defend the indefensible: religious fundamentalists

but seriously yeah, define "fundamentalist". Are we talking about the specifically peculiar strain of Christianity that insists on a literal interpretation of the Bible (which is inherently impossible and inconsistent anyway?) If we're just talking about religiously devout types, I think there's many many many easily defensible examples.

I gather this thread is mostly intended to disparage to ego-driven, blinkered idiots who can't process other people's input, as others have said...

x-post

and dave225 on the really seriously cute money

Most of the fundies that I've known do pay taxes. And I grew up around a lot of them. But I suppose there is a fringe element that doesn't - the militia types, maybe.

i am flattered (dunno if that is the intention).

anyway, Alex in NYC HIMSELF is the Alex in NYC of sociopolitics -- you should see HIS posts on these kinds of topics!

I think what I'm trying to say is that the fundies, for all their flaws, also take seriously a lot of ethical principles which probably do more good to the social fabric than harm. I'm not saying people have to be fundie to be ethical, just that there is some degree of correlation there, at least in certain areas, I think.

you CAN say that about muslim and jewish fundamentalists, too.

xpost

i am flattered (dunno if that is the intention).

I'm guessing it's not, but I'm flattered that you're flattered.

If you're a religious fundamentalist, you're an idiot and an asshole and need to fuckin' evolve with all speed. Period.

(I hope I didn't come across as too accomodating, did I?)

this figure is a tad steep, no?

They're badass, they make lovely rugs, and they probably did more to bring on the collapse of the Soviet Union than anybody else.

The worst exigencies seem to be when nationalism and religion get confused but it's pretty bad stuff nonetheless.

xpost

I think that few things are as threatening to a non-fundamentalist as someone who doesn't beleive the same way they do! evidence: this thread (among others). not condoning fundies, just sayin'.

A fundamental difference between Christian and Islam fundamentalists. Muslims don't give a damn about other people's religion, they just worry about whether MUSLIMS are pure and devout (there are still quite a few jews in Iran that don't get hassled).. Christians, however, believe everyone is damned unless they find Christ.

not true. Xians and Jews are fellow "people of the book" and are supposed to be respected. Huge difference between Islam post-19th Century and before.

A Fundamentalist world would by definition not be an evolving one

noodle i agree but could you define what's a fundamentalist? another thing that confuses me in discussions about fundamentalism is that it's hard to describe what's a fundamentalist. yes we all know what we're talking about - but what ARE we talking about? (other than "believing fuckwads who ruin everything" - a different set for everybody on this thread)

certainly nobody would describe quakers as "fundamentalists" but they really are. no compromise!! they make decisions only when consensus is reached (and yet they manage to function in groups really effectively - there's more than one conflict-resolution book out there that studies the quaker consensus method) fanaticism!! if you want to read a heart-rending acct of personal sacrifice you can read norman mailer's "armies of the night" (pgs 286-287) where he describes a group of quakers who conducted a hunger strike, in solitary confinement, naked (they refused to wear prison clothes), nearly to the point of death, with no media attention, in silent protest against the vietnam war. yet i'm sure nobody here could convincingly argue against that.

so what's a fundamentalist?

Elmer Fudnament:

http://images.google.com.au/images?q=tbn:sAKBpK4tbIwJ:www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a16/a16-fudd.gif

I guess a broad brush definition of Fundamentalist would be somebody who claims to adhere to the true tenets of their religion as opposed to what they would claim were temporizing deviations on the part of other sects. You could say that this includes all religions but I'd argue that there's a difference between the universalizing aspects of, say, Catholicism or Unitarianism or Bah'ai (of which I admit I know little) and the ideological claims of Fundamentalists.

Like I said above, I believe that the Fundamentalists' core claim to believe the definitive version of their religion is deeply flawed. That doesn't mean that there can't be positive aspects to their beliefs (I'd take the Iranian revolutionaries over the Shah's regime, without ignoring their negative aspects). Quakers are interesting people. I'd say their roots in the early Reformation, when Protestantism was pretty much the opposite of Fundamentalism - a million ways to the truth springing up all over and tolerating one another, more or less - rules them out of accusations of genuine Fundieness.

