Inexplicable religion

The Guardian has a Simon Blackburn review of Karen Armstrong's new book, In Defense of God. The book's thesis is that religion at its essence uses "devices of ritual, mystery, drama, dance and meditation in order to enable us better to cope with the vale of tears in which we find ourselves. Religion is therefore properly a matter of a practice, and may be compared with art or music."

Armstrong evidently posits that the worst perversion that can happen to religion is intellectualizing it: "This makes it into a matter of belief, argument, and ultimately dogma. It debases religion into a matter of belief in a certain number of propositions, so that if you can recite those sincerely you are an adept, and if you can't you fail."

So what should the religious adept actually say by way of expressing his or her faith? Nothing. This is the "apophatic" tradition, in which nothing about God can be put into words...

The mystery at the heart of religious practice is ineffable, unapproachable by reason and by language. Silence is its truest expression.

Blackburn disagrees, saying that silence is no more than the lowest common denominator, the mind idling - and that, "As David Hume put it, in human nature there is 'some particle of the dove, mixed in with the wolf and the serpent.' So we can expect that some directions will be better and others worse. And that is what, alas, we always find, with or without the song and dance."

Silence is of course often the mind at idle, especially when it comes to intellectual endeavors. But isn't that Armstrong's point? That religion, despite Aquinas' labors, is in no way suited for intellectualism?