November 2010 Archives

The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Armstrong makes a compelling argument against what has been called the "new atheism". Debunking the use of a literal interpretation of the Bible as something wholly modern and something that would be completely surprising and foreign to followers of the Christian faith up until at least the Enlightenment, she argues that instead religion is not an intellectual concept or dogma, but rather it is something you do. That without an active involvement, religion loses its essential value.

I find this to be a striking counter-attack to the rather tired arguments made by the new atheists, and one I'm not entirely clear how to address. From a second perspective the argument may be made this way: the act of devoting oneself actively to the pursuit of a particular religious faith, through things like prayer, meditation, and the willful act of separating oneself from a purely rational approach to understanding this world we find ourselves in may in fact have the potential of exposing us (in a mental sense) to something that we could not otherwise approach through purely rational thought. In my mind this is an argument not easily reckoned with or pushed aside.

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