Monday December 27, 2010
After reading a few books like The God Delusion by Dawkins, wanted to read some good literature covering counter-points. Didn't want to read books like "Purpose Driven Life", etc. but something more academic and nuanced. So, ended up buying Karen Armstrong's “The Case for God” I have been hearing about for a while. Though the title could be interpreted to mean how she is going to make a case for God, book is more of a study of how human beings always manage to come up with the concept of God irrespective of the era or the geographical area they belong to. You might have heard this famous quote attributed to Blaise Pascal about how human beings have a God shaped vacuum in their soul. It is listed in this book as well. While it captures the point well, it does appear to be an incorrect quote (see http://
I felt a marked difference in the writing style between the two halves. Language in the first half was stuffy. To cite an example, here is a typical sentence: "Even though the Council fathers went to such lengths to enforce dogmatic orthodoxy, their prime concern was to promote regular liturgical observance to enable the laity to transform the old external, communal rites into genuinely interior devotion." Couldn’t she say “The Council fathers tried to calm the public by focusing into following rituals”? But the second half was a lot easier to read. This could be due to the fact that I personally didn't know a lot about the first half material while I was familiar with the second half content. Still, it did feel like two different people wrote them.
I was glad to see her covering Hinduism as well. Though it is one of the major religions in the world, Western scholars usually not well versed in Eastern religions routinely skip/gloss over it focusing only on Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Though her coverage of Hinduism lacks depth comparatively, it still is more balanced compared to other writers.
Read the book while I was on vacation in India last month. During that time came across a Tamil book titled “KadavuL” (means simply “God”) while just browsing shelves in a book store. It had a collection of articles, essays and columns writer Sujatha had written over a period of 10+ years (1993 to ~2004). There is a large overlap between the two books in the material discussed (not implying any kind of plagiarism anywhere). Between the two I actually found KadavuL lot more engrossing despite it being a collection and not one massive piece of work as Case for God is. Though most of the articles in KadavuL were written for less erudite audience, Sujatha had done a wonderful job of presenting this complicated material spanning vast areas in a very easily accessible narrative. Both books have traced various forms of religions and how God had to be brought into explain most naturally occurring phenomenon in the past and how as science demystifies nature, the need for God’s hand has been dwindling over the centuries and particularly in the last few decades.
In the second half of the book, just like Sujatha, Karen discusses how quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's uncertainly principle and other such developments in science had made people realize that beyond a point nature cannot be understood fully. This realization has obliterated the confidence people once had that eventually anything and everything will be logically explained obviating the need for higher level powers to explain what we can’t understand. Lot of theologians and ancient Hindu religious writings have argued the same w.r.t. to knowing God as well. Both authors point out similarities in this convergence that is intriguing. There are areas of disappointment in Karen’s narration where she seems to stretch things to suit her convenience. For example, when mentioning Hilbert’s set of 23 problems in Mathematics, she implies (in the beginning of Chapter 11) Hilbert said that when these problems are solved, we’d have a complete understanding of the universe..! In all other material I have come across, Hilbert listed those as interesting problems in Math for people to work on. I don’t remember any assertion by him beyond that. Even if she is not an expert in Mathematics, I am surprised that the editorial process didn't catch/correct these assertions. I also noticed as to how she has avoided naming any fundamentalists she despises/looks down upon but limits herself to naming atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. that should be safe to do. :-)
Talking about God, have you heard what a dyslexic agnostic does lying on the roof top staring at the starry sky?
He wonders if there is a doG. :-)
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