Atheism, fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation
uncovering the secret sympathy
- ISBN: 9781108427982
- Editorial: Cambridge University Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2018
- Lugar de la edición: Cambridge. Reino Unido
- Encuadernación: Cartoné
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 300
- Idiomas: Inglés
In this study of new atheism and religious fundamentalism, this book advances two provocative - and surprising - arguments. Liam Jerrold Fraser argues that atheism and Protestant fundamentalism in Britain and America share a common historical origin in the English Reformation, and the crisis of authority inaugurated by the Reformers. This common origin generated two presuppositions crucial for both movements: a literalist understanding of scripture, and a disruptive understanding of divine activity in nature. Through an analysis of contemporary new atheist and Protestant fundamentalist texts, Fraser shows that these presuppositions continue to structure both groups, and support a range of shared biblical, scientific, and theological beliefs. Their common historical and intellectual structure ensures that new atheism and Protestant fundamentalism - while on the surface irreconcilably opposed - share a secret sympathy with one another, yet one which leaves them unstable, inconsistent, and unsustainable.