armstrong shows that until recently there was no warfare between science and religion. But science has changed the conversation. The meaning of words such as belief, faith, and mystery has been entirely altered, so that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God - and, indeed, reason itself - in a way that our ancestors would have found astonishing. Why has the modern God become incredible? Has God a future in this age of aggressive scientific rationalism? Karen Armstrong suggests that if we draw creatively on the insights of the past, we can build a faith that speaks to the needs of our troubled and dangerously polarized world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1850 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

About the Author
Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun in the 1960s, but then left her teaching order in 1969 to read English at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full time writer and broadcaster. She is a best-selling author of over 15 books. An accomplished writer and passionate campaigner for religious liberty, Armstrong has addressed members of the United States Congress and the Senate and has participated in the World Economic Forum.

Customer Reviews

The answer is, there are no answers
A brilliantly refreshing, readable and clear run-through of the history of religion and mysticism, mostly Christianity, and looking more at the writings of scholars rather than the experience of the laity. Armstrong doesn't really make a case for God (as in the existence of God) but rather a case for the argument that we cannot know anything about God. She clearly explains why any attempt to understand God intellectually, or to define "him", is pointless and tends to lead to idolatry. Her argument is that seeking to define the nature of God is largely a product of the scientific age, but her evidence for a more uncertain approach to God being typical previously comes from the writings of certain Greek and early Christian mystics, which she paints as typical of their times, rather than unusual - something I'm not in a position to verify.

Importantly, she argues that religion is a matter of practice not "belief" (a word that now means an acceptance of something as fact, but which in the past had the connotation more of commitment, like love), and that where it is entered into, it is best done with the understanding that it is not based on any knowledge of God's nature.

This book could be seen as an argument for mysticism, but there is no attempt at conversion here. The book doesn't itself suggest why someone not already on a religious path should follow one. Religious practice might be rewarding, but no one could be expected to know that until they were well on it, after much hard work they could otherwise have avoided. My reading of the book is that those disposed to religious practice (by circumstances, upbringing or genetics) should follow the one that best suits them, but on the understanding that the choice of practice itself is of little consequence, as long as it is entered into without any belief in its factual superiority. Meanwhile, those not so disposed to do so, should not be expected to. In the end, it is an erudite plea for a greater acceptance of the state of Unknowing. Whether such a plea will find many listeners in an age where factual knowledge and certainty are held in such high regard remains to be seen.

Recommended read.
Having bought and read six of Karen's books I found this to be one of her best. With over a thousand noted references and ten pages of glossary I am sure that I shall be returning to this book time and again for information. On a couple of occasions during the book Karen acknowledges God and religion are difficult issues to write about. Readers have even given her feedback that some of her work in the past has been difficult to read. Well despite the difficulty of the subjects and the huge amount of information there is to draw on, this book is not difficult. It does however deserve concentrated thought if you wish to get the best out of it, as she skilfully charts the development and interpretations of God and religion since 30,000 BCE. Having read hundreds of books on the subjects I have at times become very confused. This book has been like a breath of fresh air in gently helping me unravel some of those puzzling issues. I have no hesitation in recommending the book - enjoy it.

A valuable and fascinating book
A better title for this excellent book would have been "A History of God", but Karen Armstrong has already used it for an earlier work. "The Case for God" as a title gives the impression that it is a riposte to the "New Atheists" of our age, but it is only tangentially such a book. Essentially it is a history of ideas about God in (mainly) the monotheistic faiths, setting out to demonstrate that religion has always been something one practises, rather than a set of beliefs to which one subscribes. It is only since the so-called Enlightenment that a more literalistic image of God has become dominant, leading to the twin errors of fundamentalism and atheism (in its modern sense). Armstrong demonstrates that only in relatively modern times has God been seen by many as a kind of superhuman "being", like us only much more powerful, and this error has become meat and drink to the New Atheists (who are merely the other side of the fundamentalist coin).

The book is easy to read and clearly well-researched, and I found much to learn from it. For example, the famous remark in 1860 by Thomas Huxley that he would rather be descended from an ape than from Bishop Wilberforce never actually occurred; according to Armstrong, the earliest reference to it dates from 20 years later. The only error I spotted (and I wasn't looking out for them) is on page 118; the Russian icon-painter was Andrei, not Alexander, Rublev.

As a Catholic, a faith which Armstrong famously renounced, I found very little to disagree with in the book. It would have been interesting to have more about St. John of the Cross, who to my mind exemplifies how we should talk about God, and it was certainly interesting to read a summary of the views of Karl Rahner (widely regarded as the greatest 20th century Catholic theologian) which would probably seem very way-out to most ordinary Catholics.

Unlike both fundamentalists and New Atheists, Armstrong has no particular axe to grind, and as a result she has written a valuable and fascinating book.