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.”

Excellent work and narrator

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

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.

I've always been an atheist due to an inability to "believe," but that seems to be beside the point

Possibly the most important scholarly work of the present day, certainly one of the most important messages I've heard. Looking at religion as it has been practiced throughout the millennia brings contemporary spirituality into sharp contrast with its original purpose, context, and practice. The divisive literalism so prevalent in several sects today is apparently, for the most part, a very recent development and not part of their mainstream traditions. I found the epilogue alone to be worth the price of admission, it's a summation that brings home her point about looking to the past for the value of "unknowing" and the importance of practice to bring meaning to the mystery. My intellectual curiosity about religion has now warmed into greater respect.

excellent every believer no matter what you believ

Really great, if you're searching spiritually this can clear up much of what your struggling with.