Contra Fundamentalism. Fundy isn't a religion

[GoddessWhispers]

Fundies vs Rationalists

Two world views result in smashed towers and torn-up freedoms.

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

10/1/01

Fundamentalism isn’t a religion. It’s a personality disorder. It gets associated with religion a lot, because religion, with its claim to be able to provide final answers to life’s greatest mysteries, appeals to a mind-set that is fearful of uncertainty, antagonistic toward a world where trains don’t run on time and other people might do things that the fundamentalist is afraid to try personally.

Most religions attract fundamentalists, and the results are often ludicrous. The Prophet never told anyone that massacring over 5,000 innocent civilians was a good thing. Jesus never demanded that his teachings–let alone Exodus–be forced upon non-believers. Even religions that don’t have the type of authoritarian regimentation that is so important to the fundamentalist mind are afflicted by the breed. There are fundamentalist Buddhists, fundamentalist Quakers (Nixon was one such), and there are even fundamentalist dog breeders.

But fundamentalists exist everywhere there are commonly-held beliefs or enthusiasms, and they tend to accept the “truths” of their objects of veneration as perfect and inviolable. A fundamentalist Constitutionalist (known as a “strict constructionalist”) will often steadfastly ignore all amendments after the initial bill of rights as being latter-day dilutions of the original, perfect whole. A fundamentalist baseball fan will insist that no change could possibly improve baseball.

Molly Ivins noted that the psychological testing procedures used to judge whether

individuals were competent to serve as policemen included fundamentalism as a disqualifying personality trait. That makes sense: if you get pulled over for a speeding violation, you don’t want to find yourself facing a livid cop who is outraged that you have violated his sense of order and perfection in his cosmos. You want, at the very worst, a cop who is mildly disgusted at you for being stupid in public and who is going to write you up no matter what excuse you give him.

Baseball is a good example. Baseball has seen quite a few changes since 1957, when the Giants and Dodgers moved west. That wasn’t the first change in baseball since 1876, but it marked the point where change markedly accelerated. With nearly every change that brought baseball of 1957, with its eight teams in each division, early October World Series, no DH, wool or cotton uniforms, and higher pitching mound closer to the baseball of today, there is legitimate room for debate about whether the changes improved or hurt the game. Any of the changes. All of the changes.

But fundamentalists will point to a time when baseball was pure and holy (yes, some people will use the word “holy”) and describe every alteration made since then as the work of the devil, a communist plot to turn American youth into soccer fans, proof of a general decline in morals and public good taste. (Soccer fundies can be even worse; at least rooting for the “wrong baseball team” in some areas won’t get you killed).

Fundies have an often frightening ability to organize and march in lockstep to achieve their desires. Since they are people who need regimentation of and authority over their lives, and since there’s no shortage of selfless volunteers willing to provide same for just a little bit of unlimited wealth and power, they tend to be a force in their field of interest that far outweighs their numbers.

To return to the baseball analogy, the fundamentalists, who basically worship the game, have managed to stave off some of the dafter suggestions made over the years, like flourescent orange baseballs, outfield fences pulled to within 250 feet of home plate, and have just generally prevented baseball from being taken over by “change for the sake of change”. They forced all change to be subject to considerably scrutiny and criticism, and while there’s lots of room for argument over the efficacy of any given change, the game hasn’t been destroyed. Yet.

So fundamentalists, in their place, have a valuable function. They are the brakes on social change, and while that can often be frustrating, and sometimes prolongs injustice, it also prevents some truly hideous mistakes. Over the years, for example, some 2,500 proposals to change the Constitution of the United States have made it to the House floor, and it’s safe to say that about 2,400 of them were truly idiotic ideas, ranging from assigning votes based on personal wealth to banning flag burning to banning the sale of alcohol. Eighteen of them subsequently went successfully through the rest of the process, only one of which was truly idiotic. People will favor or oppose all amendments for various reasons, good and bad. Fundamentalists will oppose all amendments, and are good at setting up organized resistance to same.

But fundamentalists should never, ever be put in a leadership role, and there’s a good set of reasons for it.

First, they can’t tolerate diversity of thought. They are the keepers of the flame, the arbiters of what is true and good, and dissent, ipso facto, is evil, and demeaning to their purpose. Almost all organizations and certainly all countries have some diversity, and if the differences are visible or distinct in some other way, savage repression and even genocide will result. In Baseball, it results in great players being denied recognition for sins that aren’t even crimes in the greater society: Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson are both banned from the Hall of Fame, and in Jackson’s case, he wasn’t even guilty of what he was accused of!

I once had a Constitutional fundamentalist tell me that the country had been going to hell ever since the Marbury vs. Madison decision. I asked a couple of followup questions to make sure he understood what this decision was, and when this decision occurred. I couldn’t believe it. He was serious: Marbury vs. Madison, in which the Supreme Court essentially granted to itself the power of judicial review upon the constitutionality of specific laws. It’s hard to imagine how the Supreme Court could function without such a power, but since it wasn’t mentioned in the Constitution, this guy felt it was an abrogation of power, and that the country hadn’t amounted to its potential because of that decision.

