Times Review of Armstrong

20 Apr 2006 by nemo   Armstrong’s emphasis on non-violence is to be commended, but the evidence contradicts her thesis. Armstrong can’t seem to grasp the point that if the Axial Age hasn’t produced its results yet we could hardly, after such a time elapsed, ...

 

Email on Armstrong’s book

5 Apr 2006 by nemo   Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation, dealing with the Axial Age, just published, has brought the public’s attention to the remarkable phenomenon first described by Karl Jaspers, but first discovered in the nineteenth century. ...

 

Armstrong’s Religious Revolution

13 Dec 2005 by nemo   Meanwhile, as to Armstong’s Axial Age nonsense. Armstrong’s model of the Axial Age has degenerated into incoherence with the idea of a ‘Second Axial Age’, which was supposed to be the rise of the modern, but is now some postmodern New ...

 

Armstrong, Axial Age, Aljazeera

31 Jan 2006 by nemo   Karen Armstrong on Aljazeera.net announces her new book on Axial Age. Life is not fair, someone who has made a complete bollocks of the question of the Axial Age writes a book that will sell due to her reputation. ...

 

Armstrong, Darwin, Eugenie Scott

15 Apr 2006 by nemo   It is impossible to grasp the issues of the Axial Age without bringing in the issues of evolution, a point requiring some study. But obviously that is taboo, and one of the apparent strategies of Armstrong’s silly book is to efface ...

 

Armstrong discredits ‘Axial Age’

13 Mar 2006 by nemo   I have been waiting with a question mark in mind for the appearance of Karen Armstrong’s book on the Axial Age, The Great Transformation, reviewed here at the Financial Times (not yet available in the US). Based on a previous account in ...

 

Karen Armstrong on Axial Age

20 Nov 2005 by nemo   What is Enlightenment? magazine, issue 31, has an article on Karen Armstrong and the supposed ‘Second Axial Age’. Text is listed below, after my commentary. This page updates a post from a few days ago, and is also available at ...

 

Second Axial again

3 Apr 2006 by nemo   Because of the parallels with the Axial Age, Armstrong believes, it’s highly possible that the world is at another religious turning point. “In every single case, the catalyst of major religious change was revulsion from warfare and ...

 

Gearing up for the Armstrong mess

2 Mar 2006 by nemo   I have been waiting for Karen Armstrong’s new book The Great Transformation on the Axial Age. Based on her previous remarks in earlier books, with a short version in The History of Myth, the result is going to make a complete mess of ...

 

Armstrong’s crypto-fundamentalism?

2 Mar 2006 by nemo   We are presently in the Second Axial Age according to religious scholar, Karen Armstrong. In her book, The Battle for God, Armstrong says the Second Axial Age began in the early 20th century– a time when “people were trying to find new ...

Axial/Armstrong links

3 Apr 2006 by nemo   I have collected together the links on this blog on the Axial Age/Karen Armstrong question.

 

Armstrong and Dalai Lama

17 Apr 2006 by nemo   Sorry to keep harping on Armstrong, but she has wrecked the question of the Axial Age. Karl Jaspers’ book isn’t even in print. My careful periodization structure to examine and approach its complex study, because it challenges Darwin, ...

 

No Second Axial Age

31 Jan 2006 by nemo   I got an email from someone who had read an amazon review of mine on Armstrong’s Battle For God. I had forgotten that I had reviewed it, but went to look, see below. Armstrong’s idea of a second Axial Age doesn’t quite add up, ...

 

Axial Age and Eonic Model

15 Apr 2006 by nemo   A review of Armstrong’s The Great Transformation almost gets the point, and sees where she has gone wrong by smearing out the Axial data backwards and forwards. Then the reviewer derails with some speculations about the Ice Age. ...

 

Axial Synchronism

18 Apr 2006 by nemo   Armstrong in The Great Transformation completely distorts the issue of the ... Armstrong gets confused by the claims now that Zoroaster is much earlier and that Lao ... Then it becomes clear that the question of the Axial Age is that of ...

 

More ‘Second Axial Age’ confusion

16 Feb 2006 by nemo   In another version, Karen Armstrong has proposed a second Axial Age as some kind of postmodern restoration of religion. It is all confusion. There is no second ‘Axial Age’, unless by that we mean the rise of modernity itself. ...

 

Voodoo Scholarship

26 Nov 2005 by nemo   What is Enlightenment? magazine, issue 31, has an article on Karen Armstrong and the supposed ‘Second Axial Age’. See post from a few days ago: Armstrong on Axial Age. The issue of the magazine in question raises a sore point: these ...

 

More on Armstrong’s Axial Age

22 Nov 2005 by nemo   Googling Karen Armstrong’s views on a so-called ‘Second Axial Age’ I find a number of seminars on the subject, with this from a conference of the Jesus Seminar. Who should we find present here but Eugenie Scott! Hey wait a minute! ...

 

Dennett’s book is out

2 Feb 2006 by nemo   I am not ready to comment on Dennett’s text yet, although I forewarned in an earlier post that I was ’sharpening my claws’, also for Karen Armstrong’s new book on Axial Age. Actually, I expressed the hope of being pleasantly surprised ...

Armstrong on Myth

11 Dec 2005 by nemo   The periodization of the book focuses on the data of the Axial Age, which the author threatens to turn into another myth. Armstrong’s treatment of this subject has made it into a proxy for the onset of the world reiligions, ...

 

Second Axial Age??

16 Nov 2005 by nemo   What is Enlightenment? magazine, issue 31, has an article on Karen Armstrong and the supposed ‘Second Axial Age’. Unfortunately it is not online. The use of the term ‘Axial Age’ has suffered confusion, and has degenerated in some ...