Fundamentalist true believers untrue to humanity

[dArKeR]

By Will Hutton
THE OBSERVER , LONDON
Saturday, Apr 17, 2004,Page 9

Last weekend, more than two million Protestants and Catholics in the UK attended church to celebrate Easter, millions fewer than just 50 years ago. The great fathers of sociology -- Weber, Marx, Durkheim -- all believed that industrialization, wealth and democracy would lead to the development of a massively secular society. Religion and its myths, the linchpin of dirt-poor traditional societies, would evaporate before detraditionalizing modernity.

They were right about Europe, but wrong about almost everywhere else. Evangelical Protestantism in the United States and Islamic fundamentalism are the planet's two fastest-growing religions; 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 percent do, a proportion seemingly matched, although we don't have reliable evidence, within Islam. In those religiously inclined majorities, fundamentalists find it easier to recruit.

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