How to spot the fundie atheists

[Bob Klase]

Was there meant to be a coherent argument there?

There is a coherent argument there. At least as valid as the one it replied to.

 

[Lucian]

Because thanks to decades of Cold War propaganda about "godless commies," atheists are automatically assumed to be Marxists out to destroy free enterprise, seize the means of production, and begin the Dictatorship of the Proletariat where capitalists will be put to death for trumped-up "crimes against The People."

Well, sure, I think we all long for the violent overthrow of capitalism, not to mention baseball, apple pie and Mom, but why should I be particularly irked by female-owned or -run businesses?

Never mind. I've decided to stop worrying about this. I'm just going to go back to what I do best: clubbing babies and plotting against capitalists and God-fearing Christian Americans.

 

[blobru]

...then 0.0005% of all atheists? ABout the same as Christian fundies I'd guess.
And yes, that 0.0005% would act in the manner described by Jetlag above [i.e., "if [the Bible] is contradicted by reason and evidence, then it is our reason and evidence that errs."]

...the World Christian population comprises Christians (total): 2,076,629,000. Of those --

Anglicans: 82,895,000
Orthodox: 218,501,000
Protestants: 356,138,000
Roman Catholics: 1,097,144,000

of these those who describe themselves as Evangelicals: 221,637,000 (as subset of Protestants & Anglicans mainly) and Pentecostal/Charismatics: 553,763,000 (all denominations but mainly in Protestant/Anglican/Roman Catholic Churches.)

However the important figure is Evangelicals - as they are most likely to be Creationists. About 10% of Christians describe themselves as Evangelicals, but by no menas all Evangelicals are Creationists - it is a tiny minority position.. What percentage are Creationists? Hard figures are elusive. Many Evangelicals are in Scandinavia, and Northern Europe generally, but Creationism ius really a North American phenomenon. At most we can estimate 10% of Christians might be Creationist, but I think from what I have read the figure is actually 3-5% worldwide. I'll find hard figures tonight...

...So what about in the USA? We see endless polls decrying the Rise of the Stoopid, and we have all met a few moronic Creationists, and some clever charming ones as well. These surveys acrtually serve a useful social purpose, in spurring Research Funding, Public Education and Science campaigns. Oh I'm a cynic aren't I? But seriously, they do serve that function.

What is less trumpeted is research on the Crreationists actual beliefs and attitudes. I can't tell you about formal adherence (church attendance) because i can;t find any data, but I can tell you what seems to shock many people -in a survey in the USA of attitudes to Creationism being taufght in schools, 83% approve of the teaching of alternatives to Evolution in the classroom,but 79% believe that you can be a Christian and believe in Evolution. So that means about 5% of Creationists doubt that Christians can believe in Evolution?

I can't follow this reasoning at all. The survey you cite, according to your description, seems to be about American attitudes to Creationism. "79% [of Americans?] believe that you can be a Christian and believe in Evolution" implies 21% don't (unless there is an "unknown" category). Arguably, these would qualify as fundamentalists according to JetLeg's definition above (rejecting evolution because it contradicts the Bible, presumably).

The conclusion: "So that means about 5% of Creationists doubt that Christians can believe in Evolution" -- ??? That calculation is perfectly opaque to me, I'm afraid. If 21% of Americans don't think Evolution and Christianity are compatible, then the percentage should be much higher among American Creationists, given their beliefs.

Either you've jumbled your data or I've misread your labels for it.

That does not sound much like fundamentalism to me? So we take 5% of 10%, and that gives us 0.5% Look at the New York Times, 11th March 2000, for the article on the research. It is widely ignored. I'll try to find proper citations on my return, and expand a little more on why fundamentalism is a tiny and vocal minority masquerading as normative, even in the USA. ...

Ok, you've taken the mysterious 5% (US figure?) and applied it to the 10% Creationist Christians (worldwide or US? -- is this an extrapolated creationist frequency for US Christians?) and gotten a figure of 0.5%. The math is correct, but I'm not clear what any of these numbers is supposed to mean. Sorry.

