Rethinking God

From Karen Armstrong’s Foreign Policy piece: Think Again: God:

Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures. While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn’t going anywhere. And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, and it’s time we found a way to live with him in a balanced, compassionate manner.

I disagree with a few of Armstrong’s points because they don’t align with my personal beliefs (atheist with strong non-deist Buddhist leanings). But I completely agree with Armstrong’s central point which is this: Religion is a given. God isn’t dead because we (collectively) won’t let him die.

Rather than trying to stamp out religion, particularly in countries where European-American secularism is seen as a form of cultural imperialism, Armstrong asks us to study religions and understand the intersections between faith and politics. As I wondered in a recent post, jihadism and Islamism may be best understood as a form of liberation theology, a religious response to a political condition.