Religious fundamentalism through the ages

This is purely a hunch, since I don't have any supporting evidence, but I get the feeling that 'fundamentalism' as it features in the news today is a modern phenomenon. Of course there have always been those who die for their religious beliefs, and who put unquestioning trust in sacred texts. But I think that when multiculturalism and an accompanying implicit cultural relativism kick in, there is a natural slide either to apathy and a cessation of religious observance (e.g. "well, there are so many religions, who's right? Doesn't matter"), or to fundamentalism and a denial of the validity of religious relativism (e.g. "if we are going to do this at all, then we have to do it completely right or there's no point").

Perhaps you misunderstand. I'm not disputing the fact that there have always been people who believe their religions very strongly, and there has always been an awareness that there are 'infidels' who hold false beliefs.My suggestion was that fundamentalism as we understand it might be an essentially modern concept. If this is the case, it's anachronistic to use the term fundamentalism to describe ancient religions.My gut feeling, which as I admitted, has no real supporting evidence, is that fundamentalism (as we understand the term)is the product of the enlightenment; that one can only truly be a fundamentalist once mainstream religion has been somewhat muzzled by the increasing influence of a rationalist, naturalistic scientific method.Before the enlightenment, there was much less of a problem reconciling ideas of the natural world and religious texts. When science starts to present a seriously divergent model of the universe, either you must believe sacred texts to be increasingly symbolic and abstracted from reality, or to start to take them literally and reject science utterly (or at least the bits you find problematic).As you probably are aware, a belief that the bible is the literal truth is only a very recent phenomenon, and I would argue that this is in part a result of the enlightenment.Does that make sense to you?This message has been edited by Tusko, 04-26-2005 04:16 AM

And incidentally, I don't know if the belivers in Odin have necessarily been proved wrong. Just because Ragnarok hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that we're safe.