Introduction

The world's great thinkers have agreed on one thing: religion and modernity are incompatible. Voltaire gave religion no more than 50 years to live, Karl marx predicted that the imminent triumph of the proletariat would put an end to the disgusting trade in the opium of the masses. Sigmund freud dismissed religion as a neurosis designed to divert people's attention from more earthly interests. America was anevolutionary freak, the argument went, the sociological equivalent of the duck build platypus. Religion flourished in the backward bible belt rather than progressive new york and san francisco.