The decision occurred in 1803. The US hasn’t been worth a damn since. Nosiree, Bob.

One reason fundamentalists can’t lead is because of their great inner flaw. If you talk to two baseball fundamentalists (often self-described as “purists”) about the ideal state of baseball, you are likely to get two different views of ideal baseball. One might rhapsodize about Napoleon LaJoie, all day games, double headers, no PA system, five cent popcorn. Another might talk about the stalwart days when men were men and sheep were scared, the good old days of Fernando Valenzeula and Dwight Gooden, ‘way back before there were teams in Florida and Arizona.

They might react to the guy who passed up tickets to Game seven of the World Series to catch the Ottawa-Atlanta NHL preseason match on TV with resigned sighs. What can you do about atheists?

But when it comes to one another, they are likely to experience murderous rage. The heretic is always hated more than the infidel, because the infidel is blind to truth, whereas the heretic perverts it. Infidels should be taught, and if they can’t learn, then they should die. Heretics already know what the truth is, but consciously choose evil, and must die!

Fortunately, societal pressures and the rule of law keep them in check, which is why we see so few massacres at baseball games. (Soccer is another story, of course).

Fundamentalist regimes most often fall from internal divisions. It is their greatest weakness. It’s cause for hope should Ashcroft, Falwell and Moon gain control of our government through the GOP. The first thing that would happen is that Ashcroft and Falwell, no longer needing Moon, would turn on him. (Moon isn’t an easy subject for fundamentalist Christians. He believes that he, not Jesus, is the Saviour and Redeemer of all Mankind. I checked with our local parish priest, and he seemed reasonably sure that the Vatican still had Jesus as the number one guy on that particular list, and that if Moon was rated at all, it was pretty far down on the list.) After they got rid of Moon, or he got rid of them, there would be divisions galore among all the other supporters.

After that, you would have major sectarian strife, with groups from one church flying large planes into tall buildings owned by groups from another church, and they would have death camps for Christians Utilizing Lesser Theologies, and in all this, American freedom would have about as much chance as a soap bubble in a thermonuclear explosion.

Letting fundies run the country just wouldn’t be a real good idea at all. Genocide, whether the victims are Jews or Mets fans, just doesn’t coincide with the idea of a free and pluralistic society.

The biggest flaw in fundamentalism is that it truly cannot understand the forces of

rationality. Fundamentalists find it impossible to believe that members of their own church, political party, TV fan club or baseball fantasy league could even consider other points of view to be valid.

So when Ashcroft said that bin Laden hated and feared freedom, he was quite correct. The only problem is that Ashcroft, too, is a fundamentalist. And when crisis arrived, he was ready, with 51 new laws designed to make sure that there was a lot less of that freedom floating around, encouraging people to sustain false beliefs.

Fundamentalists don’t just fly planes into buildings and blow up restaurants and imprison dissenters. They also pass laws to “counter terrorism” and even “keep America free”.

Don’t let your fear of middle Easter terrorists blind you to the very real threat of domestic terrorists who use pens instead of 757s to subvert your freedoms.

Contra Fundamentalism

Here’s a logical disproof of Christian fundamentalism that may interest you: Christian fundamentalism is based on the belief in the inerrancy of Scripture. The doctrine of inerrancy holds that (1) The original texts of Scripture (the autographs) are inerrant, and (2) Only the original texts of Scripture are inerrant — i.e. no translation of an original document is fully inerrant. These two assertions, combined with a well-known fact about Scripture, entail a logical contradiction. The well-known fact is (3) Some of the original texts of Scriptures are translations of original texts of Scripture. It is well-known, and not doubted by scholars, that the quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures in the New Testament are from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. For example, when Matthew quotes Isaiah, he doesn't quote from the Hebrew text, but from a Greek translation of the Hebrew text.

Propositions (1), (2) and (3) form an inconsistent triad. If (1) and (2) are true then (3) is false. If (2) and (3) are true then (1) is false. And if (1) and (3) are true then (2) is false. Since we know (3) to be true, the fault lies in either (1) or (2) — the doctrine of inerrancy itself. Therefore, the doctrine of inerrancy is false. As goes inerrancy, so goes Christian fundamentalism. Hence, Christian fundamentalism is false.

This Disproof is by Donald Wayne Viney who comments: When I present this argument to fundamentalists I just get blank stares with no attempt at refutation. It is certainly possible that the argument has a fatal flaw somewhere, but no one has been able to point it out to me. It seems to me to be about as air tight as a philosophical-religious argument is likely to get.

[RisenPrism]

When are people going to learn that trying to understand faith with pschology is like trying to fix a car with a hot glue gun?

Edited January 3, 2007 by falseprophet15

[aquatus1]

When are people going to learn that trying to understand faith with pschology is like trying to fix a car with a lamp?

