Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.
Karen ArmstrongRead
Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Religious beliefs persist not due to coercion or logic, but because they provide people with a profound sense of the sacred.
Karen Armstrong emphasizes that the endurance of religious ideas and practices is not a result of powerful advocacy or rational justification, but rather stems from their ability to fulfill a fundamental human need for a connection to something greater than oneself. This sense of sacred transcendence offers comfort and meaning to the faithful, illustrating that deeply held beliefs often arise from personal experience rather than intellectual persuasion.
Themes
ReligionFaithTranscendenceBeliefSpirituality
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the importance of spirituality in daily life.
More from Karen Armstrong
All quotes →Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.
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When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too.
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Far from being the father of jihad, [Prophet] Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of his closest companions because he was determined to effect a reconciliation with Mecca
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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.
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Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.
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