Normally at the end of the week, I post a bunch of interesting articles.  (You’d better not tell me you think they’re boring.)  This week I’m too busy for that.  By about this time next week I will have taken two (terrifyingly hard) tests, outlined a review paper, written a research prospectus, alternately beaten and cajoled my model until it gives me results, presented at lab group (yeah, I still find this scary), made a poster, and packed and prepared for a conference (I’ve never been to a conference with required reading before).

My university doesn’t have a fall break.  In addition to generally being a cruel policy, it ensures that by this point in the semester I absolutely hate all of my classes.  This semester would be more manageable than some, but I’m going to a conference in November.  I’m really excited about the conference, but missing a week of classes (and not doing any hw for a week) isn’t going to make the following weeks pretty.

I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam for the last few months.  She isn’t trying to prove the existence of God, but traces how people have imagined God and the kinds of relationships they think they’ve had with him.  Fundamentalism, the brand of Christianity I’m most familiar with, tries to claim that God has always been the same and that their particular take on God was the first (and is the only perspective that is correct).  The history Armstrong presents shows very clearly how ridiculous those claims are.  She’s also very compassionate and does well at getting inside various religious thinkers’ minds.  It would be easy to belittle many of the people she profiles – their beliefs seem outlandish.  A History of God shows how historical context influences how people choose to see God.