Also, that sitting around waiting for the spirit to move you stuff strikes me as being really Zen.

I find it hard to defend religious fundies, mainly b/c of the whole church funded school thing, I don't agree w/the teaching of religious dogma as scientific fact, in fact I think it's terrible.

OTOH, there's a part of me that wishes I was religious, that wishes I could believe. The viewpoints & philosophies that I think would make for a better, more equitable world for everybody have never held less power than they do now. They have been beaten down. I kind of feel like I have nothing. I wish I was religious, but I just can't believe in all that. Terrible, eh?

By Ferlin's def. (which I find interesting) the Quakers are not Fundamentalists. It seems like most of us are equating fundamentalism with a distinct anti-intellectual/single-minded/"there are no ways but MY way" POV, which seems about right.

loose ends from upthread that don't really have anything to do with the discussion at large but I feel compelled to answer:

A well educated Muslim may wish to experiment but he is no more compelled by theology than a pagan or Hindu.

I disagree wholeheartedly with this statement. If, in a cursory sense, you were to study the many permutations of Islamic theology and rigorous thought over the centuries, you would understand that Islam has a very rich tradition of scholars compelled not only to study theology, but other disciplines as well. I cannot say anything about the Hindu religion because I don't know its past and traditions as well (I would guess it's pretty similar tho).

during the discussion of mathematics (thank you barry for your elucidation on many things), there was talk of muslims' contributions as being "engineering, not science." This seems sort of strange to me since it was asserted earlier in the thread that Christian churches were "built by science, not faith." So engineering in the Christian world is science but in the Islamic world it's merely engineering? Seems kinda strange, esp. if you have ever seen Islamic architecture. Go to the Alhambra in Grenada, Spain, and witness for yourself this mere "engineering" (which was clearly compelled by theology since there's plenty of actual text as part of the architecture!).

And it's certainly not true that science >>> engineering -- anyone who considers the Alhambra or the Hagia Sophia or the Roman acquaducts to be "mere" engineering needs to have their head examined. There's nothing intrinsically better about doing science vs doing engineering, one doesn't require more thought and expertise than the other. But they are different things. Science is science, and engineering is engineering.

Exactly, somebody was talking earlier about Tycho Brahe being an astronomer but of course astronomy and astrology were totally part of the same practice at this time.

I don't think I'm as wildly in disagreement with Shakey and hstencil as it looked last night and I've been thinking about why. It's the "Religions of the Book" that I'm objecting to and I think it's something to do with the Books. This is why I'm arguing that religious experience is necessarily locked outside of language and I distrust Monotheism because it feels like a re-iteration of logocentrism, a kind of logical cop-out blind to its own cop-outiness. The Eastern traditions all pretty firmly reject talking about themselves - "That which can be named is not The Tao" and so on - even when they're talking about how they can't be captured by language. Zen Koans are intended to be deconstructive, I think. On these terms to want religion locked outside of Greek/Western logic isn't to privilege one over the other but to try to avoid contamination, maybe?

Course you might still argue that people have successfully made the effort to share religious experience, and we'd prob'ly have to disagree at that point. If I've clarified to myself (slightly) something of what I'm thinking, it still leaves a problem of two universes which in theory can have no contact or influence on one another.

A further shot at dodgy aphorism-making:

Fundamentalism = the urge to simplify
Mysticism = the urge to complicate

?

"‘I should hardly have thought, sir,’ he said, ‘that you had any quarrel with mystical explanations.’

"‘On the contrary,’ replied Father Brown, blinking amiably at him. ‘That’s just why I can quarrel with ’em. Any sham lawyer could bamboozle me, but he couldn’t bamboozle you; because you’re a lawyer yourself. Any fool could dress up as a Red Indian and I’d swallow him whole as the only original Hiawatha; but Mr Crake would see through him at once. A swindler could pretend to me that he knew all about aeroplanes, but not to Captain Wain. And it’s just the same with the other, don’t you see? It’s just because I have picked up a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don’t hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you’ve seen it it’s still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it’s a platitude...’"
—The Arrow of Heaven
(fr.The Incredulity of Father Brown, G.K.Chesterton)

and

"‘The dog could almost have told you the story, if he could talk,’ said the priest. ‘All I complain of is that because he couldn’t talk you made up his story for him, and made him talk with the tongues of men and angels. It’s part of something I’ve noticed more and more in the modern world, appearing in all sorts of newspaper rumours and conversational catchwords; something that’s arbitrary without being authoritative. People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that, or the other. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.’ He stood up abruptly, his face heavy with a sort of frown, and went on talking almost as if he were alone. ‘It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot, and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling Bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words:

