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So, we think about God far to easily and that's because of a lot of social, intellectual, and scientific changes that have taken place in the western world and that has made God very problematic for a lot of people.

Karen Armstrong

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Karen Armstrong
Age: 79
Born: 1944
Born: November 14
Author
Historian Of Religion
Islamicist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Worcs
Place
Problematic
Made
Scientific
Think
Easily
Thinking
Western
World
Changes
People
Intellectual
Taken
Social

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I learned a lot from both, initially Jewish and Muslim theologians that had been missing, perhaps from my rather parochial Catholic upbringing.
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It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles.
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Saint Augustine ... insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to preach hatred and was not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity.
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Compassion has to become a discipline. It's something that you do. It's no good thinking that you agree with compassion or not, you've just got to do it. Just like it's no good agreeing that it's possible to float, you just have to get into the pool and then you learn that it's possible.
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There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine.
Karen Armstrong
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We have domesticated God's transcendence. We often learn about God at about the same time as we are learning about Santa Claus but our ideas about Santa Claus change, mature and become more nuanced, whereas our ideas of God can remain at a rather infantile level.
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Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage.
Karen Armstrong
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Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day.
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Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place.
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Sometimes I call myself a freelance, I can't see any one of the great religions as superior to others.
Karen Armstrong
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Golden Rule lies at the heart of every religious and of every ethical system of morality, it what makes us look at one another. The religions have all adopted it independently, Chinese, Indian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, because they find it works and because it says something very deep about the structure of our humanity.
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Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.
Karen Armstrong
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Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us.
Karen Armstrong
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Huge imbalance in power has resulted in the alienation, rage, fury, and awful amoral terrorism that has erupted and is erupting at the present time. And in order to counter this, we need to make the compassionate voice of religion and morality a dynamic force in our world.
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Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself it is not MY pain.
Karen Armstrong
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...there is something wrong with any spirituality that does not inspire selfless concern for others
Karen Armstrong
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There must be no coercion in matters of faith!
Karen Armstrong
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Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.
Karen Armstrong
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When you feel compassion, you dethrone yourself from the centre of the world.
Karen Armstrong
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there is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.
Karen Armstrong