Karen Armstrong, "Homo religious"

Questions for Making Connections within the Reading:

1. In “Homo religiosus,” Armstrong takes us back to the roots of religion in the Paleolithic era. The portrait she paints might surprise many readers. In “archaic thinking,” she argues, “there [was] no concept of the supernatural, no huge gulf separating human and divine.” There was “no belief in a single supreme being,” and indeed belief itself was beside the point because religion was openly understood as a myth, not a literal truth. Re-read the chapter and carefully note the many differences between religion then and religion now. Next, go back and look for the continuities. In spite of the differences, would you say that much of Paleolithic legacy survives to this day? Can we conclude that religion has become more mature and sophisticated, or is it possible that we have lost touch with what religion actually represents? Where does Armstrong herself seem to stand on this final question?

2. Whether we are looking at the Middle East, ancient China, or the culture of Aryan peoples who came off the steppes and settled in India, Armstrong insists that religion has been “a matter of doing rather than thinking.” But what exactly does she mean by “doing”? What kinds of activities might religion have entailed in ancient times? Start with the ancient shamans whose activities are hinted at by the frescos at Chauvet, then follow the historical thread until you reach Heidegger. Clearly, religious activities are meant to enhance ordinary life, but at the same time they appear to involve forms of behavior that are quite distinct from everyday existence. How do the mundane and the sacred interact in the history of religious “doing”?

3. One central concern of “Homo religiosus” is the self in its connections to the universe as a whole. Even though religion in our time is quite commonly understood in terms of a personal relationship with God, Armstrong emphasizes the importance of what the ancient Greeks called ekstasis, a “stepping outside the norm,” and kenosis, the “emptying” of the self. In what way does self-emptying connect the individual with the “sacred energy” of the universe? How might the experience of “nothingness” make people more alive and creative? What gets lost, in Armstrong’s view, when we imagine the “ultimate reality” as a “Supreme Being”?

Questions for Writing:  

1. According to Armstrong, “All ancient religion was based on what has been called the perennial philosophy, because it was present in some form in so many premodern cultures.” To support this claim she looks at religion among such disparate groups as the Australian Aborigines, the ancient Aryans and Chinese, the peoples of the Middle East, and the ancient Greeks. While their belief systems can appear quite dissimilar today, Armstrong points to underlying commonalities. For example, just as the Aryans thought of their gods as devas or shining ones, so the forerunners of the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—used the world ilam, meaning “radiant power,” to describe their own deities. What are the implications of these parallels? Have we put so great an emphasis on the differences that we have lost touch with the greater unity? What factors might explain the emphasis on such differences?

2. One theme of Armstrong’s recent work has been the distinction between two forms of knowing that she calls logos and mythos. “Logos” describes a kind of truth that strives for objectivity through the use of critical reason, while “mythos” describes a truth whose purpose is to overcome our subjective sense of separateness from the world and other living beings. Though past societies understood the distinction between the two, Armstrong contends that in our time both skeptics and religious people treat mythos as a set of objective claims. After reading “Homo religiosus,” would you say that mythos should have a place in our lives today? Is it really possible for us to keep mythos separate from logos? How might the two become confused, and what dangers might rise from confusing them?

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:  

1. In “Waiting for a Jew,” Jonathan Boyarin describes the sense of “wholeness” that came from living in a Jewish community in Farmingdale, New Jersey. That sense of wholeness was lost, however, when his family left Farmingdale and moved to a new town where Jewish observance seemed much less important to the other Jews they met. How would Armstrong explain the sense of wholeness that Boyarin experienced, and how would she explain the feeling of loss? In what ways might Armstrong’s chapter help us understand Boyarin’s inner journey after college—especially why he later comes to see the wholeness of his childhood as an “illusion”?

2. Armstrong sees religion as “matter of doing” rather than a matter of allegiance to unchanging beliefs. Re-read her chapter and carefully note the many different forms of “doing” she explores, from ritual sacrifice to yoga. In what sense might we understand premodern religion as a form of psychotherapy of the kind practiced today by Martha Stout, author of “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday”? Were religious practices possibly designed to overcome dissociated states and the pathologies that they cause? Or does religion actually encourage dissociation? If the answer is yes, what might be the purpose of turning away from the here and now, at least temporarily?