Karen Armstrong's The Case For God

I do a quick overview and interpretation of Karen Armstrong's book The Case For God. I also say I'd love to talk to her someday (hint, hint, maybe a good person for a Tuesday Afternoon chat?)

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• karen armstrong
• the case for god
• reason
• faith
• sam harris
• theism
• atheism
• book review

[leconfidant]

I read this book too. Karen Armstrong became a pretty solid new atheist after giving up catholicism. Now she's a pretty good philosopher of historian of religion and these are two things almost completely lacking in the new atheist awareness, which is all about hypothesis testing. If you come to an atheist conclusion despite agreeing with her premises, I think that's something her arguments and she herself would endorse. Faith is a necesarily a free decision, not a logical necesity for her.

[HarloMc]

Armstrong is an interesting cat.  I think she's right that the current debate misses the apophatic (the mysterious or unknowing) dimension of religious traditions, but I think she overstates it. I'm puzzled, for instance, by her claims that the belief that Jesus was Son of God is a "new, literal interpretation". The Council of Nicaea, for intstance, went to painful philosophical lengths to say that, in his divine nature, Jesus is of the same substance with God the Father.

[AtheistWoman]

Yes, Karen Armstrong is "a theist in general without any affiliation," and with an infinitely elastic concept of God. As Sam Harris has noted, she inhabits a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology.