[Buddha-l] The Case for God

[Curt Steinmetz]

Weng-Fai Wong wrote:
> Piya wrote: 
>   
>> From what I have read of Armstrong (not all her works) is that she is not
>> strong in specifics, esp Buddhist specifics. 
>>     
>
> Her new book "The Case for God" actually ends with a para about the Buddha.
>   

How in blue blazes could a book about "God" conclude with a paragraph 
about the Buddha? Especially considered Armstrong's track record with 
respect to the Buddha Dharma.

The fact that Armstrong frames her response to Dawkins & Co. in terms of 
"God", while simultaneously claiming that she is speaking on behalf of 
all the world's religions, is a very bad sign. Worse yet, the framing is 
actually in terms not just of "God", but of that boneheaded Christian 
obsession with "proving" the "existence" of their "God", or "making a 
case" for him, or whatever.

Since Armstrong has no qualms about critiquing the New Atheists as "not 
theologically literate", and since she also says that their polemics 
"lack intellectual depth" (both of which are valid points), it is 
perhaps permissible to mention the fact that Armstrong herself is not a 
scholar of religion and/or comparative religion, nor is she in any 
meaningful sense a historian -- or any other kind of scholar, for that 
matter. So her inability to come up with a genuinely pan-religious 
response to the New Atheists shouldn't be all that surprising, I suppose.

When Armstrong was on Bill Moyer's show a few months back she actually 
stated that ancient Greek Pagans "may have been not religious in our 
sense". She apparently didn't realize that she was talking about the 
people to who gave us such words as theology, piety and divinity. In 
fact, the founders of Christianity did not use the word "God", but 
rather "ho theos" and/or "deus" - words appropriated from the Pagan 
Greeks and Romans.

Curt