Reddit Reddit reviews The Case for God

We found 5 Reddit comments about The Case for God. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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5 Reddit comments about The Case for God:

u/njrollem · 8 pointsr/atheism

The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong. I'm a strong atheist, but I enjoy hearing her talk. I doubt she'll convince you, but at least she won't fill you with a murderous rage and you'll bea able to finish the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Case-God-Karen-Armstrong/dp/0307269183/ref=pd_nr_b_13?ie=UTF8&s=books

u/Earthtone_Coalition · 2 pointsr/Christianity

I'm an atheist, and have more books about atheism than about any particular theistic belief.

That said, I'd strongly recommend--and would appreciate Christian Redditors' takes on--The Case For God by Karen Armstrong. I'm afraid it's been a while since I read it, but I recall thinking that, at least from the atheist perspective, this book presents a fairly nuanced look at god and religion throughout history. Armstrong advocates (?) for a return to a gnostic tradition of belief and contemplating God through silence. It only addresses the New Atheist argument briefly, at the very end. Interesting stuff.

EDIT: I failed to mention the following. As a counterpoint to Armstrong's "all paths" interpretation of belief I'd recommend God is Not One by Stephen Prothero. This is one of my favorite books I've read about religions. The book is strictly a comparative study of major religions and does not address the question of whether or not God exists, so it may not fit into your pro/contra reading list. Still, a fascinating book and highly illuminating.

u/raisinbeans · 2 pointsr/Christianity

My apologies, I assumed you may have been familiar with Rene Decartes.

I'll explain it this way: How do you know something? How do you know something as simple as your keyboard is in front of you?

You can see it and you can feel it, right?

But that doesn't actually prove the keyboard really exists. That just proves your eyes see a keyboard and your hands feel a keyboard.

And really, you can't even 100% sure of that. You know from experience that your senses aren't 100% trustworthy. They can be confused by psychological tricks or medical conditions can cause senses to report things that aren't really there. As mentioned before, optical illusions, phantom pain, schizophrenia, magic tricks, desert mirages, LSD, mushrooms, etc are all known cases where your eye sight, hearing, or sense of touch report things that aren't there.

So really, all you can say for 100% certainity is that you think your senses are reporting there's a keyboard in front of you.

While four hundred years too early, Decartes would have used The Matrix as a great example. Relying solely on your senses, there is no difference between your reality now and if you were hooked up to The Matrix. Everything you saw, heard, or touched would prove that the Matrix was reality- yet it wasn't.

Likewise, while it is incredibly unlikely and not at all practical, there is still a tiny tiny chance that you just may be inside a giant virtual reality world.

> When asked for evidence,

When asked for evidence I listed several resources for you. I'll explicitly bullet them for you this time :-)

u/mathent · 2 pointsr/atheism

I can speak from personal experiance. The best way I can offer to push someone from theism, specifically evangelical christianity, to atheism is to show them that what they've been told about God is (mostly) bull shit.

For this, I offer: The Case for God by Karen Armstrong.

Armstrong outlines all understandings of God for all of history. As such, it can be really dense, but it really gives you an exhaustive understanding of how people have understood God. She also does it by presenting the facts as she has studied them, and offers very little of her own opinion. That is, she is arguing for understanding the historical character of God, not that you should necessarily believe in Him. She's actually quite critical of the modern, mainstream, conceptions of God--especially biblical literalism and evangelical protestants.

Her discussion should change the way you perceive God, which may allow you to have more objectivity towards your beliefs. I read this through my de-conversion and I think it helped me more than any other book; here was a woman arguing for God telling me that most of what I believed was a new fad in Christian beliefs rather than a multi-century established doctrine.

Reading an atheist book is all well and good, but you know what they're going to say. This book will argue that even in the context of God existing, what you believe about him is bull shit.

u/Irish_Whiskey · 2 pointsr/religion

The Case for God and The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong are both good. The God Delusion is a simple breakdown and explanation of most major religious claims. Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World by the Dalai Llama is an interesting book on ethics. The Koran: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Cook is 150 funny and insightful pages on Islam. Under the Banner of Heaven is a shocking and fascinating account of fundamentalist Mormonism. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan discusses religion, and Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot are my secular versions of holy books. And of course given the occasion, I can't leave out God is Not Great.

I recommend avoiding authors like Lee Strobel and Deepak Chopra. Both are essentially liars for their causes, either inventing evidence, or deliberately being incredibly misleading in how they use terms. Popularity in those cases definitely doesn't indicate quality.