Because of its breadth and detail, this is among the more difficult books I’ve tackled. In brief, Armstrong reviews the theological histories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three related monotheistic traditions. She expounds on the complex and often surprising evolution of each, from their origins through the 20th century. It is an expansive treatment, but well worth the six months it’s taken to get through it.
I want to enumerate here the principal insights I gained. This is not a review or critique of the book, but a melange of Armstrong’s historical narrative, my own opinions, and personal reflection. In other words, it should not be attributed en toto to Armstrong.
1. As individuals constrained by short lifespans, we fail to appreciate how our respective religious practices have changed over time. In all three traditions, teachings often presented as absolute have been plastic and malleable. They have all been revised and reinterpreted continuously. Since their inceptions, the respective clergies and other intelligentsia in all generations have argued about right belief and practice. In so doing, they have taken each far from its origin, to the point that rigid and dogmatic interpretation of any is absurd. In fact, Armstrong points out that, over the centuries, people have constantly reinvented the idea of God to keep it relevant to their times and their lives. In this vein, she traces the rise of modern atheism to the lessening relevance of God in a science-driven age.
2. Implicit within this book is a comment on a remarkable aspect of the human psyche: Theologians and “theologian philosophers” have repeatedly propounded and defended (even to violence and death) incredibly complex, explicit theologies woven from nothing more than vivid imaginations. The amount of energy and certainty and commitment individuals can throw into such exercise is, indeed, remarkable. I imagine psychologists have a way of characterizing this. For my part, I think it must derive from our need to create personal meaning and purpose. (See this post, and the two previous.)
3. As a group, the mystics across traditions seem to have gotten it right: What unites us is the mystery of existence and our universal desire to supersede that mystery and commune with the Divine. The way there is within the individual, inward toward some “divine spark” that animates each of us. It is not via external institutions or imaginatively constructed and imposed dogmas. Unfortunately, the inward route imposes personal responsibility and commitment. As a whole, we seem all too willing to forfeit our independence to any number of individuals and institutions claiming to have already done the work for us.
4. Atheism is not the only other option, as the more militant atheists would have you believe: there are alternatives (OK, besides Buddhism) to the theist-nontheist argument. The mystical concept of an “ineffable” or an “absolute” argues just the opposite. I think we use the idea of a “being” in order to conceptualize something we are inherently incapable of conceptualizing. But in this context, the idea of a “being” or a deity is best thought of as a symbol. Where all three traditions have gone off the rails has been in adopting the symbol as the end in itself: They have lost sight of the mystery their own concept of a deity symbolizes. It seems to me that true communion with the ineffable not only does not entail any such deity, it cannot do so.
This website features an unusually complete list of God’s attributes. There are many such lists online but few are of this quality.
It is of some interest that those who can no longer find meaning in the traditional concept of a personal deity, a phenomenon characterized by Nietzsche as “the death of God,” strive earnestly to find meaning in detached attributes such as the Holy, the Omnipresent, the Infinite, the Transcendent, the Ineffable and so forth. It is worth considering whether these detachments can ameliorate existential anxiety and supply the desired level of validation apart from the God in which they inhere, or even whether they make sense in isolation. Conspicuous by its absence from ALL such lists is an entry labeled the Divine. There is an excellent reason for this omission: it is because God Himself IS the Divine. To relinquish belief in a personal deity and then evince a longing for the Divine is to treat the Whole as if it were itself a detachable Part of that Whole. In another aphorism by Nietzsche, this enterprise has been well described:
New battles. — After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries — a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his shadow. — And we — we must still defeat his shadow as well!
http://www.theattributesofgod.org/list-of-attributes.html
There are so many ways to approach your comment, I am not sure which to use…a part, at least, of why I’ve stalled in responding. That, and it deserved some thought…more, probably, than I’ve given it even here.
In any case, four points seemed to merit addressing:
(1) I will put this one first, because it’s dismissive: The list of God’s “attributes” as presented on the site you reference, or any other drawn as it is from Biblical references, is inherently circular and as such, uninteresting.
(2) The need for meaning is, by all appearances, an inherent human trait. Never having read Nietzsche, I’d comment just from your references that he comes off feeling entitled to be condescending or belittling or superior simply because he feels he has transcended this need. But (for the sake of argument) did he perhaps find his own meaning in judging others? This is dangerous territory, and I can be as guilty as anyone else. Regardless, I can’t blame anyone for seeking meaning and significance to their lives, in whatever fashion. Nor would I choose to deprive them of that meaning, as long as they exercise it within socially acceptable norms of tolerance.
(3) You appear to infer (I assume from something in my post) that I think those who believe in a deity use it as a means of injecting meaning into their lives. There are no doubt those who do, and power to them if it works. There are likely also those (particularly among fundamentalist sects of all three traditions) who probably think they are using their belief to constitute meaning. But it’s more likely they are using it as a source of self-important superiority and thus a platform for judging others, their real source of meaning. This, as I implied above, is something we all have to be careful of. People like you and I can be just as condescending in our non-belief.
In any case, I am not suggesting that everyone who believes in a deity necessarily does so to constitute meaning. If, for example, one believed in an impassive God who created mankind out of boredom (I mean, how else do you keep busy in eternity?) and doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens on earth, then it would be pretty hard to find meaning in that. In any case, I’ve never suggested that I find or seek meaning in either a deity or the unknown. On the contrary, I’ve argued (as evidenced here for example) that meaning must be created, and that doing so is a personal responsibility and endeavor.
(4) And finally, a comment about my using the term “the Divine.” Coincidentally, I have a post drafted on this but have not yet decided to publish it. It stemmed from a conversation with Larry Rhodes, author of ”Atheism: What’s It All About?,” and current President of the Rationalists of East Tennessee.
In effect, my feeling is that we are limited by our vocabulary. Even the word “ineffable,” which by nature means inexpressible in words, is a word. That’s why I said in my post on Armstrong that only the mystics seem to have gotten it right. No one, neither you nor I nor Nietzsche nor Dawkins, can argue (not convincingly, anyway) that existence or the universe or our knowledge is cut and dried. Just saying, “Well, we die and that’s it, end of consciousness, lights out” is a cop out. It may be true insofar as consciousness is concerned. And in fact, in terms of our nature as sentient beings, that may be all that can ultimately matter to us.
If one wants to argue that, well OK, I’d probably agree. But arguing that does nothing in terms of our propensity to at least wonder what it’s all about. And what’s wrong with that? The problem arises when we turn to our limited vocabulary to put a name to that wonder and to whatever, if anything, lies at the base of it. For want of anything better, I like and use the term “the Divine,” simply because it feels good to me and expresses to me what I feel. It’s unfortunate because, as Larry pointed out to me, it derives etymologically from a Latin word for a god, similarly to deity and deism (of different derivation). But I certainly don’t mean that by it. If anything, Paul Tillich’s “ultimate concern” better obtains here…but I don’t like that because of the word “concern.” That implies something active on our part, but once we are dead we are unlikely to be concerned with anything.
In any case, my intent in using any term is not to create meaning. It’s to convey the need to attain a state of humility before the fragile nature of our existence, and perhaps provide some direction for my own gratitude, gratitude for the privilege of simply being able to participate in this state we call “life,” however fleeting that opportunity.