The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous books on religious affairs

This book is about Fundamentalism.

Mythos and Logos: spiritual and logical realm

"We tend to assume that the people of the past were (more or less) like us, but in fact their spiritual lives were rather different.

In particular, they evolved two ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge, which scholars have called mythos and logos. Both were essential; they were regarded as complementary ways of arriving at truth, and each had its special area of competence."

"The various mythological stories, which were not intended to be taken literally, were an ancient form of psychology."

"When people told stories about heroes who descended into the underworld, struggled through labyrinths, or fought with monsters, they were bringing to light the obscure regions of the subconscious realm, which is not accessible to purely rational investigation, but which has a profound effect upon our experience and behavior."

"Logos was the rational, pragmatic, and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world."

"In the premodern world, both mythos and logos were regarded as indispensable. Each would be impoverished without the other. Yet the two were essentially distinct, and it was held to be dangerous to confuse mythical and rational discourse. They had separate jobs to do. "

Origins of Fundamentalism

"By the eighteenth century, however, the people of Europe and America had achieved such astonishing success in science and technology that they began to think that logos was the only means to truth and began to discount mythos as false and superstitious.

It is also true that the new world they were creating contradicted the dynamic of the old mythical spirituality.

Our religious experience in the modern world has changed, and because an increasing number of people regard scientific rationalism alone as true, they have often tried to turn the mythos of their faith into logos. Fundamentalists have also made this attempt. This confusion has led to more problems."

The great progress made by science and technology overshadowed religion.

"humanity had lost its orientation and was hurtling toward an infinite nothingness." People don't believe in anything. It is nihilism. Fundamentalism filled this vacuum.

"When they [fundamentalists] created these alternative societies, fundamentalists were demonstrating their disillusion with a culture which could not easily accommodate the spiritual."

"there is a void at the heart of modern culture, which Western people experienced at an early stage of their scientific revolution.

Pascal recoiled in dread from the emptiness of the cosmos; Descartes saw the human being as the sole living denizen of an inert universe; Hobbes imagined God retreating from the world, and Nietzsche declared that God was dead: humanity had lost its orientation and was hurtling toward an infinite nothingness."

Fundamentalism is out of place

"WE CANNOT BE RELIGIOUS in the same way as our ancestors in the premodern conservative world, when the myths and rituals of faith helped people to accept limitations that were essential to agrarian civilization."

What worked before is no longer applicable today as our knowledge and tools have improved.

Fundamentalism leaves its believers behind

"they seem so adamantly opposed to many of the most positive values of modern society. Fundamentalists have no time for democracy, pluralism, religious toleration, peacekeeping, free speech, or the separation of church and state."

Those who over-emphasize mythos, and ignore logos will be left behind.

How to deal with fundamentalism?

"Suppression and coercion are clearly not the answer. They invariably lead to a backlash and can make fundamentalists or potential fundamentalists more extreme. Protestant fundamentalists in the United States became more reactionary, intransigent, and literal-minded after their humiliation at the Scopes trial. The most extreme forms of Sunni fundamentalism surfaced in Nasser’s concentration camps, and the shah’s crackdowns helped to inspire the Islamic Revolution. Fundamentalism is an embattled faith; it anticipates imminent annihilation."

"Repression has bitten deeply into the souls of those who have experienced secularization as aggressive, and has warped their religious vision, making it violent and intolerant in its turn. Fundamentalists see conspiracy everywhere and are sometimes possessed by a rage that seems demonic."

"A more just and objective appraisal of the meaning of these religious movements must be sought."

Role of Fear: "First, it is important to recognize that these theologies and ideologies are rooted in fear. The desire to define doctrines, erect barriers, establish borders, and segregate the faithful in a sacred enclave where the law is stringently observed springs from that terror of extinction which has made all fundamentalists, at one time or another, believe that the secularists were about to wipe them out. The modern world, which seems so exciting to a liberal, seems Godless, drained of meaning, and even satanic to a fundamentalist."

Do not be dismissive: "Second, it is important to realize that these movements are not an archaic throwback to the past; they are modern, innovative, and modernizing. Protestant fundamentalists read the Bible in a literal, rational way that is quite different from the more mystical, allegorical approach of premodern spirituality."

Religion always has value

"Throughout we have seen that religion has often helped people to adjust to modernity. Shabbateanism, Quakerism, Methodism, and Islamic mysticism helped Jews, Christians, and Muslims prepare for major change, and gave them a context in which they could approach the new ideas."

"Religion is not opium of the people, but vitamin of the weak." [Régis Debray]

Exploiting fundamentalism

Secularism and modernity just as irrational

Aggression and lack of compassion of secularism

"Because it was so embattled, this campaign to re-sacralize society became aggressive and distorted. It lacked the compassion which all faiths have insisted is essential to the religious life and to any experience of the numinous.

Instead, it preached an ideology of exclusion, hatred, and even violence. But the fundamentalists did not have a monopoly on anger.

Their [fundamentalists] movements had often evolved in a dialectical relationship with an aggressive secularism which showed scant respect for religion and its adherents.

Secularists and fundamentalists sometimes seem trapped in an escalating spiral of hostility and recrimination."

"Fundamentalists feel that they are battling against forces that threaten their most sacred values. During a war it is very difficult for combatants to appreciate one another’s position."


The rise of fundamentalism is due to the rejection by secularists, rationalists, and nationalists of the mythos - the existence in human mind of "obscure regions of the subconscious realm, which is not accessible to purely rational investigation".

Religion addresses this deep human need as an "ancient form of psychology".

Aggression and lack of compassion by secularists, rationalists, and nationalists has created a vacuum leading to nihilism (belief in nothing). Fundamentalism filled this vacuum.

The fix is deeper understanding of root cause, minimizing aggression, more compassion, and separation and respect of two equally important mythos and logos.




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