Karen Armstrong « Thinking About The Mind

13Apr/10

Karen Armstrong : “What is Religion?”

Like all human institutions, religion is a growing and evolving phenomena. Learning how we got here is the first step towards why religion is the way it is now, and Karen Armstrong's books are a must read for anyone interested in the history of human religions. She is by far my favourite writer on the subject. Karen Armstrong's focus is on the abrahamic religions but she is also very well versed in the major asian religions as well.

In this talk she speaks about how the bible is the gathering of multiple stories which were never meant as an incontrovertible absolute truth. She talks about how the Torah, Bible, the word of god should be read and interpreted appropriately for the given time, a key point the orthodox religionists seem to miss entirely. No-one seems to read the books in their original Greek/Aramaic but in translations sticking to words which have long changed their original meaning. She goes into depth about how the concept of "belief" talked about in the bible did not at all mean blind belief into some biblical 'facts' but rather having a deep spiritual enlightenment (in the buddhist sense). The word changed meaning in translation into english and even more over the past 500 years of evolution of English language. The message is to read the old scripts and think about how they apply to todays reality, not to try to shape our reality into that of human society 2,000 or 3,000 years ago...

FORA.tv : Chautauqua Institution : Karen Armstrong: What is Religion?

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