“Mark and Bev Tindall” <> wrote in message news:<>… from

http://www.lightmillennium.org/summer_02/jmardin_karmstrong_p1.html

Religion in Our Time: Will Our Faith Help us to Unite or Will It Continue to Divide?

Karen Armstrong

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It is a somewhat dizzying experience, almost like watching a pendulum swinging back and forth between the God of the mystics and the God of the philosophers, those who thought we could only reach God through our creative imagination and others who tried to reach him through reason, those who taught that God was within each of us and those who considered Him aloof and not of this world. These types of polemics existed within each of the three monotheistic faiths. Ms. Armstrong skillfully compares and brings to life all the various approaches to the idea of the ultimate truth, with points and counterpoints that ultimately seem to be leading back into each other, as we get to consider, for instance, the mystical aspects of Plato, or the scientific inclinations of the Sufis, who she says had often used mathematics and science as an aid to contemplation.

“Compassion is the key.” (2)

Ms. Armstrong traces the evolution of the first Sky God, to the growth

of Paganism, to the painful return to the idea of the one God, that of

Abraham, which she says got off to an unfortunate start, “since the tribal deity Yahweh was murderously partial to his own people.” Early

on he was used to justify the annihilation of the native people of Canaan in a way that adds a chilling dimension to the current events of that region, the modern day Israel. But ultimately the prophets of

Israel reformed the old cult of Yahweh and promoted the ideal of compassion. Yahweh started out as a god of revolution, but became one of self-castigation as well. “They thought they were God’s Chosen People? They had entirely misunderstood the nature of the covenant, which meant responsibility, not privilege,”(3) Ms. Armstrong paraphrases the prophet Amos. Over the centuries, the importance of compassion and respect for our fellow human beings was one of Yahweh’s

primary messages, as it would be of all the great world religions.

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All three of the monotheistic faiths at one time or another tried to wed their traditions and their ideas about God with the rationalism of

Ancient Greece. This of course first started with the Jews, and held an affinity for the Greek Christians, but was taken up even more extensively by Islam, until they helped to awaken Europe from out of its Dark Ages. What they called Falsafah, or “philosophy,” was the ideal to which Arab Muslims were beginning to devote themselves in the

9th century. The Faylasufs wanted to live rationally in accordance with the laws that governed the universe, which could be perceived at every level of reality. In this way they were able to combine their spirituality with an empirical curiosity as well. During the 9th and 10th centuries, more scientific discoveries had been achieved in the Abbassid empire than in any previous history of mankind. Averroes in the 12th century, who was said to have introduced Aristotle to the West, influenced Maimonedes and Thomas Aquinas, and helped Europe to acquire a more rationalistic conception of God.

For so many reasons, whether it be the brutal experience of the Inquisition, or the conservative spirit after centuries of Mongol invasions, Judaism and Islam around the 15th century were starting to lose faith in falsafah, and the possibility that we could ever know God through rationalism, and it was around this time that the Western Christians were just getting started. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and a new kind of society based on science and technology

was to emerge, and to charge ahead of all its rival world powers.

Still the God of the Reformation might have made the Western Christians efficient and powerful, she says, but he did not make them happy. It was a terrifying and elitist God, predestining the majority

of humanity to hell. The growing sectarianism, and the wars fought in God’s name, would by the end of the18th century gradually lead a few disillusioned Europeans to start questioning God’s existence itself, rather than merely the dogma surrounding him. Eventually God and Science were to become altogether incompatible, and the new Gods of the West would be those of Pure Rationalism, Technology, and Progress.

As Ms. Armstrong points out, as we come to realize the toll we’ve been

taking on the environment and the variety of other social ills plaguing western society, the growing rate of crime, and drug addiction, perhaps today we are beginning to suspect these new myths might be just as hollow as some of our older ones.

“Such men of the Enlightenment as Newton and Descartes, who still believed in God, but saw him more as a kind of Great Mechanic, who sat

atop a mechanized universe, had no time for mystery. But there are signs that the pendulum might be swinging back, if not towards an actual God of the Mystics, towards an attention towards that spiritual, that more mysterious side of our lives and our psyche. There is a growing interest in Eastern religions and practices such as

meditation and yoga. Joseph Campbell’s work on mythology is widely read. Celalledin Rumi is currently the best selling poet in the West.

