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<address><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/04/case-for-god-karen-armstrong">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/04/case-for-god-karen-armstrong</a><br>
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<h1 class="css-10d1jpn">All quiet on the God front</h1>
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<div class="css-yx10il">Simon Blackburn discusses the argument
that religious experience can't be discussed</div>
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<div class="css-1sq67yf">Simon Blackburn</div>
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<div class="css-1kkxezg" role="textbox"><span
class="css-nyo8hb">Published on </span>Sat 4 Jul
2009 00.01 BST</div>
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<p class="css-182kmce"><span class="css-hi9njr"><span
class="css-jwwgxz">T</span></span><span
class="css-182kmce">his is an eloquent and interesting
book, although you do not quite get what it says on the
tin. Karen Armstrong takes the reader through a history
of religious practice in many different cultures,
arguing that in the good old days and purest forms they
all come to much the same thing. They use devices of
ritual, mystery, drama, dance and meditation in order to
enable us better to cope with the vale of tears in which
we find ourselves. Religion is therefore properly a
matter of a practice, and may be compared with art or
music. These are similarly difficult to create, and even
to appreciate. But nobody who has managed either would
doubt that something valuable has happened in the
process. We come out of the art gallery or concert hall
enriched and braced, elevated and tranquil, and may even
fancy ourselves better people, though the change may or
may not be noticed by those around us.</span></p>
<p class="css-182kmce">This is religion as it should be,
and, according to Armstrong, as it once was in all the
world's best traditions. However, there is a serpent in
this paradise, as in others. Or rather, several serpents,
but the worst is the folly of intellectualising the
practice. This makes it into a matter of belief, argument,
and ultimately dogma. It debases religion into a matter of
belief in a certain number of propositions, so that if you
can recite those sincerely you are an adept, and if you
can't you fail. This is Armstrong's principal target. With
the scientific triumphs of the 17th century, religion
stopped being a practice and started to become a theory -
in particular the theory of the divine architect. This is
a perversion of anything valuable in religious practice,
Armstrong writes, and it is only this perverted view that
arouses the scorn of modern "militant" atheists. So
Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris have chosen a straw
man as a target. Real religion is serenely immune to their
discovery that it is silly to talk of a divine architect.
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<p class="css-182kmce">So what should the religious adept
actually say by way of expressing his or her faith?
Nothing. This is the "apophatic" tradition, in which
nothing about God can be put into words. Armstrong firmly
recommends silence, having written at least 15 books on
the topic. Words such as "God" have to be seen as symbols,
not names, but any word falls short of describing what it
symbolises, and will always be inadequate, contradictory,
metaphorical or allegorical. The mystery at the heart of
religious practice is ineffable, unapproachable by reason
and by language. Silence is its truest expression. The
right kind of silence, of course, not that of the pothead
or inebriate. The religious state is exactly that of Alice
after hearing the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky": "Somehow it
seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't exactly
know what they are." If Alice puts on a dog collar, she
will be at one with the tradition.</p>
<p class="css-182kmce">Armstrong is not presenting a case
for God in the sense most people in our idolatrous world
would think of it. The ordinary man or woman in the pew or
on the prayer mat probably thinks of God as a kind of
large version of themselves with mysterious powers and a
rather nasty temper. That is the vice of theory again, and
as long as they think like that, ordinary folk are not
truly religious, whatever they profess. By contrast,
Armstrong promises that her kinds of practice will make us
better, wiser, more forgiving, loving, courageous,
selfless, hopeful and just. Who can be against that? </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">The odd thing is that the book
presupposes that such desirable improvements are the same
thing as an increase in understanding - only a kind of
understanding that has no describable content. It is
beyond words, yet is nevertheless to be described in terms
of awareness and truth. But why should we accept that?
Imagine that I come out of the art gallery or other trance
with a beatific smile on my face. I have enjoyed myself,
and feel better. Perhaps I give a coin to the beggar I
ignored on the way in. Even if I do so, there is no reason
to describe the improvement in terms of my having
understood anything. If I feel more generous, well and
good, but the proof of that pudding is not my beatific
smile but how I behave. As Wittgenstein, whose views on
religion Armstrong thoroughly endorses, also said, an
inner process stands in need of outward criteria. You can
feel good without being good, and be good without
stretching your understanding beyond words. Her experience
of "Jabberwocky" may have improved Alice. </p>
<p class="css-182kmce">Silence is just that. It is a kind of
lowest common denominator of the human mind. The machine
is idling. Which direction it then goes after a period of
idling is a highly unpredictable matter. As David Hume put
it, in human nature there is "some particle of the dove,
mixed in with the wolf and the serpent". So we can expect
that some directions will be better and others worse. And
that is what, alas, we always find, with or without the
song and dance.</p>
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