Karen Armstrong, time-traveling pollster
Karen Armstrong’s breezy way with facts and references can sometimes produce declarations that are really funny. On the first page of chapter 10, ‘Atheism,’ for instance, she starts with a preacher launching ‘a crusdade’ against Deism in 1790 and goes on with the rise of Evangelicalism into the 1830s. No references of course. The next paragraph starts ‘On the frontiers, nearly 40 percent of Americans felt slighted by the aristocratic republican government…’
!!! Really?! How the hell does she know that? She doesn’t even say at what particular moment in time that bizarrely exact claim was (according to her) true, and she certainly doesn’t say how she knows or how anyone else knows either. That’s not surprising, because no one does know that; no one could know that; there was no way for anyone to know that between 1790 and the 1830s. Actually there’s no way for anyone to know that even now, since even polling measures what people say they think or feel, not what they feel.
It is, frankly, typical of Armstrong’s level of thought to make such an absurd claim. It’s as if she winds herself up like a toy and then just cranks out some yards of prose, without really thinking about anything she’s saying. She tells stories, but unfortunately she presents her stories as factual narratives, and that’s very misleading.
This would matter much less if she weren’t so widely considered a deep and powerful and learned thinker. But she is, so it does.
And another thing. There’s no entry in the index for Aquinas. That surprised me when I looked for it, then I found him in the text – but she calls him Thomas. So I looked under Thomas, and there he is. But there’s no ‘Aquinas: see Thomas of Aquinas’ in the index. In any case – what’s that about? He’s known as Aquinas, not Thomas. He’s not like Leonardo, who is Leonardo, not da Vinci. I looked in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy: he’s under Aquinas. So what’s Armstrong doing? Is this some Catholic thing? Is it an affectation? Or is she just clueless. I don’t know, but it’s damn silly.
I tried the Catholic Encyclopedia and a search for “Thomas” brought the following results:
http://www.newadvent.org/utility/search.htm?safe=active&cx=000299817191393086628%3Aifmbhlr-8×0&q=thomas&sa=Search&cof=FORID%3A9#899
Thomas of Aquinas is the first choice, but there are pages and pages of other Toms. I can see why Karen irritates you, but I would not take her so seriously, if I were you.
Can you see why it irritates me to be given advice about what to take seriously?
I too find stupidity lauded as profundity extremely irritating. Amos, are you winding OB up on purpose?
Hey, quit it! Winding up Ophelia is *my* job!!
One speaks of ‘Thomist’, ‘Thomism’, ‘Thomistic’; not of ‘Aquinian’, ‘Aquinistic’, etc. Maybe that is the source of the confusion?
p.s. Karen Armstrong can’t think for toffee, OK?
Benjamin:”Hey, quit it! Winding up Ophelia is *my* job!!”
Just being sincerely on a different page (eg due to not reading carefully)works too. I just just hold off rather than wasting her reading time now.
Ophelia, I really wouldn’t be so irritated about amos if I were you ;)
Well, I’m not you. What I mean is that demanding serious scholarship of Karen Armstrong is like demanding that the TV show “Friends” give an accurate portrayal of the socio-economic realities of single people in New York City. Pop is pop.
The mistake you have made is that Friends did not pretend to be a serious look at socio-economic realities. Karen Armstrong though does lay claim to be a serious scholar of history and theology.
Clearly you think holding people up to the the standards the claim for themselves is wrong.
Matt: Karen may claim to be serious, but, as OB points out, she doesn’t even use primary sources. Her history of religion, of which I read part, reminds me of a world history book that I had as a child: the Greeks followed the Egyptians and then came the Romans, all in a neat sequence like courses in a formal dinner. Her lack of seriousness, her pop superficiality, is so obvious that I don’t see the point in
belaboring it, but certainly, I recognize your right to employ your time as you choose.
“I would not take her so seriously”
I take Ophelia’s discussions of Armstrong to be demonstrations of why the many people who do take Armstrong seriously should not.
Occasionally, when I read a claim like “people in the past didn’t actually believe things, they just lived in a generally goddy sort of way”, I hesistate to pour scorn, because I suspect Armstrong has (surely?!) done more reading on the subject than my own very very little.
I’m grateful for this sort of fisking because it reassures me that what superficially looks like crap very probably is indeed crap.
Amos,
So the fact that many people take Armstrong to be a serious scholar should go unchallenged, and her claims unchecked ?
You seem to have got confused over what ought to be the case and what is actually the case.
Should biologists leave creationist claims unchallenged for the same reason ? How about Holocaust denial ?
“She tells stories, but unfortunately she presents her stories as factual narratives, and that’s very misleading.”
It seems to me that the central tenet of her life’s work is that there is no difference between a fictional story and a factual narrative—and even if there were, why bother distinguishing since it ruins the wondermystery.
There’s something very childish about it—as if she were a small child having a tea party with her imaginary friends Mr. Thomas and Mr. Ludwig and Mr. Jesus and they always agree with her and compliment her on how good the imaginary tea is.
amos…
One, lots of people do take Armstrong seriously, as I’d already said, and as comments here indicate, and as the briefest of googlings would indicate. “Friends” doesn’t lecture Congress on Islam. “Friends” doesn’t lay down the law in newspaper articles and on the BBC and NPR. “Friends” is a sitcom and that is what it is taken to be – nobody mistakes “Friends” for a scholar of religion.
Two, this business of patronizingly advising me how to spend my time…it’s impertinent, it’s presumptuous, it’s intrusive, it’s bad manners. By all means dispute me on the substance, but do not pat me on the head and give me advice.
Chris, I was kidding. RDRR.
“Is this some Catholic thing?”
I have always heard him referred to as: ‘Thomas of Aquinas’
I know that to Catholics he’s a ‘saint’ as well as the philosopher, and that he’s from Aquino, just as Leonardo is from Vinci. But in ordinary (secular) usage he is referred to as Aquinas, not as Thomas; in philosophy he is Aquinas, not Thomas; so what I wonder is whether Armstrong is being showily Catholic or just clueless.
Dave’s suggestion about Thomism etc is helpful. Hey Dave, I bet you think Armstrong is a terrific amateur historian, don’t you? Sure you do!
I have just returned in a voyage aboard my timeship, the H.G. Wells (Patent Pending). In my explorations I discovered that:
1. When Christians launched a Crusade they actually meant it – it was never done ‘for shits and giggles’, as I believe Dr Armstrong implies.
2. Aristotle, when confronted with extracts from the King James Bible, laughed his nightie off at its barbaric absurdity. (I then used my patent ‘mindwipe’ gizmo to prevent a temporal anomaly with that one).
3. Abraham never did any of the really nasty things attributed to him. He in fact lived a quiet life as a quantity surveyor in Ur. This rehabilitates the poor chap, but of course wrecks all three faiths based on his supposed antics. Result.
Thought you’d like to know.
I almost bought KA’s book on the bible yesterday, but was put off by memory of these threads. Has anyone read that? Is it worth it? I am just intereted in ther history of the bible and don’t want anything too long and this looked like it. Presumably this couldn’t be too ideological.
Even if it’s not too ideological, I think it’s pretty clear that it’s risky to trust her on anything external to herself. (And at this point I’m not even sure I would trust her memoirs, but at least there less is at stake.)
Most of the reviewers in Amazon liked the book on the Bible, but the one reviewer who seemed to know the literature on the subject said that her source material is generally 25 years out of date and that her account contains several basic factual errors.