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We believe that all religions are basically  the same-

at least the one that we read was.

They all believe in love and goodness.

They only differ on matters of creation,

sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

Steven Turner, “Creed”

I’ve been thinking of this passage from journalist Steven Turner’s satirical poem ever since reading Rosalynde Welch’s excellent blog yesterday.  Karen Armstrong’s suggestion that somehow religion is improved by a loss of religious belief …well, it gives me a headache.   What world does Armstrong live in, that she thinks people of religious faith will happily and knowingly accept a spiritual placebo - a God who doesn’t exist, but is terribly important, nonetheless?  Does anyone else find this condescending?  I need more than metaphor and folklore to help me grapple with the big questions of meaning, ethics and mortality.  I enjoy Santa Claus as much as the next person, but I wouldn’t build my life on…

An artist's rendering of Joseph Smith's first vision

Karen Armstrong, a popular historian of religion whose bestselling A History of God brought her to national prominence in 1993, is back in the news. Her new book, The Case for God, revisits some familiar  territory in a stimulating survey of Western religious history, but this time Armstrong packages her message in an admonition to both conservative Christians and bellicose atheists, mutual antagonists in the cultural skirmishes over religion.  The Wall Street Journal recently commissioned Armstrong and Richard Dawkins, the most outspoken of the new atheists, to respond to the question, “Where does evolution leave God?” (one wonders why they did not also include an informed representative of conservative religion in their symposium).  The two answers were published together, and they make a most interesting study in contrast. Armstrong uses the platform to reprise the argument of her new book:

In the past, many of the most…