Case for God, The: What Religion Really Means Book

Religion gets a bad press, being criticized for creating intolerance and causing warfare. Often a misjudgement is made about what is 'God 'and 'religion'. The human condition seems to need to seek out moments to be touched within and lifted momentarily beyond ourselves, just as art can replace words. Karen Armstrong believes are thinking in relation to transcendence in religion is undeveloped, and that we think about God in a traditionally idolatrous way. She considers how in the Indian 10BC Brahman competition, priests needed to go to the jungle to retreat because they couldn't think about God in the marketplace and needed the meditative separation from daily life. She believes this 'hard work', which formed the development of the practice of Yoga, an attempt to remove the ego, where exercising and fasting took place before the real competition would begin, with the object of finding the Brahman, i.e. all that is. The winner would be the person who reduced everyone to silence. The Brahman was present when there was a sudden realisation of the impotence of speech. Karen believes the aim of theology is to help us live in that 'pregnant pause'. However, the retreat is not enough. The art of religion is not theoretical, and needs years of disciplined practice to develop. Karen Armstrong does not see juxtaposition between science and religion. She argues that traditional theology would always be reconsidering scripture in the light of new scientific knowledge, and that some leaders would be horrified by the denial of what cannot be understood, citing that Calvinists would argue against evolution in a way that would horrify Calvin. This deeply spiritual and yet highly academic study of world religions tells the reader how Armstrong, influenced by her meeting with the Dalai Lama, is able to claim that all religions teach kindness and compassion as the highest value that supersedes all others. Read More