Explaining Fundamentalism

[stamenflicker]

Good afternoon,

Most of you who've read my posts probably know I'm a Christian, or at least you've correctly assumed that. I suppose as over the course of 30 years I've met and interacted with a wide variety of believers. Though situated in the South, were fudamentalism is presumed to be rampant, I'd have to say I just haven't met many of them, and the ones I have met are pretty tame.

That said, as I look around at the things posted on the forum, I am beginning to see that my experience with people of faith isn't quite like many of yours, and that there really may be some wackos out there in the arena of faith.

I'm curious about fundamentalism, because as a young teenager I may have been one of those literal thinkers for a time. It's immaturity and lack of life experience that leads to literalism and living in a black/white world, in my opinion anyway. So most Christians "grow out of it" (although I like to think of them growing into something else), but then again, its becoming clear to me that some never do. Why?

I can't draw worth a flip. I talked with an artist friend of mine who looked at something I drew for fun at summer camp. I asked her why I couldn't draw. She said, "Well it looks like you draw on about a middle school, early high school level. When's the last time you drew something?" she asked me. It was about the sixth grade when I last really sat down and tried to draw anything. So my devleopment sort of stopped because I stopped drawing.

So I got to thinking, given the number of people educated in church private schools, Catholic schools, etc. and given that most people encounter Christianity via vacation bible schools, youth groups, confirmation classes, etc. what if some people just quit there? I mean they sort of get what they want (eternal salvation or whatever) and quit thinking about or practicing their faith in any meaningful way. Could that be true? Or is it something else?

Curious,

Flick

 

[Z]

Boy, loaded topic.

In my own, honest, personal opinion, fundamentalism (in any faith) is propogated by laziness. People don't want to waste the extra effort to learn anything. They're happy bowing to authority, because it's just that much easier to accept that those appointed over you know what they're doing. Look at American culture, for example. Companies know that a well-placed ad on TV is worth more than all the quality ingredients or craftsmanship in the world. RonCO can sell ten million 'Acme Lump-O-Turds' if the jingle is catchy and they get an ad in prime-time.

Let's face it - thinking is not an inherent trait, with most people. Kids in school wail and moan even the smallest reading assignment. Entertainment in the home is limited, these days, to television and video games. How many books are in the homes of the average American family? Very few, I'd wager.

I was raised to be a thinker, primarily. I was reading at three. Not children's books, either; my mother was obsessed with Isaac Asimov; so while the other kids were struggling over 'Little Bear' I was deep into 'Foundation'. I read a dictionary at age six and got through the 'g's before my mother explained that it wasn't that kind of book. I particularly loved our oversized world and national atlases, especially the topographical projection in hard plastic. My room had nine bookshelves at one point.

So for me, thinking and questioning and learning were second-nature. Granted, it never took me far from religion; but by the time I was on my own, it had me looking at all religions, trying to parse what was common among them and what made the most sense. Every faith, IMHO, has some grain of truth within it. Usually buried under large loads of horse manure, but still...

But most people aren't raised like that. They are trained to accept what they're told, no questions asked. Authorities are supposed to be absolute. "Why?" "Because I said so." (That's a response never heard in our home. If the kid asked why, the parent damn well can give a more accurate and reasonable answer than that!)

So from the earliest age, kids are being raised to trust religious authorities. Then those authorities spend endless hours feeding them a system of thought that eschews logic and reason in favor of emotions. Don't worry about who Cain married after he left his parents; we want you to feel the shame he carried with him!

Then the kids get into school, where we quickly learn that the easy way involves flat obedience, and the hard way is the way that involves thinking. Kids like classes with neat, tidy multiple choice worksheets, where 'homework' is copying a few sentences from a book; rather than sheets with formulae and theorums, where thinking is required. Which was easier for most of you out there, tests where you had to remember a date or a city, or where you had to compute, say, using quadratic equations or balancing chemical reactions?

So what's a kid to think? Science is hard, takes a lot of work, and requires too much thinking; religion, on the other hand, laughs at hard thought and offers eternal salvation and glorious life, all for the price of a few hymns sung and some hours every Sunday being hypnotised in a pretty building.

