Discussions and comments about religion in the news.
Fundamentalist Mistakes
When, three days ago, I posted my comments about the discovery of a two-page manuscript fragment of the Qur’an that, according to new reports, can be dated (technically, the parchment on which the text is written can be dated) to the lifetime of the prophet Mohammed or to a decade or so later, I had no idea that the post would be such a big deal. The Facebook version of the post has had nearly245,000 hits. and counting. Who would-a thought? There are, as you might imagine, many many comments being made. And it strikes me that many, many of these comments are simply wrong. I won’t be taking them on one at a time. I want simply to say something about a strain of comment that I’m getting (including in private email) from fundamentalists. There are various ways that one can define fundamentalism. (I often say, in jest, that the easiest definition is that a fundamentalist is: “no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental.”) I don’t need to go into a lot [...]