ABSTRACT
The metaphor of pathology for religion is itself like a virus in neo-Darwinian discourse about religion. In its fundamentalist incarnation, religion wants to substitute creationism for evolution; in its rationalist militancy, science dreams of the withering away of religion and its illusions. When religion and science compete in their explanations of the origins of the universe, the origins of life and the material workings of the universe, religion loses. But in its symbolic aspect, religion provides satisfactions of needs for many people that science can never provide. If the main burden of responsibility for the present state of affairs lies with the religious fundamentalists, the militant atheism of certain prominent exponents of the scientific worldview has only exacerbated matters. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson, a historian with Enlightenment and Marxist sympathies, turns out to be an eloquent witness for the religious imagination against its detractors in the camp of scientific progress.
