The Case for God

By: Karen Armstrong

Narrated by: Karen Armstrong

Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Why has God become unbelievable? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors?

Answering these questions with the same depth of knowledge and profound insight that have marked all her acclaimed books, Armstrong makes clear how the changing face of the world has necessarily changed the importance of religion at both the societal and the individual level. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age. Yet she cautions us that religion was never supposed to provide answers that lie within the competence of human reason; that, she says, is the role of logos. The task of religion is “to help us live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there are no easy explanations.” She emphasizes, too, that religion will not work automatically. It is, she says, a practical discipline: its insights are derived not from abstract speculation but from “dedicated intellectual endeavor” and a “compassionate lifestyle that enables us to break out of the prism of selfhood.”©2009 Karen Armstrong; (P)2009 Random House

Excellent work and narrator

Truly a beautiful work worth listening and sharing. Worth the time to sit and enjoy and learn.

Which God?

If you believe in the God of creation, the God that intervenes in history, the one and only God, be it Judaic, be it Muslin, be it Christian, Karen Armstrong’s case is weak. If your God lives with you, encompasses all your weaknesses, accepts your moral idiosyncrasies and relates to your history and desires, Karen Armstrong’s case is strong. The book examines the diverse ideas of God through history and gives special attention to the modern and postmodern concepts of a religious life and it opposite, the atheist self. Science and religion are confronted and reconciled, at least the author tries it. Meanwhile, she advances her ideas of a personal God, without dogmas, a God that gives meaning to our life. Her arguments seems compelling. Her book gives the reader a good and well researched overview of the development of the idea of God in the monotheistic religions.

excellent

taking Pride as the first and greatest sin, the common throughline of reverence for apophatic theology (specifically the inevitability of silence in the face of God) suggests a strong case for the practical and moral superiority of Humility in all things

the case for god

Just the best. so much information, you'll have to listern many times if you want to talk about this subject.

Thought-provoking

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I love all of Karen Armstrong's books. Well written, thoughtful, and rational. She is a lovely narrator, too. I leave each book wishing everyone in the world had just read it, too.