Karen Armstrong Divorces Faith from Knowlege. Wall Street Journal dual with Richard Dawkins.

Trying to divorce faith from reason in seeking to answer the new atheists, Karen Armstrong flys south as she also divorces faith from knowledge. The implications are disastrous. As believers, we must not capitulate with those who attempt to relativize faith in order to preserve it. Rather, we should pursue the development of solid rejoinders which refute the ideas of men like Dawkins. Much better rejoinders are available.

Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence

The Wall Street Journal commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question “Where does evolution leave God?” Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results.

Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians find their faith shaken to the core.  Read more…