Reader Colin sent an email that Karen Armstrong was on the BBC this morning. His note, below, got me to listen to the first 15 minutes of the 43-minute show, the part that is pretty much a monologue by Armstrong before other discussants take over. His email:

If you can stomach it, you might find the interview on BBC Radio 4 this morning interesting. In the UK, you can generally get repeats on BBC iPlayer and this one should be here. The programme last 45 minutes, but KA gets the bulk of the first 15 minutes. I only caught snatches of it, but heard her, inter alia, trot out the strawman that all wars are caused by religion, just in order to shoot it down.

A different reader from the UK added this while also calling my attention to the show:

It was a discussion between Karen Armstrong, writer/historian Justin Marozzi and Christopher Coker, chaired by Tom Sutcliffe, a splendid journalist and presenter, although I think he was rather lenient on Armstrong.

Well, if you listen, you’ll hear that Sutcliffe does put her in the hot seat a few times, and even gets her to admit that religion has done some bad stuff (about 8:15).

In the US, you can hear it at the link as well, or just click on the image below and hit “play now.”

It’s pretty much what you expect from the Great Apologist, but her statement “that you can never separate religion from other activities” makes me wonder: she singles out things other than religion, like economics, humiliation, and race, as causes of violence, but somehow religion remains inseparably intertwined with everything else. Religion gets a pass for no obvious reason (except that she’s soft on it).

Somehow, when I listen to her, I’m sensing a machine whose gears are locked in a tendentious output of faith-osculation, a machine that can’t be tweaked. I wish Hitchens were still here to take her on: imagine a Hitchens/Armstrong debate!

The BBC description:

Karen Armstrong argues against the notion that religion is the major cause of war. The former nun tells Tom Sutcliffe that faith is as likely to produce pacifists and peace-builders as medieval crusaders and modern-day jihadists. But Justin Marozzi charts the violent history of Baghdad and asks what role religion had to play there. The philosopher Christopher Coker explores how warfare dominates our history, and argues that war, like religion, is central to the human condition.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

By the way, last night President Obama was interviewed by Steve Kroft on the t.v. show “60 minutes,” and I wrote down two statements he made:

1. ISIS is an “ideologically driven” organization.

2. The members of ISIS “think they can kill someone who doesn’t worship the same God.”

Isn’t that an admission that ISIS is driven by religion, and in fact adheres to a form of religion?