The Case for God

Reading this book has deepened my spirituality by helping me to understand how human beings evolved in their "knowing" and "unknowing" about God.

More of a textbook on the history of "god scholarship". Don't expect to get any answers.

This is one of the best books you'll be able to find on the history, nature, purpose, and use for religion. It will take you on a wild journey, and then leave you wondering what's next. This is not for those with a closed mind, but for those in search of truth, compassion, and the divine.

Intriguing book written by a former nun about the role of myth in religion. I got about halfway through before I lost interest.

Not for the faint of heart, Karen Armstrong's book sets the tone on its first page - this is not an easy read! Thinking about God is not easy - in fact, according to Armstrong, it's nearly impossible. This book is firmly rooted in ancient traditions of unknowing, and I found it useful for shaking off some of our cultural assumptions. I feel like the deep things awakened by this work will take...more

Not for the faint of heart, Karen Armstrong's book sets the tone on its first page - this is not an easy read! Thinking about God is not easy - in fact, according to Armstrong, it's nearly impossible. This book is firmly rooted in ancient traditions of unknowing, and I found it useful for shaking off some of our cultural assumptions. I feel like the deep things awakened by this work will take years to fully develop. On the whole, an invitation to remember that "God" is so much more than we think we know. I would recommend this to any Christian who is feeling like the pat answers are too shallow and is looking for more than what our culture or the church is currently offering.   hide

Armstrong gets to a key (and often lost) point of religious teaching, which is that it is practical and experienced rather than rationally explicable. This difference is seen in the Greek comprehension between logos and mythos. This book systematically traces out the threads of theology that led us to believe in such a way that empirical, positive proof is the only way of understanding the world...more

Armstrong gets to a key (and often lost) point of religious teaching, which is that it is practical and experienced rather than rationally explicable. This difference is seen in the Greek comprehension between logos and mythos. This book systematically traces out the threads of theology that led us to believe in such a way that empirical, positive proof is the only way of understanding the world and shows how this loss has led to a subsequent derangement of religion, both in terms of fundamentalism and in the new atheism of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennet. A smart and well-written (if sometimes overly exhaustive) study of the developments mentioned above that I'd recommend to anyone looking for something more than blind faith or abject scientism in their beliefs.   hide

I'll start this review out with the context that while I am not a particularly religious person, I have some warped fascination with "things religious." I have no particular axe to grind regarding the existence or non-existence of the Almighty - I'm a live and let live type of guy. The additional piece of context I'll add is that I don't consider myself a dummy when it comes to complex and...more

I'll start this review out with the context that while I am not a particularly religious person, I have some warped fascination with "things religious." I have no particular axe to grind regarding the existence or non-existence of the Almighty - I'm a live and let live type of guy. The additional piece of context I'll add is that I don't consider myself a dummy when it comes to complex and nuanced topics, but I must confess I didn't understand much of what this book was trying to get across. At the 1/3 point of The Case for God, I realized I had basically no idea what I had just read, and I found I did not enjoy the thought of picking the book up again. At that point I abandoned it. Normally I'm a glutton for punishment, and will slog through a difficult read, but what was the point if I wasn't retaining anything? A word for those getting ready to comment, "How the heck can you review a book - giving it 1 star - when you didn't even read it?!?" That's really the point of the review - I just didn't get it. Had I read the entire thing, I'd have been no more enlightened for it. I enjoyed Ms Armstrong's The History of God. While the writing in that book was similarly over my head, I was able to take away her key points. In this work, I could barely figure out what they were. I wanted to love The Case for God; most of the other low-rating reviews compliment Ms Armstrong's writing, but I just couldn't follow it.   hide

Absolutely brilliant book if taken purely as a history of Western thought about God. And though Armstrong rightfully champions the better thinkers and their ideas, she failed to convince me that their intelligence ever trickled down to the majority of worshippers. Still came away saddened that the concept of God was and is such a blunt instrument in most people's hands. If this was meant as...more

Absolutely brilliant book if taken purely as a history of Western thought about God. And though Armstrong rightfully champions the better thinkers and their ideas, she failed to convince me that their intelligence ever trickled down to the majority of worshippers. Still came away saddened that the concept of God was and is such a blunt instrument in most people's hands. If this was meant as some kind of riposte to the New Atheist bestsellers, it will fall flat.   hide

Armstrong is phenomenal, i don't think she ever wrote a book that wasn't worth reading, she is one of humanity's good voices in my view, yet i would call this book the case "against" God, even though it's well written and intellegent