Attributes of fundamentalism

[varwoche]

I presuppose that fundamentalism is a destructive force.

IMO these are the raw ingredients of fundamentalism -- common across Christianity, Islam, and to a somewhat less extent Judaism -- that make fundamentalism a destructive force, both locally and globally. Hence positive attributes, such as charitable works, are omitted.

- supernatural belief system
- one true god, one true faith
- afterlife; better than life
(except Judaism?)
- moralistic
- damning of disbelievers
- violent extremists acting in the name of god

Islamists become particularly dangerous with the addition of:
- suicidal
- desparate (poverty)

Any additions?

 

[Earthborn]

Hence positive attributes, such as charitable works, are omitted.

In that case, you'll have to show that the first 4 things on your list are negative attributes.

 

[Kerberos]

Islamists become particularly dangerous with the addition of:
- suicidal
- desparate (poverty)

I'm given to understand that it isn't actually poverty that makes terrorists but rather decline and humiliation. So it isn't dirt poor Africans who are terrorists, but rather Arabs who witness the decline of their countries, their inability to defeat Israel and so forth.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

In that case, you'll have to show that the first 4 things on your list are negative attributes.

- supernatural belief system

Opposes the advance of science, lowering life standars as in teh medium age.

- one true god, one true faith

Intolerance, leads to genocide.

- afterlife; better than life
(except Judaism?)

No respect for human life. (ie Spanish Inquisition, Salem witches burning, and so on) Also, leads human efforts that can be used to make this world better to useless actions destinated to gain paradise.

- moralistic
I assume that he wanted to say "Legalistic".

 

[Earthborn]

- supernatural belief system

Opposes the advance of science,

I guess Newton, Kepler and Galileo didn't exist then? They all had a supernatural belief system and they managed to advance science quite a lot. So a supernatural belief system cannot by itself oppose the advance of science.

lowering life standars as in teh medium age.

I assume you mean the Middle Ages? I think you'll have to show that the lowering in life standards was because of a supernatural belief system.

- one true god, one true faith

Intolerance, leads to genocide.

People who believe that there is one true God and one true faith are not necessarily intolerant or advocating genocide. So such a belief cannot be a negative aspect by itself because of that.

- afterlife; better than life
(except Judaism?)

No respect for human life. (ie Spanish Inquisition, Salem witches burning, and so on)

You assume that people who believe in an afterlife have no respect for human life? I don't believe that. I also don't believe that the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch trials are proof of a disrespect for human life. On the contrary: they were misguided or ignorant attempts to preserve it.

Also, leads human efforts that can be used to make this world better to useless actions destinated to gain paradise.

But some people believe that making this world better will gain them paradise. So belief in an after life that is better than this life is not necessarily a negative aspect.

- moralistic
I assume that he wanted to say "Legalistic".

Whatever. Using a negatively sounding word for it, does not make it necessarily a bad thing.

All you did is give some (hardly common) negative aspects of these aspects of fundamentalism. But you have not shown that these aspects of fundamentalism are negative aspects by themselves.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I guess Newton, Kepler and Galileo didn't exist then? They all had a supernatural belief system and they managed to advance science quite a lot. So a supernatural belief system cannot by itself oppose the advance of science.

Yes it can by itself. The way the did their advances was rejecting supernaturalism for the systems they studied. BTW, funny you mention Galileo Galilei.

I assume you mean the Middle Ages? I think you'll have to show that the lowering in life standards was because of a supernatural belief system.

Middle ages Yup

People who believe that there is one true God and one true faith are not necessarily intolerant or advocating genocide. So such a belief cannot be a negative aspect by itself because of that.

Yes it is negative by itself because that belief leads to intolerance and genocide (would it be the point to allow other gods and other faiths if they are all false).The fact that SOME believers in a OTG and OTF don't advocate genocide or intolerance says something abot that people, not about the belief. Historically, when believers in OTG and OTF have political control, genocide and intolerance are the norm.

You assume that people who believe in an afterlife have no respect for human life? I don't believe that. I also don't believe that the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch trials are proof of a disrespect for human life. On the contrary: they were misguided or ignorant attempts to preserve it.But some people believe that making this world better will gain them paradise. So belief in an after life that is better than this life is not necessarily a negative aspect.

You made my point about inquisition and Salem!.
If some people believe that making this world better would gain paradise for them, and that improvement in this world is obtained with objetive means, then the means are sound, but the belief itself it's neutral.

