Posts tagged “Religion”
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 […]
What I’ve Noticed
Women in Afghanistan are setting themselves on fire in astonishing numbers. Getting child marriage banned must be higher on our list of priorities. Think you’re not going to get into grad school this year? Toaster Sunshine has some words of wisdom for you. A review of acupuncture’s effect on heart rate variability. Conclusion: bullshit. On comparing Obama […]
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 […]
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 […]
An Outside Perspective
I grew up in an extremely conservative, strange, and cult-like church. It took me a long time to figure out that there wasn’t something wrong with me, that the problem was the church. When I was in elementary school, the music minister’s wife, Patty Jo, disappeared. We learned years later that her husband had killed […]
Religious truth doesn’t describe the world
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Science demands the fundamental belief that there is a rational explanation for everything; it also requires an imagination and courage which are not dissimilar to religious creativity. Like the prophet or the mystic, the scientist also forces himself to confront the […]