Heed not the fanatics
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1189919,00.html
Only by rebutting fundamentalism in all its forms can we stop
ourselves being plunged into a new Dark Age
Will Hutton
Sunday April 11, 2004
The Observer
Today, more than two million Protestants and Catholics will attend
church to celebrate Easter, a resilient band but millions fewer than
just 50 years ago. The great fathers of sociology - Weber, Marx,
Durkheim - all believed that industrialisation, wealth and democracy
would lead to the development of a massively secular society. Religion
and its myths, the linchpin of dirt-poor traditional society, would
evaporate before detraditionalising modernity.
They were right about Europe but wrong about almost everywhere else.
Protestant evangelism in the United States and Islamic fundamentalism
are the two fastest-growing religions on the planet; even Hindu and
Buddhist fundamentalism are on the increase. Only Europe has moved in
the direction the classic sociologists predicted. A mere third of
Europeans report that they think that life is worth living because God
exists. In the US, 61 per cent do, a proportion matched, although we
don't have reliable evidence, within Islam. In those broad religiously
inclined majorities, fundamentalists find it easier to recruit.
Will Hutton
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=18510aff.0312130718.32c9a8a%40posting.google.com
Fundamentalism fundamentalist fundamentalists
http://news.google.com/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=+Fundamentalism+OR+fundamentalist+OR+fundamentalists&sa=N&tab=gn
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=+Fundamentalism+OR+fundamentalist+OR+fundamentalists&sa=N&tab=nw
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=+Fundamentalism+OR+fundamentalist+OR+fundamentalists&sa=N&tab=wd&cat=gwd%2FTop
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_oq=Fundamentalism%20fundamentalist%20fundamentalists&safe=images&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_scoring=d&lr=&num=100&hl=en
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