Posts filed under “Books”
Imagining God
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Today many people in the West would be dismayed if a leading theologian suggested that God was in some profound sense a product of the imagination. Yet it should be obvious that the imagination is the chief religious faculty. It has […]
The God of the Fundamentalists
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Once the Bible begins to be interpreted literally instead of symbolically, the idea of its God becomes impossible. To imagine a deity who is literally responsible for everything that happens on earth involves impossible contradictions. The “God” of the Bible ceases […]
How do you ascend?
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Although it is clearly culturally conditioned, this kind of “ascent” seems an incontrovertible fact of life. However we choose to interpret it, people all over the world and in all phases of history have had this type of contemplative experience. Monotheists […]
The serious flaws of Christian fundamentalism & its personal God
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Yahweh began as a highly personalized deity with passionate human likes and dislikes. Later he became a symbol of transcendence, whose thoughts were not our thoughts and whose ways soared above our own as the heavens tower above the earth. The […]
The Wild Trees
A few weeks ago, a friend told me he was coming over with a book that I absolutely had to read. He showed up a few minutes later and launched immediately into a rapturous description of The Wild Trees. He wouldn’t even visit very long so that I could start reading right away. I didn’t […]
People Mold God
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: [T]he Christianity of the Angles, the Saxons, and the Franks was rudimentary. They were aggressive and martial people and they wanted an aggressive religion… Soldier saints like St. George, St. Mercury and St. Demetrius figured more than God in their piety […]
Mystical religion is particularly bad for stupid people
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Not everybody was capable of philosophical thought, however, so Falsafah was only for an intellectual elite. It would confuse the masses and lead them into an error that imperiled their eternal salvation. Hence the importance of the esoteric tradition, which kept […]