Religion offers beauty, authority, and freedom from personal responsibility (believe it or not). What does science offer again?

I can see, pretty well, where fundamentalists are coming from; when you're told all your life that the Bible is the ABSOLUTE truth, and can never, EVER be wrong, you learn a different form of logic and reasoning that causes you to immediately shoehorn all data to match the Bible. If there's a logical flaw, then it's logic that's at fault, not your Bible. Besides, when you're taught that there's some fallen angel actively seeking to pervert and distort EVERYTHING, what hope does reason have of teaching you the truth?

Look at some posts by the infamous 1inChrist. He even went so far as to say that logic and reason are the tools of the Devil. And, like it or not, many fundamentalists feel exactly the same way.

... Anyway, I'm going on and on, and making no sense. Sorry... good night.

 

[FireGarden]

Hi, Flick
I haven't met any wacko fundies either -- I have read the posts of some on internet forums. But it's hard to guess the age of people on the net!

But if the reason they're fundies is because they quit investigating at an early age, then why do we still hear them talking about religion? doesn't that mean they're still interested? And surely such talk means they get an answer, which pushes them towards further investigation. Why do they resist that push?

I used to believe that aliens were visiting Earth, that UFOs were their spaceships. The Barney and Betty Hill abduction was one of my favorites -- they drew space maps with stars astronomers didn't know; they had chemicals on their clothes that chemists couldn't name. I'm glad internet forums didn't exist as I was growing up -- I'd be quoted on "UFOlogists say the darndest things".

But there's only so long you can believe in something where evidence is promised but then never given. Years and years of dodgy photos/film and anecdotes. Never anything definite. I lost faith.

I guess that backs up part of your theory. There's inexperience involved. You still need to show that all the noisy fundies we hear from are people that have lost interest in studying faith, but not lost interest in talking about faith.



[Edited to replace final question with clearer statement]

 

[Alkatran]

Which was easier for most of you out there, tests where you had to remember a date or a city, or where you had to compute, say, using quadratic equations or balancing chemical reactions?

The math and science questions were hundreds of times easier! The laws of physics are like a cheat book: on normal tests you need a piece of knowledge per question, on physics test you only need a fixed amount of knowledge for ALL questions. (With the exception of biology, which is such a huge subject there's memorization involved)

Not to mention I still KNOW my physics, as opposed to all the good memorizing the ~50 countries in Africa did.

 

[Z]

Me too, Alkatran - but I've heard we're in the minority.

 

[drkitten]

But if the reason they're fundies is because they quit investigating at an early age, then why do we still hear them talking about religion? doesn't that mean they're still interested? And surely such talk means they get an answer, which pushes them towards further investigation. Why do they resist that push?

There's a big difference between interest in learning and interest in teaching, as anyone who's had a close-to-retirement professor is likely to be able to attest. After a while, one gets to the point, mentally and emotionally, where one feels that one has all the answers -- or if not all, then enough to get by. A colleague of mine who shall remain nameless, at a school that shall remain equally nameless, had a set of forty-five days worth of slide transparencies (one for each class during the semester), and had been using the same set, without changes, for at least ten years. By the time he'd been using them for eight years, they were woefully out of date -- but the first-years didn't know any better, did they?

Of course, I'm not that sure he was interested in teaching, either, but he was interested in drawing his paycheck, which was enough to keep him coming in.

My sister is involved in a rather odd fundamentalist cult, so I have a bit of personal experience with these things. In her case, she is specifically not interested in learning -- growing up with an obnoxious know-it-all like me as a sibling, I can kind of understand why. She simply wants answers, preferably bite-size ones that she can fit into her head in one gulp. She also likes the authority structure of her fascist little cult, where she's been relieved of the burden of making most of her own long-term decisions about her life. And, of course, she will try to tell anyone who listens about her personal relationship -- but, to be honest, again, that's part of what is expected in her church. And only by doing appropriate evangelical actions like that, does she get the approval (which she so desperately needs and wants) from the fascist little men at the top of her cult.

I guess that backs up part of your theory. There's inexperience involved. You still need to show that all the noisy fundies we hear from are people that have lost interest in studying faith, but not lost interest in talking about faith.

