A review by tivolihen
A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Karen Armstrong

4.0

Dang, this book was one of those that literally makes your brain explode. It took me a bit of time to get through (partly because it's so dense) but also because I had to stop so often to marvel at humanity and the creation of organized religion. Moving through history with this book and seeing how humanity's conception of God has changed through the ages was insane for me. I keep moving towards this idea that all religions are merely an attempt to make sense of the divine and this book was the last step I needed to get there. We claim that the divine is incomprehensible and any attempt to make sense of the divine is going to fall way short, yet we continue to grasp at answers with religion. Armstrong says, "The Koran is highly suspicious of theological speculation, dismissing it as self-indulgent guesswork about things that nobody can possibly know or prove." And that's how I feel. We can't know things. We know we can't know things. And to pretend like we can come to some sort of logical explanation for the transcendent is utter nonsense. Speaking about the Vedas, Armstrong says, "It was designed to help people to come to terms with the wonder and terror of existence. It asked more questions than it answered, designed to hold the people in an attitude of reverent wonder." That's what spirituality is about in my opinion. Being in awe of the wonder of the world. We aren't supposed to have answers. Religion may help give you some idea of how others have experienced the divine, but it cannot give you answers. There are no answers. All you can know is your own experience.

Four stars because I think it could have been shorter and less dense. Her writing got kinda boring at some points, but overall the information was rad.