Whatever. Using a negatively sounding word for it, does not make it necessarily a bad thing.

Moralistic is very different to legalistic. Want to argue about that?

All you did is give some (hardly common) negative aspects of these aspects of fundamentalism. But you have not shown that these aspects of fundamentalism are negative aspects by themselves.

Let's see. With little effort I can show you some positive aspects of antsemitism, jihad,communism, the Castro regime and white supremacy ideology. We can have some positive aspects for ANYTHING. Does that make that ideologies more sound to you?

 

[varwoche]

In that case, you'll have to show that the first 4 things on your list are negative attributes.

I didn't say they were negative attributes per se. I am suggesting that the finished package is destructive, and that these are the causal raw ingredients.

One true god: makes it possible to view all others as evil

Afterlife, better than life: cheapens life

 

[varwoche]

Re: Re: Attributes of fundamentalism

I'm given to understand that it isn't actually poverty that makes terrorists but rather decline and humiliation. So it isn't dirt poor Africans who are terrorists, but rather Arabs who witness the decline of their countries, their inability to defeat Israel and so forth.

Interesting point. I wonder what other cultures/nations could be described as humiliated / in decline...?

 

[scribble]

I see that violence makes your list.

So I have to ask, what do you call a good ol group of Christian Fundamentalists? I mean, the non-violent churchgoing sorts who just happen to proclaim the stuff int he Bible is true? My Baptist church could only have been described as fundamentalists.

I think perhaps the word you are looking for is not fundamentalists. I believe it is Zealots (edit: zealotry? Or maybe somehting else entirerly). Many fundies are non-violent sorts who honestly believe a lot like any other Christian would, only more "goddidit." They aren't about to kill anyone.

Edit to add: Many Christians live in poverty... many islams live in riches like you will *never* see in your lifetime. Why do you single out Islamics as having "poverty" as one of their negative attributes?

 

[espritch]

- supernatural belief system
- one true god, one true faith
- afterlife; better than life
(except Judaism?)
- moralistic
- damning of disbelievers
- violent extremists acting in the name of god

This list would seem to imply that fundamentalism is a purely religious phenomenon. I regard communism as practiced by Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot, and fascism as practiced by Hitler to be forms of fundamentalism even though they are not religious in the traditional sense. The essence of fundamentalism is the unshakable belief that your world view is the correct one, the willingness to resort to violence to force your world view on others, and the need to suppress and silence any view that challenges your own.

P.S. Hinduism does not posit a single God, but there is such a thing as fundamentalist Hinduism, so even if we limit it to religious fundamentalism, the belief in a single God is not essential to fundamentalism.

P.P.S. I just read Scribble's post, and he has a point. Maybe fundamentalism is not actually quite the correct term for this. Zealotry might be a better one.

 

[varwoche]

So I have to ask, what do you call a good ol group of Christian Fundamentalists? I mean, the non-violent churchgoing sorts who just happen to proclaim the stuff int he Bible is true?

I contend that "moderate fundamentalists" are destructive to society on a smaller, local scale, i.e. intolerant of "sinners" such as homosexuals, and intolerant of science (evolution).

I think perhaps the word you are looking for is not fundamentalists. I believe it is Zealots (edit: zealotry? Or maybe somehting else entirerly). Many fundies are non-violent sorts who honestly believe a lot like any other Christian would, only more "goddidit." They aren't about to kill anyone.

True, it's the extreme fringe - the zealots - that resort to violence. I'm intentionally connecting the dots however (not neccessrily with success!) between the zealot and the garden variety non-violent fundamentalist.

Many Christians live in poverty... many islams live in riches like you will *never* see in your lifetime. Why do you single out Islamics as having "poverty" as one of their negative attributes?

These aren't negative attributes per se. These are what I view as the causal ingredients leading to a negative result.

True, there are many poor Christians, South America for instance. Maybe it's the decline/humiliation factor, suggested by Kerberos.

 

[scribble]

True, it's the extreme fringe - the zealots - that resort to violence. I'm intentionally connecting the dots however (not neccessrily with success!) between the zealot and the garden variety non-violent fundamentalist.

Ah - there may well be some dots to connect. Violence wouldn't appear to be one of them. Nor poverty (my parents were quite wealthy when I was growing up as a fundie).

