GakuseiDon

A History of God, mostly Chapter 3, "A Light to the Gentiles", which covers the development of Platonism in the Second Century.

Ted Hoffman

Ben Smith,
Sorry, I did not mean to sound hostile. And I am not hostile.

Ted Hoffman

Please quote the relevant passage.

Secular Pinoy

Whoa! As someone who has three of her books (History of God, Battle for God, Islam: A Short History), I can vouch that she is not an atheist. She's a former nun and currently seems to be some kind of nondenominational, liberal, spiritual theist. Where did you get that idea? Hopefully not from evangelicals, who are quick to call anyone an atheist.

GakuseiDon

Has she become a theist again? Good for her! I know that she has written articles against fundamentalism, so I guess it is to a moderate theism.

But at the time she wrote A History of God (1993), she had lost her belief in God, though perhaps it may be better to call her an agnostic rather than an atheist (not that I want to open THAT debate here!). In her Introduction, she writes:

Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life and once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief in God slip quietly away. He had never really impiinged on my life, though I had done my best to enable him to do so. Now that I no longer felt so guily and anxious about him, he became too remote to be a reality... The more I learned about the history of religion, the more my earlier misgivings were justified. The doctrines that I had accepted without question as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period of time.

She certainly sounds like someone who would be less prone to allow their beliefs to guide their scholarship (though who can say for sure?), at least at the time she wrote A History of God.

What are her beliefs now, then?

GakuseiDon

I'll do that in the other thread, since it seems to be more relevent there.

Toto

Karen Armstrong is usually described as a free lance monotheist with an admiration for some Islamic thinkers. She seems to be part of that tradition that says that the question of whether God exists is not a meaningful question.

This seems to be a fuller description of her beliefs:

Roger Pearse

One of the problems I have with Doherty's book is that, when you look for a short statement of some particular proposition he advances, it is not to be found. So one is obliged to summarise his position, in order to discuss it. Having done this, I have found that some of his disciples do then assert that he is being misrepresented. This is tedious for everyone. Let's talk about what books do and do not say, rather than argue whether something is a misrepresentation.

I suspect that this problem is not necessarily Doherty's fault; it may be partly because I believe that the book is the end-product of a long and acrimonious argument with J.P.Holding, who saw earlier drafts and caused portions to be rewritten. Possibly he jumped hard on any clear statement that could be measured and disagreed with. In the process of altering the form of his work, Doherty seems to have lost these clear flag-posts.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

GakuseiDon

That's from 'A History of God' also.

Does anyone know if she's declared an actual belief in God since then?

GakuseiDon

Yes, I agree. The OP is about one statement that Doherty uses. But unfortunately when you do that, you get accused of focusing on minor points, and ignoring the bigger picture.

That's interesting Roger, I wasn't aware of that history.