Karen Armstrong: The Case for God

The Anniston Star recently said this about the book and author: Karen Armstrong is known for her excellent, even-handed books on religious matters, and The Case For God is her best work yet, focusing mainly on the Christian religion. Almost everyone reading it will find evidence to bolster their beliefs, and faults revealed with them as well. But if they’re honest and open-minded, they’ll also find a lot of things to think about. Opening with an exploration of some of the earliest religious beliefs and rites, Armstrong points out immediately that religion from the start was not meant to have the answers to everything. People of all religions, from Buddhism to Greek gods to Judaism and more, always said the ultimate identity and idea of God could not be understood intellectually, only imperfectly and individually. To understand their gods in terms humans can comprehend, humans must make their gods into nothing more or less than a human ideal — the stereotypical bearded chap in the sky. And in doing so, they cheapen the god into an idol, something imperfectly understood yet followed blindly. Read that article, in full, here. The author was recently a gust on The Brian Lehrer Show, on WNYC Radio, an NPR affiliate. Listen to that show below. See also: A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, The Bible: A Biography (Books That Changed the World), The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions.

"Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences" by Jeffrey Long, Paul Perry

A year ago MSNBC covered this author and his new book, which is just going to be released, this coming January, 2011, as a paperback: The near-death experience story is so common that it has become a bit of a cliché: A medical patient, hanging in a murky limbo between life and death, is drawn through a tunnel of bright light, meets their maker, and is told they must return to the land of living.
But that scenario played out letter-perfectly for Mary Jo Rapini. And her story is getting firm backing by a doctor who has studied some 1,300 near-death experiences. Medical doctor Jeffrey Long chronicles Rapini’s story, along with his own research, in a new book: “Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences.” In the book, Long contends his study shows that accounts of near-death experiences play out remarkably similarly among the people who have had them, crossing age and cultural boundaries to such a degree that they can’t be chalked up simply to everyone having seen the same Hollywood movie. Find that MSNBC report, here. See also: Science and the Near-Death Experience: How Consciousness Survives Death.

"A Wanton Woman: The Life of Ida C. Craddock" from NPR by ALICE GREGORY

Ida C. Craddock. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of her. Neither had I. But according to her most recent biographer, Leigh Eric Schmidt, this is a travesty. She deserves a place in our pantheon of polymaths. A professor of American religious history at Harvard, Schmidt champions Craddock as a secular oracle, civil liberties proponent and religious therapist. His aim with the biography, Heaven's Bride, is to retroactively legitimize Craddock, a self-taught, quasi-academic dismissed by the intellectuals of her day and all but forgotten in ours. [...] And though auto-didacticism is not a glittery or singular enough basis upon which to historicize an individual, it becomes clear over the chapters that Craddock's most basic attributes — her "unregulated intelligence" and her "destructive impulse to impart knowledge without discrimination" — are actually her most impressive. Craddock's intellectual infatuations ran the gamut, but most were "peculiar" or at least arcane: Ouija boards, Alaskan totem poles, tantric yoga. She herself was a wunderkammer of marvels.

Read that full NPR feature story, here. Read an excerpt from the book, here. See also: Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment, Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality, Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism

Punk Rock Professor Talks Anarchy And Evolution from NPR: Science Friday Podcast

At the same time Greg Graffin was starting the legendary punk rock band Bad Religion, he was becoming fascinated by evolutionary biology. Both would become lifelong pursuits. He talks about the connection in his new book, Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God.

Download the podcast here. See also: Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant?: A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity, Punk Rock Dad: No Rules, Just Real Life, Cold As the Clay

Do Atheists Know More About Christianity Than Christians? from The Atlantic Wire by Heather Horn

A new Pew survey is pretty much guaranteed to ruffle the feathers of the faithful. In a survey of religious knowledge, Americans did fairly poorly, displaying little knowledge of world religions. More provocatively, Americans did not even know much about their own religions. A shocking forty-five percent of Catholics incorrectly answered a question about Catholicism and Communion, for example. To make matters worse, it seems that those who scored highest on this survey were, in fact, atheists and agnostics. The next-highest scoring groups were Jews and Mormons. 'Religion Congruence Fallacy' That's what "academics call it," writes Jeffrey Weiss at Politics Daily, referring to the phenomenon of "Americans who say they belong to a particular religious tradition tend[ing] not to act like it," whether through premarital sex or divorce or what-have-you. He points out that, until this survey, there had been little evidence to support scholar Stephen Prothero's claim that "Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion." Weiss is skeptical, though, about some of the questions (on which Prothero, apparently, was consulted), which, he says " read to me as if they were taken from a religion version of Trivial Pursuit." That said, he's fascinated by the fact that Jews, Mormons, and the "religiously unaffiliated" do so well, and is particularly struck by the responses to two questions [...]

Read the full Atlantic article here. See also: Statistics on Religion in America Report -- Pew Forum on Religion, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert

The Colbert Report - August 23, 2010 - Leslie Kean

759 August 23 Losing His Religion Leslie Kean None 6107

Source: Wikipedia. See also: UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record, Crash: When UFOs Fall From the Sky: A History of Famous Incidents, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups, Science Was Wrong: Startling Truths About Cures, Theories, and Inventions "They" Declared Impossible

"Lisa Miller on her New Book, 'Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife'" from The Takeaway

From "The Lovely Bones" to "What Dreams May Come: A Novel," our popular conception of heaven is becoming increasingly beautiful and irreligious. We talk to Lisa Miller, Religion Editor at Newsweek Magazine and author of the new book "Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife." She joins us with a look at changing conceptions of heaven through the years. And she tells us that this is a personal story as well.

In the podcast, Miller says, "Belief in hell is tanking; it's tanking worse than the economy tanked last year." Download the podcast here.