Book by Karen Armstrong

A book we thought was pretty interesting . . .

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Roughly four decades ago, due to the advances in technology and scientific research, many scientists and scholars predicted that religion would become a weaker cultural force.

But according to Karen Armstrong, the opposite has proven to be the case.

In fact, in her book The Battle For God, Amstrong documents an increase in "fundamentalism" throughout many of the world's major religions, and then works to answer the question: why?

Armstrong answers by describing an ironic conflict of how religious fundamentalism and Western scientific materialism (also known as "flatland") seem to actually fuel each other, each urging the other on to greater excesses in pointing out the others' seeming irrationality.

She recommends a remedy of relaxing the accusations and name-calling, and more effort towards dialogue. In the tradition of "seek first to understand, then to be understood," she states to "prevent an escalation of the conflict, we must try and understand the pain and perception of the other side." The Battle For God, with Armstrong's engaging style and wealth of research, describes her view of an escalating antagonism which can hopefully be defused by mutual understanding.

The New York Times Book Review, Chris Hedges
"...one of the most penetrating, readable and prescient accounts to date of the rise of the fundamentalist movements in Judaism, Christianity and Islam."

Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People
"An impressive achievement. Armstrong has mastered a mountain of material, added some brilliant insights of her own, and made it accessible."

Appendix I
Do "fundamentalists" consider themselves to be "fundamentalists"?
We don't think so.

Appendix II
Armstrong's premise is echoed by another thinker, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, in Truth: A History and a Guide For the Perplexed:

"At present, common sense is caught in the cross-fire of a culture-war between religious extremists, who think they know the truth, and secular nihilists, who think it can never be known. My hope is to put our crisis in context; to reassure readers that the search for truth is still on and leave relativists and fundamentalists where they belong - on the margins of history.")

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