That last sentence almost perfectly describes my sister. As much as anything, she likes talking about faith, both to earn brownie points with her superiors and to reassure herself that she's doing the right thing in this cult. But in either case, learning about her faith, except in the official, fascist, cult-authorized manner, is not going to give her what she wants.....

 

[Gestahl]

Good afternoon,

Most of you who've read my posts probably know I'm a Christian, or at least you've correctly assumed that. I suppose as over the course of 30 years I've met and interacted with a wide variety of believers. Though situated in the South, were fudamentalism is presumed to be rampant, I'd have to say I just haven't met many of them, and the ones I have met are pretty tame.

Man, big topic. I'm going to try and tread softly...

First, there is the obvious subtle confirmation bias that can sneak up on you when you try to use personal experience, we all are guilty of that one. I tend to overlook the more militant atheists, and I think we are a kinda prickly, but mostly fun-loving and warm bunch. I am sure many people's perceptions could be different.

Let me ask you this: are you homosexual? Have you ever practiced another religion like Wicca, Unitarian, or been an atheist? How about a drug user? Ever aborted a child or had a pregnancy before wedlock? I am willing to bet you have not, or if you did, you kept it very very private.

As a former Southern Baptist, I can tell you most of the time we avoid talking about anything we might disagree about, to the point of having our "church" persona, and our true selves. Going back and talking to lots of the more "liberal" people in the congregation, they have related that they don't say anything might rock the boat. They are too emotionally invested in their friends and families' friends. I would bet the more "conservative" people do the exact same thing.

The true nature of people does not come out when there is an assumptive agreement between them. These people don't seem that militant, because you are all agreeing for the most part, and you are OK by their book. It's kind of like the Hulk with his hidden anger that must be triggered:

"HOMOSEXUAL ABORTION! HULK SMASH!"

OK, just kidding, but you get the idea. For example, my Dad's a head deacon of a church in AL. I thought all the adults there were pretty tame, and pretty reasonable folk. Because, of course, it's those *other* Christians that are the problem.
Then I saw news reports where these same people were at the point of almost screaming obscenities at the courthouse steps over the Ten Commandments. My own sister, a pharmacy major at Samford in Birmingham, who got a 5 on the AP exam in biology and takes biology courses every semester, believes in Creationism, thinks evolution is mostly crap and at most a WAG, and I have had several passionate debates with her. My mother's trigger is drugs. My father's trigger is abortion. Thank Ed that I don't think a single one of them has ever encountered a homosexual. I think these "wedge" issues, as they are called, are part and parcel of what create fundamentalist mindsets, as well as isolation from external, conflicting influences.

People don't become fundamentalists until they are pushed. You didn't see those people being challenged, pushed, or even worse, ignored and dismissed.

Finally, you say that many of these fundamentalists may be spiritually atrophied in a sense... i.e. they have stopped growing spritually, and just become a literalistic shell. To take your drawing example, what happens when you don't even know there is a way to draw better, or everyone tells you your drawings are the best ever! To take it to the extreme, imagine everyone you have ever seen or anything you have ever been exposed to has had drawing on par with your level. Would you expect to get any better? I think my triggers share a parallel with being able to see "better" drawings. If you go too long, you may not be able to accept that there even are better drawings.

/end rambling half-answer

 

[stamenflicker]

Thanks for the responses so far. I know a lot of Christians that are against things like homosexuality and abortion... if I was in a position to label them, and I'm not, then the ones I know would be conservative Christians. I don't know any Christians who actively boycott abortion clinics or march against gays at a parade. I did see a group of Christians try to remove a lesbian principal from an elementary school though, that was ugly.

So maybe my scale would be:

Liberal Christian -- Christianity is good for me and my family, but the divinity of Jesus stuff is all made up.

Moderate Christian -- Believes in the Jesus part, but isn't going to argue much about science, or social issues like homosexuality because he/she has other concerns.

Conservative Christian -- Is well conservative on social issues and not afraid to speak their mind.

Fundamentalist Christian -- a state of illogic in which anything that isn't "Christian" or mending to their worldview is a threat and must be eliminated by just about any means (websites, marches, even bombing abortion clinics).