"‘He was made Man’."
—The Oracle of the Dog (fr.same collection)

chesterton considered himself an orthodox catholic tho i think this only had force in contrarian terms: set against establishment anglicanism, plus also the various freethinkings, atheisms and cultisms of his day: he wz a carlylian dialectician as much as anything, making his points clearer by turning cliches on their heads (ts: forensic logic vs moral logic)

i like that he sets the bar high, in terms of what science can and can't do (another of my favourtie stories is "the mistake of the machine"), and i like the way he insists that his faith (ie father brown's) makes no sense, and wd be hollow, if it doesn't accord with science, rationalism and above all common sense—indeed, that it delivers them better, bcz it also delivers humility

the problem dodge w.the "ineffable" is that it can easily be to turned into a bully's trick: "if you don't feel/see/experience this, it is bcz you are less sensitive/moral/enlightened" morphing into "i'm not telling you to do this bcz of what *i* want: i'm telling bcz the INEFFABLE is telling me to tell you"

why i posted those:
chesterton = interesting example of someone who, on some levels, wz a bit of a bigot (religious and cultural), being i think able to turn the clash of his beliefs with various conventional wisdoms and/or faddish er fads into genuine practical moral insight

other believers (inc.atheists) (=me, sorta) please copy

FB solves this particular story somewhat after the fact (i wson;t spoil it for you), but his explanation is based a little bit in forensic evidence, and a lot in common sense about how people work and why various people have acted the way they have

so i think what he means there by "he was made man" is that the reason to believe in god is that god believes in man: that he cares and understands every individual as an individual, and that if we want to be true to this faith, we should try and do that too

-- f--gg (gffcnn...), March 5th, 2005.

i dunno, he seems kinda like a douche to me!

http://www.altpress.com/sections/photo_contest03/06-10-2003/michele_lago/thursday.jpg

i don't particularly agree w.chesterton that you need to be a catholic, or any kind of christian, to understand each person in themselves (though i do think this is a good thing to try and do): i think he wz right that there were/are a lot of faiths (esp."novel" faiths?)* which ppl grab at in order to fast-track their way thru this process, or sidestep it altogether

*(he's talking about ancient religions but he does sort of mean the modern fascination with them more than how they may have worked back then)

Chesterton also seems to be saying there that rationality and scepticism are founded on Christianity, that it moved humanity away from the Pagan religions which were dehumanising, hence the animal totemism.

Now I'm not sure I totally agree with him - the early history of the Church is full of fighting with Greek philosophy as much as with Paganism - but it's an interesting argument. Like he's saying Scepticism belongs to God too.

(and i think he's wrong that it doesn't belong to other gods, and i also think he's wrong that atheism ALWAYS leads to superstition, but he's right that some pseudo-atheisms have a hysterical edge which lead straight back into some of the stuff which xtianity was trying to clamber out of)

in the first story in this book FB is caught in a resurrection scam, where a bogus miracle involving him is concocted by his enemies, who include an atheist freemason mystic and a fake-pious factory boss whose workers FB has helped in a strike

they assume he will go along with it bcz it will "help the church" but he does exactly the opposite, bcz to him the catholic church is AGAINST ALL LIES

this seems historically a difficult position to support! but like i say i think GKC's position is built out of embattled paradox in a way

is it a good idea to? i don't think it's a NECESSARY idea (eg to safeguard morality, like kant argued): i think on the whole the good things that can come of it (eg as just explored) can be got to other ways, and maybe possibly arrived at without extra harmful epiphenomenal baggage

(also, on the subject of classifying things as opposites: Levi-Strauss to thread)

http://ox.eicat.ca/~scarruthers/ilx/pope-dan.jpg