Karen, a former Roman Catholic Nun who rejected her faith talks in her book about what it all really is by talking about the part of religion that I like, recognising that there is an unknown. (And acknowledging that. And circling and circling closer and closer to a truth that you WILL never get no matter what you do because you can't. Because we are human.)
Summary of Karen Armstrong's Argument by Lisa Miller: To oversimplify: "faith" and "reason" are not like political parties. You don't join one after having been convinced via argument of its validity. What the Greeks called logos and what they called mythos define two different aspects of the world and our experience in it: the knowable and the unknowable. You can believe in both. The bridge between them, Armstrong submits, is not the snarky badinage or righteous browbeating that has so defined faith-versus-reason debates of late, but practice.
She writes, "Jews, Christians, and Muslims all knew that revealed truth was symbolic, that scripture could not be interpreted literally, and that sacred texts had multiple meanings, and could lead to entirely fresh insights. Revelation was not an event that happened once in the distant past, but an ongoing, creative process. (from "The Case for God" Karen Armstrong)
"This critique has not been articulated often or clearly enough: the new atheists are, in effect, buying into one particular modern, Western fundamentalist notion of God in order to make God look ridiculous and knock it down... She has a special affinity for the mystics...all these, she argues, access transcendence through disciplined work, through failure, anxiety, and the redoubling of effort. By submitting to the unknown, mystics are supposed to become more wise and more loving. At its best then, mythos has a positive, pragmatic effect on logos." (from Lisa Miller)
(Jeremy Hilary Boob from the Yellow Submarine)
I love that this conversation has been started. It takes me back to the most Ive learned about the unknown, a graduate class my professor Jeremy deQ. Adams allowed me to take at SMU. (let me note that professor Adams is a New Orleans born medievalist who used to teach at Oxford in London and party with the Beatles. FACT: he is the inspiration for the Professor in the Yellow Submarine- the Beatles actually called him Jeremy Hilary Boob, yeah, you know the song "the Nowhere Man" YEP. Professor Adams is the NOWHERE man.... and the song totally makes sense when you listen to him string together millions of ideas and listen/ watch his brain dance over centuries in class (and over tea at his awesome house that looks like a museum)
The class was on St. Augustine of Hippo (a partyboy who wasn't religous and then was so moved while volunterring in Northern Africa by the women who were victems of rape-as-a-tool-of-war and became religous... but not before he first figured out the unknown for himself and kind of REASONED the explinations that he found in religous texts- today he is known as one of the 4 Drs of the church, the intellectual Dr) and the City of God and the transition from Rome (and the state as the governor of ideas to the Christian Church and its subsequent organization of people after the sack of the Vandals) I was going to babble on about all this but link to the sparknotes is good- I might return to this topic later.
The last thing to mention is Hudson Smiths Book, The World Religions, which is a book that I carry around all the time, for years, and it explains very well, the world's religions. Not the fanatical or political or misconstrued elements of the religions. But the mystical, truth seeking and ways this way of seeing has tried to unravel that that is unknown. (Although I don't like the picture on the cover I linked too... mine is pretty and white and looks like a real book).
.... calls attention to the differences in reason and faith.
These days are so fanatical and I feel like I am confronted with straight up morons. I do not think Karen Armstrong is a moron and I am
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