Ms. Armstrong finds evidence for this resurgence even in the preponderance of people in psychoanalysis, which she likens to certain

kinds of mystical disciplines.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, scientists were fairly confident that they had conquered almost everything there was to be conquered, and that science would be able to solve all our problems. And yet people were to soon realize that even secular societies were just as prone to war, and science itself in the 20th century entered a

new era of uncertainty. Einstein was telling us absolute space and time did not exist, the notion of simultaneously existing realties, extra dimensions, would challenge our reliance on empiricism, as would

the world of quantum mechanics, which some say has brought about the death of determinism. The most successful theory today, quantum theory, which makes possible everything from laser beams, transistors to computers, is actually based on some of the most bizarre ideas in the history of science. In the quantum world there is always an element of uncertainty. Everything is based on probability, and the whole concept of object, as something existing with well-defined properties, just does not apply. Somehow an electron does not even exist until we observe it.

To hear a scientist talking about the inadequacies of language to understand the new discoveries, one almost thinks one is listening to a religious sage talking of the impossibility of ever being able to grasp God. In fact God has always been treated and described as a higher dimensional being, even before the scientific concept of higher

dimensions was introduced. A scientist may be able to describe higher

dimensions or the nature of the subatomic world in mathematical terms,

but when one tries to do so in ordinary language, through ordinary logic, one is stumped. The same frustrations are true of the spiritual quest. Religious approaches have often spoken about the transcendent in the negative, or used silence, poetry, or unanswerable

riddles or koans, as a means to get beyond our human mind. It seems as though science once again is beginning to take on the nature of the

mystical experience, and that our spirituality once again might be strengthened rather than countered by science. In any case, both endeavors do share certain qualities, as Ms. Armstrong points out. They both involve a leap of faith, a creative act of imagination, to envision something that is not there. And this might be an appropriate way to describe all vocations. If we take a step back, maybe we can see that all paths are part of the same human quest to get some kind of divine or transcendent understanding of our existence.

“Atheism has often been a transitional state: thus Jews, Christians and Muslims were all called “atheists” by their pagan contemporaries because they had adopted a revolutionary notion of divinity and transcendence. Is modern atheism a similar denial of “god” which is no longer adequate to the problems of our time?” (5)

Ms. Armstrong points out that all the great confessional faiths, the idea of “God,” as well as the philosophical rationalism in Greece, were a product of the city and of the market place. They developed in

a time of growing economic activity and a spirit of aggressive capitalism, as a counter to the loss of the earlier communal values, as in Islam, and because of the growing consciousness of problems of social inequity. One cannot help but question, now that we are in this globalized, ever-expanding marketplace, are we in need of some new outlook, a more expansive vision, in order to balance what seems to be an ever-growing self-interest? We are so busy struggling to get

ahead, or simply to make ends meet, we cannot see beyond our own concern for our pocketbook at the gas pump, at the supermarket, or in the clothing store. Since the Industrial Revolution the nature of our

work has become one of increasing specialization, which leaves us with

even less a sense of the overall picture, and of the ultimate interconnectedness of things.

Furthermore it seems so much of our scientific resources and research goes into how to make a profit, rather than to find what will be of most benefit for the overall good. How to make a seed that will not regenerate, or how to build more and more effective weapons of destruction. The government, and consumers as well, dismiss industries that do not appear profitable, or thrifty enough, but which

would have obvious long-term benefit, such as alternative, sustainable

forms of energy. It seems our spirituality, or our sense of morality,

is in dire need of catching up with our scientific progress.

“Fundamentalism exists in a symbiotic relationship with a coercive secularism.” (6)

Fundamentalism, though claiming to be about a return to the old ways, is in actuality a purely modern phenomenon, modernity’s dark side, as Ms. Armstrong calls it, which exists within all the world religions.

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After 9/11, not surprisingly, there has been an increase in church attendance in America and a further interest in spirituality. Like most secular people, I have grown to be suspicious of any kind of organized religion. Ms. Armstrong also talks of the outdatedness of so many of our notions of God, and of that God-shaped hole in our consciousness that Sartre had described, yet she says people have always come up with new symbols to act as a focus for spirituality. And it seems important that we continue to do so, to create a new faith in “God” or anything else –it matters little what– she says. These would be provisional Gods, which can be discarded, or transcended, as they are outgrown, as in Buddhism or Hinduism, but it seems important that we keep creating these ideals to function as a kind of lodestar for our efforts, and it seems perfectly fine to allow ourselves to be conscious of our role as their creator.

……

But it also becomes evident from reading Ms. Armstrong’s work that the

progress of human thought is an incredibly intricate collaboration and

cross-pollination of ideas and efforts throughout the millennia and across geographical locations and intellectual disciplines. If we are to fashion a vibrant new faith for the 21st century, she says, perhaps

we should look to our past for some valuable lessons and warnings. Thankfully we have someone like Karen Armstrong to help us make sense of our rich and diverse heritage