Karen Armstrong: Let’s revive the Golden Rule
October 5, 2009
I have become a big fan of Karen Armstrong over the past several years. Funny thing, is that I bought one of her books – A History of God – over ten years ago, but never cracked it until last year. It was worth the wait! Since then, I’ve read two more books from Armstrong, who is a leading author and scholar on the ever-controversial subject of Religion.
Here is a short clip of her recent TED talk. The theme is Compassion as the underlying essence of all world religions.
If you don’t know about TED yet, I strongly advise you to visit ted.com, create a profile and participate! TED also has strong presence on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.
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March Fourth: Spiritual Reflections, Life Philosophy, Happiness, Motivation and Inspiration 
I am a big fan of Karen Armstrong too
Really interesting! Armstrong’s particular theory comes through in her introduction to A Case for God. In my view, she comes very close to reducing religion to ethics, which is something liberal Protestantism has been criticized for doing. Take, for example, “God is love.” I interpret this as teaching that love is the source or basis of existence. Even though our acts of love (and feelings!…which Armstrong also discounts relative to conduct) involve “God is love” being actualized, there is also the sense irrespective of one’s conduct that existence itself is love. I take the transcendent wisdom of the latter to be just as important as conduct in religious terms. I’ve just posted a critique (http://deligentia.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/a-case-for-god/).