Were their beliefs dangerous? My mother and father's family both have a long history of killing themselves with drugs (*). If I were feeling particularly angstful, I might say it's their religious beliefs that allowed them to throw away this life. After all, it's only a small part of the Evermore.

(*) by and large these have been non-violent, but very pitiful deaths. Overdoses, emphasema from smoking, that sort of thing.

 

[epepke]

I presuppose that fundamentalism is a destructive force.

IMO these are the raw ingredients of fundamentalism -- common across Christianity, Islam, and to a somewhat less extent Judaism -- that make fundamentalism a destructive force, both locally and globally. Hence positive attributes, such as charitable works, are omitted.

I would say that fundamentalism consists of unwavering adherence to a large body of preconceived ideas, combined with intolerance of those that do not adhere to said ideas.

The set of ideas has to be large. It cannot be, say, a half dozen or a dozen basic principles. Although there may be such a set at the core, a good functional test is whether reasonable people, using reasonable logic, can disagree about the implications of the core principles even if they agree about the core principles.

The set need not come from religion, although in practice, most do.

 

[fishbob]

Fundamentalist characteristics

Any additions?

A subtle characteristic, very difficult to detect, is the small scar above the hairline where the great big needle was inserted to suck out about half a liter of brains.

 

[varwoche]

I guess Newton, Kepler and Galileo didn't exist then? They all had a supernatural belief system and they managed to advance science quite a lot. So a supernatural belief system cannot by itself oppose the advance of science.

I intended this per the scientific knowledge of the time, needless(?) to say.

 

[elliotfc]

I presuppose that fundamentalism is a destructive force.

IMO these are the raw ingredients of fundamentalism -- common across Christianity, Islam, and to a somewhat less extent Judaism -- that make fundamentalism a destructive force, both locally and globally. Hence positive attributes, such as charitable works, are omitted.

- supernatural belief system
- one true god, one true faith
- afterlife; better than life
(except Judaism?)
- moralistic
- damning of disbelievers
- violent extremists acting in the name of god

Islamists become particularly dangerous with the addition of:
- suicidal
- desparate (poverty)

Any additions?

Gosh.

Obviously you aren't daft enough to suggest that all people who can be classified into the described box are necessarily externally destructive. And of course there are many externally destructive people who don't fit with any of the above requirements.

A possible was of analyzing this:

Visit all of the prisons in the United States, find the most violent/destructive inmates, and see if they fit with the above requisites. How many do they correspond with? When you have the results, what could be done with them?

Perhaps if we could find total numbers for the population at large (for all categories, 100% correpsondence to above list to 0% correspondence) then find out percentages, that would mean something.

I agree that people with the above characteristics can CHOOSE to commit acts of violence, but in that case you have free will. I think that free will makes people destructive, regardless of the belief system installed.

In other words, I can find one million people who share NONE of the above characteristics, but carefully choose certain attributes to target any belief system I choose. If I wanted to go after people who watch X amount of TV a week and eat a certain kind of food, or people who have sociopathic and atheistic beliefs, etc.

I'll give you that the belief in divine license to do any and everything is something that should worry society. The "by all means necessary" ideology is out of order, but that also goes for French revolution era libertines. If we could examine all of history and literature and discourse and find BAMN types, and see what there fundamental attributes are, I suspect that maybe half of them would be fundamentalist like you describe above. That's just a guess?

It either takes strong convictions to make violence happen, or a complete lack of conviction (sociopathy?). That's just a theory.

I insist that most fundamentalist types are harmless. The violent extremists are a depressing minority. Three abortion doctors have been killed in the US since 1973 and the media builds it up to some sort of mass epidemic of doctor killing. If you want to believe something, you'll inflate incidents to give you intellectual comfort and security I guess, that goes for me as well as all of you.

-Elliot

 

[varwoche]

Re: Re: Attributes of fundamentalism

Obviously you aren't daft enough to suggest that all people who can be classified into the described box are necessarily externally destructive. And of course there are many externally destructive people who don't fit with any of the above requirements.

... Visit all of the prisons in the United States, find the most violent/destructive inmates, and see if they fit with the above requisites. How many do they correspond with? When you have the results, what could be done with them?

Thank you for your thought provoking reply. I agree that "ordinary" crime kills and injures FAR more people than violent acts committed by fundamentalists. I also agree that in the US, home grown fundamentalists aren't running amok killing people. However, I don't see how this makes the topic any less valid. (You are welcomed and encouraged to start a thread about violent criminals btw.)

