Atheism Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

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.