Is the idea of a personal god an aberration?

(A personal god, according to Karen Armstrong, is one that listens to your prayers and intervenes in the affairs of the physical world.)

The thesis of A History of God is that monotheistic religions as they are practiced today, with their concept of a personal god, are an aberation of their original meanings. She argues that religious texts were never intended to be taken literally; that everything from creation stories to the concept of trinity to the description of hell in the Quran were all intended as a metaphor and myth in order to facilitate ongoing dialog about what god means to the individual.

I am not convinced.

Her evidence in unimpressive. She gives various examples of mystics in all three religions and how they have interpreted the texts. She also cites several intellectuals throughout history who have adopted the mystic's ideas to lead their society towards scientific rationalism in order to keep up with the rest of the modern world.

To strengthen her argument, she gives cherry-picked examples of what the prophets said and did that gives credence to the mystical interpretation of the texts. This simply does not stand up to scrutiny because the prophets' biographies are embeded within the religious tradition itself, which the majority has viewed as literal truth througout history. Intellectual elites and mystics are and have always been a minority.

This book is an interesting defense of religion. Instead of sugarcoating what the majority believes, Armstrong simply says that the majority is wrong, and the minority is right. What a flimsy argument.