I use "destructive" in a broader sense, to include: corrosive of tolerance, corrosive of reason, corrosive of the value of life.

And certainly the fact that fundamentalists permeate the highest levels of the US government (and other governments) make this a worthy topic, don't you think?

 

[CapelDodger]

Fundamentalism is almost always reactionary. Its supporters tend to be people who are losing out during the inevitable changes that occur in society. It is set up in opposition to the contemporary world and (usually) unstoppable forces, which is why it tends to be destructive. It demands activism, if not reactivism. So the British Puritans of the 17thCE were largely country gentry living in a time when the mercantile classes were becoming dominant ecenomically and politically. Why was God allowing the natural order of things to be overturned? Because the people were letting him down; time to get back to fundamentals. No more tolerance of gays or civil marriage (aka adultery), no more suffering a witch to live. Back to the Bible/Koran/Torah or whatever, back to the fundamental source not the self-serving interpertations of a corrupt priesthood. Back to commitment, life and soul. Which is very dangerous, since there will always be nasty-minded people on hand to take advantage of that kind of commitment for their own ends. (Fascism is a sort of fundamentalist nationalism.)

 

[elliotfc]

Re: Re: Re: Attributes of fundamentalism

Thank you for your thought provoking reply. I agree that "ordinary" crime kills and injures FAR more people than violent acts committed by fundamentalists. I also agree that in the US, home grown fundamentalists aren't running amok killing people. However, I don't see how this makes the topic any less valid. (You are welcomed and encouraged to start a thread about violent criminals btw.)

OK, so what's worse, "ordinary" crime or "extraordinary" crime? Is it a crime to have fundamentalist ideas?

It is a valid topic, I just offered a perspective based on the injection of the variable of violence.

In my opinion (in my opinion) Christians declaring non-Christians to burn in hell is commensurate to skeptics declaring religious types to be idiots/irrational. It's just hyperbole. No violence accompanies the words. Of course there are exceptions.

I use "destructive" in a broader sense, to include: corrosive of tolerance, corrosive of reason, corrosive of the value of life.

By definition, a person who says that another person is on their way to hell is intolerant, is that the way of thinking here?

Is it intolerance to declare someone to be irrational? No, not if you can back it up (have an explanation at hand). In the same way, the fundamentalist has reasons for declaring that others will burn forever.

The fundamentalist would disagree with your characterization of them as being irrational, and might even accuse you of intolerance. Likewise you would disagree with their characterization of you as hell-bound, and accuse them of intolerance.

As for the value of life, consider that when the fundamentalist Christian harangues, they do so because they are concerned with the value of human life. If they really believed what they believed but didn't share their truth, they would not be concerned with the value of other human lives. If you think someone is going to hell but you keep that opinion to yourself, you are not very interested in that person's eternal life.

And certainly the fact that fundamentalists permeate the highest levels of the US government (and other governments) make this a worthy topic, don't you think?

I wouldn't have chimed in if it wasn't a worthy topic.

The worst world governmental leaders (magnitude definitely, perhaps qualitatively as well) of the past 100 years have not been religious fundamentalists so I'm not as worried as you (if you are worried that is, you may just be intellecutally interested and that's fine too).

-Elliot

 

[elliotfc]

Fundamentalism is almost always reactionary.

What isn't reactionary? Isn't everything a reaction to something else?

Its supporters tend to be people who are losing out during the inevitable changes that occur in society.

Tell that to the "enlightened" Muslims of the middle ages. Fundamentalism has been around thousands of years, where are these inevitable changes that you are talking about?

It is set up in opposition to the contemporary world and (usually) unstoppable forces, which is why it tends to be destructive.

Except for all of the fundamentalists who aren't destructive. Actually, the contemporary world was set up after fundamentalism, so if anything the contemporary world is reactionary, and not the other way around.

[B}Because the people were letting him down; time to get back to fundamentals. No more tolerance of gays or civil marriage (aka adultery), no more suffering a witch to live. Back to the Bible/Koran/Torah or whatever, back to the fundamental source not the self-serving interpertations of a corrupt priesthood. Back to commitment, life and soul. Which is very dangerous, since there will always be nasty-minded people on hand to take advantage of that kind of commitment for their own ends. (Fascism is a sort of fundamentalist nationalism.) [/B]

Are you saying that commitment is bad?

-Elliot