It's this latter group, I've not encountered much, or if I have, they've hidden it pretty well from me.

Flick
I suppose what I really asking is what makes these crazies. I guess we'll probably never know.

 

[farmermike]

In my own, honest, personal opinion, fundamentalism (in any faith) is propogated by laziness. People don't want to waste the extra effort to learn anything.

To a critical thinker,laziness would appear to be the case.The bible becomes this rock or foundation,issues and their answers become black and white.Believing,reading meaning into things where there is none re-enforces that mindset that seems to have all the answers.

 

[FireGarden]

quote:

---

Originally posted by new drkitten
That last sentence almost perfectly describes my sister. As much as anything, she likes talking about faith, both to earn brownie points with her superiors and to reassure herself that she's doing the right thing in this cult. But in either case, learning about her faith, except in the official, fascist, cult-authorized manner, is not going to give her what she wants...

---

That must really upset you.

I can't imagine being obsessed with something, but not wanting to learn everything about it. I've tried to think of some advice,... Sorry. This is way out of my experience.

 

[stamenflicker]

farmermike,

Believing,reading meaning into things where there is none re-enforces that mindset that seems to have all the answers.

One of the interesting things to me, is that I read someplace that Jesus asked 10 times more questions than he answered. Now I haven't gone through to count them up, but that seems pretty close to me. Jesus basically confronted the religious fundamentalism of his day by re-interpreting the Hebrew scriptures. And if humility is supposed to be a primary characteristic of the Christian faith, how did these people stray so far from it?

Flick

 

[Kopji]

Maybe there is something in many people, not even related to religion... that demands answers. Most religion is simply taking advantage of this market.

Questioning, reasoning, wondering, and maybe above all - curious people; stand much closer to each other than to someone who thinks they have arrived at all the truth there is worth knowing.

 

[Phideaux]

Karen Armstrong's Battle for God gives some insight about what causes fundamentalism to arise.

When people feel stressed, afraid, threatened and that the world (mostly technology) is changing frighteningly fast, they tend to shift toward fundamentalism.

When people feel pressed for resources, fundamental religious thinking is an effective tribal response to justify going after more resources. Fundamentalism justifies entitlement, since fundamentalists generally have some idea they are “chosen” above others and therefore justified to do whatever they need to do in the name of God.

This supposedly has the effect of slowing down the changes in the culture. People can't learn and adapt very fast as a group, so they cling to tradition all the more.

 

[clarsct]

Hmmmm.

I'm not going to tread softly. I tread softly very seldom.

The empty can rattles loudest, my friend. These people have fallen into the greatest evil of organized religion: complacency. They've shelved the difficult topics of birth, life, death and all of the rest, and, having shelved them, never go back to look at them again. They've buried their heads in the sand for so long, that even the remotest thought of coming up for air is anathema.

Many doctors of that age died believing that Pasteur was a quack and a fraud. They could not give up their cherished beliefs.

They no longer SEEK the truth, they KNOW the truth. And knowing is the biggest barrier to learning.

Second is ego. It feels damned GOOD to be one of the chosen. They've staked their afterlife on it. It doesn't matter what they DO, so long as the mouth the words loudly enough to fool themselves. Anything that threatens this illusion of superiority is met with great violence.
That, and the ego of immortality. The fact of your own mortality is more than some can contemplate. Their ego won't allow it.

I've known a lot of xians that would have embarrased...EMBARRASSED...Jesus, assuming said person existed.

Third is power. It is a feeling of power to know you're right and be able to influence the actions of others. It's a power trip, pure and simple. "God will get you!"

And lastly, I think that in some distant part of themselves, they know this. That is what hurts. In some part of you, you must tell the truth to yourself, if one is to remain sane. To face that voice and confront it...that is more than most people can mentally handle. They know they cannot face it. Religion is for those who cannot face the unknown alone.

 

[farmermike]

Liberal Christian -- Christianity is good for me and my family, but the divinity of Jesus stuff is all made up.

Up until a few years ago,that would have been a good definition of my view.With a good social network(all these brothers and sisters in christ)it is easy to conform.But truly not believing did make a lot of things hard to accept.Laziness on my part could have let this liberal christian live on.It didn't take a whole lot of research and critical thinking to unravel the whole thing.

