The Case for God

I was expecting arguments on whether there was a God or not, and Karen Armstrong gave them to me. But what she gave me was the history of arguments for or against God, which was much more interesting than what I expected. I found the relationship between Protestant Christianity and science to be particularly interesting, and left the book feeling that my expectation that someone would prove to me, logically, that there was a God was itself an artifact of Enlightenment-era Protestantism's relationship to science. I also ended up feeling that yes, there should be reason in religion, but expecting scientific proof of God is expecting chocolate in your peanut butter. The Enlightenment may have felt that science and religion are two great show more tastes that taste great together, but not every jar of peanut butter is a Reese's cup. show less

Excellent stuff - I thought it covered a lot of the same ground as her 'A History of God', albeit with a narrower focus (that book giving an overview of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and more irritation at the way talk about religion is currently conducted by both believers and non-believers. That made it more pointed, and for my money more enjoyable (if less comprehensive). It was also a lot more challenging than her previous books, unless my memory fails me/mind is slowing down - but that's very much a positive. My only caveat is the slight re-hash, otherwise this is fascinating and thought-provoking. If nothing else, it's refreshing to be reminded that there's more to life than scripture-worshippers and Sam Harris.

I cannot overstate the impact this book has had on me. Armstrong describes a feeling I have had for years: a feeling that there is something wrong with the way we approach religion today, a feeling that this thing that is wrong is contributing to the disconnectedness and alienation that are so prevalent in late 20th and early 21st century culture.

She somehow manages to survey centuries of theological, philosophical, and scientific development in just a few hundred pages. And that makes it sound horribly dull, which it's not. You know that 'Ah-ha!' moment when you find the answer to a question that's been tormenting you, when everything finally clicks into place? This book is a whole series clicks, one after another.

The first half of the show more book took a bit of work to get through, but the second half really picked it up. And the last page: CLICK! show less

In this work, Armstrong tries to directly address some of the "New Atheists" by claiming that the God they are attacking is basically a straw man. She argues that, historically, religious texts were not seen as something meant to be taken literally, that they were starting points from which we could contemplate the ineffable. She believes that religions only started insisting on the literal interpretation of their texts when science and rationalism began to be the way most humans engaged with the world. Some people reacted by trying to prove that their religions and religious texts were compatible with science. This, Armstrong believes, is the God that the New Atheists attack, while leaving alone the god/source/path that most religious show more people have engaged with over the centuries.

She makes a compelling argument, and this book could find readers on both sides of the God debate. If you agree with the New Atheists, you might be infuriated, but it would still be worth your while. If, on the other hand, the New Atheists infuriate you, even though you don't believe in religious texts literally, then this is definitely worth a read. show less

Karen Armstrong makes no case for God and only a weak, uneven, and confused case for "God." She clearly (and rightly) dismisses theology that treats God as merely the greatest power in existence, but ultimately fails to explain why the word or label "God" remains useful. In the final pages, where I hoped to see her "case" become clear, she only advocates what amounts to active engagement with life, mindfulness, and recognition of uncertainty. Why we need "to engage with a symbol [like "God"] imaginatively [and] become ritually and ethically involved with it" is not clear, except Armstrong claims that doing so will "allow it [the symbol] to effect a profound change in you." (See page 321.)

Armstrong rightly points out that "God" the show more symbol too easily becomes God the idol, which is "one of the pitfalls of monotheism" (page 321), so why should we bother putting a label on "religious experience," which she appears to define as "explor[ing] the normal workings of our minds and notic[ing] how frequently these propel us quite naturally into transcendence" (page 327)? And what is "transcendence" anyway? If putting words on these things creates a dangerous "pitfall," then Armstrong has fatally undercut her case. To portray her book and her argument as being a "case for God," she is only irresponsibly perpetuating the problem that she has spilled so much ink to reveal, not just in this book, but in several earlier ones.

It does seem quite "natural" or "normal"—perhaps a better word is "commonplace"—to recognize that we remain ignorant of the true nature of reality, but doing so while actively engaging with life and practicing mindfulness does not require having a label or a symbol like "God." Or Armstrong, at least, has not convincingly argued that it does, which is what I expected her to do, right from the beginning of the book.

Ultimately (and unfortunately), this book follows what now appears to this reader as a clear progression in her work: writing that increasingly looks less like history, or even history of ideas, and more like roughly chronological bibliography with connective glosses here and there. It is not an argument, but a guided tour through Karen Armstrong's reading. Taken on those terms, The Case for God is quite an interesting work. But taken on the terms by which it seems to present itself, it is a failure. show less

The title of another book out last year excited me--The Evolution of God--but when I heard the author speak I was disappointed. (There was a lot of talk about zero sum game.) Armstrong's book is what I had hoped for from the other. It covers the changing ways people have viewed God and religion, from 30,000 BCE, when humans crawled deep into caves to cover their walls with paintings of animals and maybe shamans, to the present, when both fundamentalists and atheists insist on a strict literal interpretation of scriptures--a legacy of the modern scientific revolution that has left everyone, including the devout, looking for unambiguous, objective truth derived from some kind of logical deliberation. The modern way is simplistic; show more Armstrong believes religious life involves hard work, pushing finite hearts and minds to the edges of their understanding, toward the infinite.

I took a long time to read this book and as soon as I finished I started reading it again. There is a lot to absorb and a lot that challenged my unexamined beliefs, a mind-blowing experience that's my drug of choice. As an an agnostic leaning toward a non-belligerent atheism, reading is almost my religion, so when Armstrong wrote convincingly about the printing press's drawback of moving learning and religion in a depersonalized and inflexible direction, leading in religion's case to ridiculous disagreements over finer and finer dogmatic distinctions, I was shocked into a speechless, apophatic state. One of many I experienced while reading her book. Which is maybe, or maybe not, ironic because that apophatic experience I got from reading is the right place, Armstrong believes, to begin transcending our everyday world and experiencing God. Religion, Armstrong writes, historically has been and should be more about practice and experience and less about blind belief in particular doctrines. Sounds great to me. show less

Amazing experience reading into the history, philosophy and theology of the human race searching for God. Very detailed views on complex issues yet presented in an orgnized way that leaves you reaching your own conclusions. Karen’s subtle, analytic and compassion tone is much needed in such extremely polarized world.