A Critique Of Karen Armstrong’S Book The Battle For God
...it personally distasteful that in many instances the serious debates involving religion, ethics and world views are dominated by persons who’s faith in the greatness of G-d has been shaken in such a way that they feel compelled to attempt to drag the rest of the faithful along on their personal journey in search of what they hope will be the ultimate answer to their personal questions. I felt this way after reading Karen Armstrong’s book The Battle for G-d A History of Fundamentalism. Karen Armstrong has, since leaving the Catholic convent in the late 1960’s, been on what seems in my estimation to be a quest for some sense of an inner personal experience with G-d that has constantly evaded her grasp or perhaps understanding. She has spent a lifetime searching through historic records of the world’s major religions and come to rest, in this book, The Battle for G-d, on what most sociologist or historians would consider the deeper corner pockets of each of the three major religions whom descended from the Biblical figure Abraham. However, in describing the depth or intensity of the individuals involved in those narrow corners of the three religions in question she fails to consider that the pockets which she has designated as “fundamentalist” are at the very least not as equally deep or even perhaps mislabeled. It is my belief that Armstrong has allowed her own struggle with the spiritual and secular aspect of modern life to influence her evaluation of the three major religions of the Western World, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and their role in the strife currently present in our Western culture.
In her book The Battle for G-D, Armstrong takes the reader through a complex review of World History. This review however is not a sequential time line, but a bumpy or choppy presentation of mixed eras, events, and dates which would confuse most readers. This...
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