The cosmology of the ancient world was telling you about the nature of life here and now. Genesis is not about the origins of life. There were many o… - Karen Armstrong

Then, as now, there would always be people who preferred the option of devoting their religious energies to sacred space over the more difficult duty of compassion.

One of the most characteristic new developments since the 1970s has been the rise of a type of religiosity that we usually call “fundamentalism” in most of the major world religions, including the three religions of God. A highly political spirituality, it is literal and intolerant in its vision. In the United States, which has always been prone to extremist and apocalyptic enthusiasm, Christian fundamentalism has attached itself to the New Right. Fundamentalists campaign for the abolition of legal abortion and for a hard line on moral and social decency.

One of the reasons why religion seems irrelevant today is that many of us no longer have the sense that we are surrounded by the unseen.