 

[stamenflicker]

clarsec,

Religion is for those who cannot face the unknown alone.

Well, I'm responding I suppose as a moderate Christian, and would say religion in the assumption that one doesn't have to face the unknown alone. It's a different worldview I realize.

Flick

 

[Dr Adequate]

I'm curious about fundamentalism, because as a young teenager I may have been one of those literal thinkers for a time. It's immaturity and lack of life experience that leads to literalism and living in a black/white world, in my opinion anyway. So most Christians "grow out of it" (although I like to think of them growing into something else), but then again, its becoming clear to me that some never do. Why? ... what if some people just quit there? I mean they sort of get what they want (eternal salvation or whatever) and quit thinking about or practicing their faith in any meaningful way. Could that be true? Or is it something else?

I've thought so long and hard about this subject that the thread's about to drop off the bottom of the page without me having my say. Which is unthinkable.

So: first of all, in speculating along the lines of "they don't grow out of it" we may stumble into a fallacy. We might call this the "phase-I've-been-through" fallacy. You can tell a fundie how you once toyed with fundie thoughts, but you grew out of it. And then the fundie can tell me how he was once attracted to atheism, and he grew out of it. And then I can tell you how I used to be a moderate Christian, but I grew out of that.

It's like a theological game of "Scissors, Paper, Stone".

Apparently, we've each grown out of the other's opinions. So this tells us nothing. To say "Oh, I abandoned that idea when I was a teenager" is not the same as saying "Oh, I have proved that idea wrong, and the people who hold it are intellectually immature".

Look at me, I'm sticking up for fundies. How did that happen? But unless you can show that your transition from adolescence to adulthood was more enlightening than anyone else's, then you've just come up with a psychologically sophisticated version of the ad hominem argument.

I'm feeling all typed out now, so I'll give my theory of why fundies are fundies in another post. Watch this space.

 

[stamenflicker]

But unless you can show that your transition from adolescence to adulthood was more enlightening than anyone else's

Dr. A,

I think enlightened is the maybe the wrong word because it focuses solely on mental activity. Perhaps my transition was better for the "well-being" of myself and others around me. If we can agree that while a little discord my generate good conversation, a lot of it breeds needless strife, then I doubt there is much to prove that transitioning out of fundamentalism was a good move for me, and probably would be a good move for others.

What I am mostly getting at is the inability to read between the lines, which does strike me as immaturity-- sort of a perpetual 6th grader so to speak. I worked with lots of teenagers over the years and before that ability to think and relate abstractly kicks in you can have a hell of time trying to teach through metaphor. I'm just wondering if that relationship carries over into the faith arena. Have you ever read fundi poetry or listened to Christian music? It is almost devoid of metaphor, which says something to me anyway. Check out this link:

American evangelical Christians do not like metaphor. That's not strong enough. They fear metaphor. It terrifies them, and so they despise it, reject it and forbid it wherever possible.

http://dickstaub.com/links_view.php?record_id=4662

Or this one from Gellman's article "What would Dylan do?":

There must be room in the culture for people who believe in both God and Aretha Franklin. Right now we are perilously close to a world in which Rolling Stone owns all the good music (and all the bad music) and religion owns all the good ideas (and a few bad ideas). This cannot continue because, to paraphrase Kant, ideas without music are empty, and music without ideas is blind.

http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Newsweek/2005/01/26/764404?extID=10032&oliID=213

Flick

 

[Psi Baba]

The math and science questions were hundreds of times easier! The laws of physics are like a cheat book: on normal tests you need a piece of knowledge per question, on physics test you only need a fixed amount of knowledge for ALL questions. (With the exception of biology, which is such a huge subject there's memorization involved)

Not to derail, but that reminds of the famous quote by Enrico Fermi, "If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist."

 

[Huh-What?]

Interesting Topic. However, I just wanted to thank zaayrdragon for a quote in my sig.

"Science is hard, takes a lot of work, and requires too much thinking; religion, on the other hand, laughs at hard thought and offers eternal salvation and glorious life, all for the price of a few hymns sung and some hours every Sunday being hypnotised in a pretty building." - zaayrdragon