03.02.06

Armstrong’s crypto-fundamentalism?

Posted in The Axial Age at 10:05 pm by nemo

By the time Armstong is done with the ‘Axial Age’ the idea will be discredited.
Here’s one garbled version of Armstrong’s Second Axial Age thesis.

Having seen my book, no doubt, she has changed her tactics. Fundamentalism and a second Axial Age starting in the twenty-first century is complete nonsense.
Armstrong is not able to focus on what happened in the first Axial Age. It is not about sages and prophets, as such. The complexity and depth of the phenomenon cannot be generalized into a religious thesis.
Get going on the Eonic Model.

Religious historians speak of the Axial Age, about 200-700 BCE—the period of reformers and prophets. Human society was moving to new forms of social and economic organization; sacrificial rites and rituals were being replaced or supplemented by concern for justice in human relations. “I take no delight in your feasts and fancy parties” roared the Axial Age Hebrew prophet, Amos, speaking to the fat cat rulers and Enron executives of his time. “Let justice roll down like waters…” The God of Amos demanded fair distribution of resources and justice for the poor.

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 ways to be religious.” She writes,
Just as people in the first Axial Age (c. 700-200 BCE) had found that
the old paganism no longer worked in the new conditions of their period, and had evolved the great confessional faiths, so too, in this second axial age there was a similar challenge. Like any truly creative enterprise the search for modern (and later, for postmodern) faith was supremely difficult….the quest continues. The religiosity we call ‘fundamentalism’ is just one of these attempts. (Armstrong, 2000, p. 169)

Karen Armstrong sees the rise of fundamentalism as essentially a modern phenomenon. We are in the emerging postmodern Second Axial Age - The religion that worked for past generations is no longer adequate. We 21st century humanoids are living in an age when that axial center is shifting. We’re trying to find a new center in a revolving body that won’t hold still. Fundamentalism among the People of the Book (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) is a fear-based attempt to desperately grab the anchor of dogma in the churning seas of modernity.
There’s a problem here because wherever you have fundamentalism you have religious absolutism, the belief that there is only one truth

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