What is there in her book that seems "left field"?
I should reiterate/clarify: I'm not saying "Karen Armstrong lets you down so atheists win" - I know there is diversity in the church. The reason I was asking was that, as I said, the book was recommended to me on this site and I found it, well, pretty diverse. I was also reluctant to say why I thought this because I wanted the opinions of others, and not have the issue seen through my atheist lenses.
But since you ask ...
the book the Case for God is intended as a response to atheists by way of explaining to them (well, us) how we fundamentally misunderstand religion and so set up straw men to knock them down. My take on Armstrong is that she considers religion to be entirely a practice with no other content than human desire for transcendance. So: god, jesus, the resurrection: all symbolic. The bible: myth. God's existence is irrelevant and indeed the wrong question. She says in as many words that anyone who looks in the bible and expects to get direction on how to live life is just not getting what the bible is about.
So, she says, atheists who think that god is real, and that Jesus was real, and the resurrection actually happened, and that religion provides guidance and rules, doesn't really understand whaat religion is about and so our arguments are completely missing the target.
But: I used to be a Christian, and I really believed that god exists, that Jesus exists, and through the cross and resurrection Jesus provides us with the means to enjoy eternal life. It seems to me (deliberate understatement here) that that is what most Christians think. The upshot is that Armstrong is not just saying that atheits misunderstand religion, she is saying that most christians throughout christian history misunderstand religion as well.
I said I didn't want to speak for Armstrong in case I misrepresented her views, but here is a cut-down extract of the comments in this link (Armstrong 'versus' Dawkins on evolution):
Man vs. God - WSJ.com
Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect... there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive... if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making....
If you read the article you'll note a lot of references to past religious practice; by way of background to her thinking, the general sense of The Case for God is that to understand religion we have to go back to the documents that pre-date the bible (eg when Yaweh was just one local god among many) and take the view that everyone who has contributed to or reflected on the bible since 1,200 BC has got it wrong (she is particularly harsh on the authors of Deuteronomy) - except theologians taking her apophatic approach. OK, I exaggerate on this point, but not much.
I'd be inclined to regard Armtrong as less of an out-there theist and more of a confused atheist, to be frank. But, no doubt, others may disagree.
