In a comment to the Guardian on 12 July 2009, ex-nun and theologian Karen Armstrong claims that (my emphasis):
Her claim that the emphasis on "belief" in Christianity is only 300 years old is difficult to accept in view of the Roman Catholic Church's early persecution of heresies such as that of the Cathars in the 12th century.Confusion by Christians between belief and reason has created bad science and inept religion ...
The extraordinary and eccentric emphasis on "belief" in Christianity today is an accident of history that has distorted our understanding of religious truth. We call religious people "believers", as though acceptance of a set of doctrines was their principal activity, and before undertaking the religious life many feel obliged to satisfy themselves about the metaphysical claims of the church, which cannot be proven rationally since they lie beyond the reach of empirical sense data.... how can we extricate ourselves from the religious cul-de-sac we entered about 300 years ago?
Her message seems to me to be similar to that of the radical theologians such as Don Cupitt "When we have ... freed ourselves from nostalgia for a cosmic Father Christmas ...".
Once the "belief" aspect has been removed from religion, what is left that distinguishes it from say Humanism?
Armstrong's new book The Case for God: What Religion Really Means has attracted contrasting reviews in the Guardian/Observer newspapers.
1) John Crace in The Guardian, Tuesday 7 July 2009 (referenced by NSS Newsline 10 July 2009) summarises Armstrong's message (again my emphasis):
Much of what we say about God these days is facile. The concept of God is meant to be hard. Too often we get lost in what Greeks called logos (reason) rather than interpreting him through mythoi - those things we know to be eternally true but can't prove. Like Santa Claus. Religion is not about belief or faith; it is a skill. Self-deceit does not always come easily, so we have to work at it.
2) Alain de Botton in The Observer, Sunday 19 July 2009 wrote:
Karen Armstrong wages a vigorous war on the twin evils of religious fundamentalism and militant atheism ...She wishes to remind us of the mystery of God.... He [God] is not good, divine, powerful or intelligent in any way that we can understand. We could not even say that God 'exists', because our concept of existence is too limited. ... The concluding part of Armstrong's book traces the growth of modern atheism and attributes it largely to religions' failure to argue for what is most compelling about them. Fatally, religions tried to defend themselves against science by arguing that they knew the truth better than the geologists, rather than presenting themselves (as one feels Armstrong would have wished) as the guardians of mystery and therapeutic manoeuvres of the mind.
