Wow, she changed history to make her argument into a better story… wonder if that’s ever happened before.

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(Makes jerking off motion with hand)

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I used to respect Armstrong, but she is growing less and less connected to reality.

In this case, I might have to come back and finish reading the article later. I got halfway through before my mind couldn’t stand it any longer.

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Armstrong’s attempt to revive apophatic theology from the Middle Ages is an irresponsible avoidance of accountability for religious violence - then and now. 

Shame on her.

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This website is supposed to be one of “reason” and integrity, or so I thought and am lead to believe by the masthead and mission. I’m no sure that some of the entries here are representing those values well, this one in particular.

Books, like all things, are left to interpretation. Perhaps we can be less quick to judge and offer more opportunity for dialogue and have a discussion. That too is something I thought The Reason Project is supposed to allow for.

I’m losing interest, fast. Especially given that the authors on this blog do not reveal their identities. I mean, come on… author anonymity on a blog, especially this one?

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“Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.”

Interesting… Yoda is a symbol, but does not factually exist.

If Karen could bring herself to admit that she considered ‘God’ to exist in the manner of any other fictional character, I might complain: I thought I was reading an article written by a theist.

But if Karen recognizes that God is a symbol and not fact, isn’t that the exact bloody point we atheists have been making all along?

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^ I agree, Armstrong is trying to play both sides of the fence here. Why? I don’t know. Maybe she thinks if she keeps it more and more ubiquitous she’ll sell more books.

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Everything said that is offensive to religion is a necessity!

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“As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions.”

What?

I couldn’t get past the first page.

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“As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions.”

And as soon as we became recognizably human, men and women figured that the Sun orbits the Earth.

Does that mean it’s right ?

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I made a full response to this article on my blog, please check it out, thanks.

http://reasonsciencemetal.blogspot.com/

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Oh dear Karen. This time the piffle is worse than usual. Let me see if I understand your argument:

“People have always been religious therefore there is a god.”

The proposition only has to be made for its vacuity to be made obvious.

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Step 1 - Select a religion.
Step 2 - Write an 8 page apologist article with ads on every page.
Step 3 - Profit.

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Oops. I meant to say…

Step 3 - “Prophet”. Always get those two confused.

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I have immense respect for Karen Armstrong.  “A History of God” is one of my favorite books.  With that said she would probably be disappointed to know that it aided my journey to atheism more than it stemmed my urges to abandon faith.  In my view “A History of God” does much to explore why and how we got to where we are with religion.  The question I don’t think Armstrong answers adequately is why we should continue to embrace religion given our current knowledge and sophistication.  While religion may have been a necessary construct in our history we have outgrown its usefulness.

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Dang. I am getting fed up of this faith vs reason nonsense. Come on guys, why to get so tensed up? Take it easy! There are better things to do. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens need to just relax.

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There is nothing nonsensical about clear hard debate over the value of reason over faith in society.  It is one of the most important issues facing American democracy, impacting everything from the education of children to foreign policy.  One big difference is that voices like Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens were not widely available in the past, often due to fear or outright persecution.  Save the “nonsensical” comments for the violent, anti-intellectual, and hypocritical believing community.

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