I always fix my car with a lamp. It helps me see things that I would otherwise not notice.

[GoddessWhispers]

I always fix my car with a lamp. It helps me see things that I would otherwise not notice.

Oh hell, ain't that the truth. Before the lamp thing, fixing my car, I stuck a spark plug in the cat! I suppose I don't have to mention that's the last time she thought a traipse across the radiator would be no big deal, do I!? Nah, didn't think so.

Edited January 3, 2007 by GoddessWhispers

[RisenPrism]

But a lamp often times illuminates only a small part of the whole...

[GoddessWhispers]

But that is the first step, out of the darkness.

[girty1600]

Oh hell, ain't that the truth. Before the lamp thing, fixing my car, I stuck a spark plug in the cat! I suppose I don't have to mention that's the last time she thought a traipse across the radiator would be no big deal, do I!? Nah, didn't think so.

I usually just use the cat as a spark plug and keep the lamp close by.

[GoddessWhispers]

Soooo, I'm not the only one that had a Yugo!? Good to know. Varoom , Varooooooom, Pffffft, Pffffffft!

[aquatus1]

But a lamp often times illuminates only a small part of the whole...

Sometimes you need to focus on one thing at a time.

[Mesobaite]

Great OP GoddessWhispers. What I find so intruging is the fact that for me, being brought up christian fundamentalist, I am now learning to see the world as a rationalist. I think at this point in time in my journey here I am still struggling to keep my fundamentalist 'frame of mind' while trying to see the things I couldn't see before through rartionalism. I'd like to see this thread develope on the same lines of enlightment that its been for me so far.

[truth's last stand]

Great use of a sports analogy. But I'm a Cubs fan, so what does that make me?

[GoddessWhispers]

I'm glad you find this thread speaks to you Mesobaite. And I look forward to your thoughts.

Great use of a sports analogy. But I'm a Cubs fan, so what does that make me?

Extroridinarly agnostic!? Or is that optimistic?!

[RisenPrism]

We could sit here all day and make elaborate metaphors as to how psychology compares to religion, or we could just realize that psychology has no jurisdiction in the realm of the soul, and never will be able to analyze faith.

[GoddessWhispers]

However, do you believe holding faith in something identifiable as "god" and "soul", is relevant to psychology!?

[RisenPrism]

Whoever wrote that page is a narrow minded ignorant fool.

[GoddessWhispers]

To what page would you be referring?!

Certainly not the link I provided, as "that page" is actually a link menu featuring over 17 articles on the topic of religion and psychology, for consideration. It is impossible to levy such a pejorative when the material has not been available for consideration for longer than 5 minutes.

[RisenPrism]

It's a general statement. Anybody who tries to link psychology and religion in any way shape or form, IMHO, is a fool.

[GoddessWhispers]

Well, aside from the fondness for prejoratives, you're really not saying anything there. Perhaps if you elaborated it wouldn't read as something that discounts faith having any relativity to the mind.

[RisenPrism]

And that would be my point. I don't believe that faith has anything to do with the mind.

[aquatus1]

It's a general statement. Anybody who tries to link psychology and religion in any way shape or form, IMHO, is a fool.

How can this post be considered anything other than close-minded?

[RisenPrism]

I said "in my opinion", I did not state it as fact, and I don't see it as closed minded.

[+Link of Hyrule]

Great article. Very well written, and the point is well made. One little thing I'd like to add though, and that's that fundamentalists are a minority in any group. When soccer fans riot at a game, it is generally understood that they are not representative of the entirety of the soccer community. When certain baseball fans claim that the rule changes destroyed the game forever, all one needs do is see the popularity of the sport today and see that this belief is also not representative of the wider community.

Fundamentalism is unfortunately a fact of life in many aspects of society, and neither sport nor religion are exempt from such people.

Regards, PA

Edited January 4, 2007 by Paranoid Android

[truth's last stand]

I'm glad you find this thread speaks to you Mesobaite. And I look forward to your thoughts.

Extroridinarly agnostic!? Or is that optimistic?!

I would suggest a chapter in the book Baseball and Philosophy in which being a Cubs fan is compared to religious faith. Very interesting reading. I currently am looking at The Undead and Philosophy because I'm a zombie freak like that.

[GoddessWhispers]

Great article. Very well written, and the point is well made. One little thing I'd like to add though, and that's that fundamentalists are a minority in any group. When soccer fans riot at a game, it is generally understood that they are not representative of the entirety of the soccer community. When certain baseball fans claim that the rule changes destroyed the game forever, all one needs do is see the popularity of the sport today and see that this belief is also not representative of the wider community.

Fundamentalism is unfortunately a fact of life in many aspects of society, and neither sport nor religion are exempt from such people.

Regards, PA

I think you would agree there is a vast difference , as well as a corroborating influence in that respect, between fundamentalist religionists and those that are sports fans. The fundamentals of baseball never exacted the crusades or the inquisition, nor did it exterminate millions of "fans" for not being up to par according to the rules of the game.