There are a whole host of adjectives used to describe fundamentalist religion: backwards, anti-modern, reactionary, unscientific, ante-Diluvian.* The idea behind all of those descriptions is that fundamentalist religions have fallen off the train of progress. It’s a whiggish notion that religion, like society and politics, is advancing to greater freedom, rationality, and liberality thanks to science; consequently, fundamentalist religions that don’t share those goals are backwards, and will fade away in time.
It’s also a notion that is wrong.
