[lbo-talk] M. Parenti joins the New Atheists?

[Chris Doss]

Well, it seems to me that the Reformation and Enlightenment are not so much in a parent-child relationship as they are brother and sister (cf. Luther and Erasmus, Correspondence Between). Both were reactions to what they saw as an ossified and perverted tradition and turned away from the institutions of that tradition (and both went way too far in the process).
 
I mean, look at Hobbes. He was both what we would think of as a Fundamentalist and what we would think of as a precursor to the modern scientific worldview (I'm tempted to get into a digression on how materialism and theism do not contradict each other, but am not going to).

----- Original Message ----
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>

Our hermeneutic took a strange turn with the rise of capitalism. The interaction was surely complex. An aspect of the process is set out in a brilliant recent book by James Simpson, Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and Its Reformation Opponents (Harvard UP 2007) - “a landmark in the study of fundamentalism. In James Simpson's radical reassessment, the Protestant Reformation appears not as a parent of the Enlightenment, but rather as a progenitor of the extreme and intolerant literalism that has seized every major world religion today” (Amitav Ghosh).