Is it that 'new atheists' like Sam Harris simply don't understand religion (beyond assembling everything bad they know to attack it with), or is the failure to distinguish positive and negative deliberate?
Fundamentalism is a 20th-century invention, in many ways a response to the rapid social change brought about by modernity and global capitalism, says Giles Fraser. It is a perversion of religion, and in no way the real thing, let alone its 'heartbeat'.