Karen Armstrong

One of my favorite internet procrastinations is watching TED conference talks. If you don’t know, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED conferences are highly exclusive events and attract some of the most interesting speakers from just about every field imaginable. The reputation of TED is such that these folks put serious effort into their presentations as inspiration is the name of the game. Some of the technology talks are pretty jaw-dropping (like this one given by a neuroscientist demonstrating real-time brain scanning). It was a little more like a traditional talk than most of what you’ll see at TED, but this afternoon I watched a talk given by Karen Armstrong at this year's conference. If you don’t know Armstrong, she is a former nun who has developed a very successful second career writing books about the relationship between the Abrahamic religions. She’s especially become known for her highly humane treatment of Islam from a Western perspective and her ecumenical take on monotheistic religions.

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Also, see:

Umm Yasmin's Karen Armstrong on TEDtalk

Karen Bacquet's Karen Armstrong on Compassion

	1. Written by This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it on 17-04-2008 01:07 - Registered
	Great talk by Karen Armstrong! Many thanks for posting this link, Steve. I think Karen is on to something when she calls for a charter for compassion and when she says religion is not primarily about belief. "Don't confine your concerns to your own group." Good advice. She is a masterful writer and speaker with an pov that is helpful no matter what religion or no religion you believe in. Baquia brought this to my attention and i posted a comment on Bahai Rants as well.    I think this is more than just a writer's talk, it could be the start of something of importance. I'm going to alert my church and the local Bahia's to this and see what happens.     The hidden words are said to be the distillation of all religious truth. If we had a charter that focused on actions that lead to and stem from compassion, that also set aside and put in perspective differing beliefs it might help us figure out what is really important and enable us to stay focused on that.    What do you think?    Frank http://frankwinters.wordpress.com/

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