21% of Americans a go to church one or more times a week (2006). About 61 million people, or 3% of the Christians in the world. So if even 10% of US Christians are literalist Creationists, then that represents a VERY small percentage. Figures for Creationism in UK Church goers suggest less than 2% - more as I find the data.

Why are you limiting number of US Christians according to weekly attendance? A quick glance at wiki gives percentages of 76-78.5% of Americans identifying as Christian. US population ~303.8 million x 76% = 231 million US Christians. (Okay, I see here the 10% is an upper bound for US "literalist" Creationists per US Christians, carried over from estimates of worldwide percentages for same... I think).

Yep, sounds right and you will know far better than me - and what fls has shown too supports this - and with other US sects, maybe 5% of US Christians .So as a total of all Christians, probably 0.005%, as I said?

cj x

No. 231 million / 2100 million [round-up] = 11%. About 11% of all Christians are American. 11% x 5% = 0.55%, which is 1100 times greater than than the figure you initially gave (0.0005%, see top quote).

Of course, data estimated from memory and experience are just ballpark figures; no problem there, though the figures do need be verified. As for the logic for some of the calculations above, at least as stated, I can barely guess. (Again, I may be misreading what look like rushed descriptions).

And if this were to be a serious calculation, the definition of "fundamentalist" would have to be hammered out and fairly applied (I think JetLeg's which you quote above is very good). The calculations seem to rely on only American Creationists satisfying the definition for "Christian Fundamentalist". I think. My head aches.

 

[tsig]

Well, sure, I think we all long for the violent overthrow of capitalism, not to mention baseball, apple pie and Mom, but why should I be particularly irked by female-owned or -run businesses?

Never mind. I've decided to stop worrying about this. I'm just going to go back to what I do best: clubbing babies and plotting against capitalists and God-fearing Christian Americans.

You want to stick with your strengths.

 

[cj.23]

I can't follow this reasoning at all. The survey you cite, according to your description, seems to be about American attitudes to Creationism. "79% [of Americans?] believe that you can be a Christian and believe in Evolution" implies 21% don't (unless there is an "unknown" category). Arguably, these would qualify as fundamentalists according to JetLeg's definition above (rejecting evolution because it contradicts the Bible, presumably).

Nope, you are misreading it. These are the numbers from the survey, not percentages of each other!

83% approve of the teaching of ID, Creationism or alternatives to evolutionary theory
79% of the original number surveyed, not of the 79% mentioned above, believe you can be a Christian and believe in Evolution.

So we can extrapolate that about 4% believe you can't be a Christian and believe in Evolution - and that 4% represents about 5% of those who believe Creationism should be taught in schools, so 95% of Chritsians don't agree with this. You are instead taking &9% of 83% - but no, bth figures refer to the same population.

Ya see?

The conclusion: "So that means about 5% of Creationists doubt that Christians can believe in Evolution" -- ??? That calculation is perfectly opaque to me, I'm afraid. If 21% of Americans don't think Evolution and Christianity are compatible, then the percentage should be much higher among American Creationists, given their beliefs.

On the contrary, the belief that Christianity and Evolution is incompatible seems to be very high among American Atheists, far higher than among Christians generally? Of course i base this on nothing more than anecdotal evidence - I am this very morning however talking to my local university to arrange a survey on a related topic, so shall have some hard data in a few months.

Either you've jumbled your data or I've misread your labels for it.

No you are reading the second figure as a fraction of a fraction not a fraction of the original population.

Ok, you've taken the mysterious 5% (US figure?) and applied it to the 10% Creationist Christians (worldwide or US? -- is this an extrapolated creationist frequency for US Christians?) and gotten a figure of 0.5%. The math is correct, but I'm not clear what any of these numbers is supposed to mean. Sorry.

Have I? No I took 5% as level of Creationist based on the above who think Evolution is incompatible with Christian faith, which group I thought could reasonably be called fundamentalists in the popular sense employed here, and then looked at what percentage that constiututes of US Christians, and then divided by what percentage US Christians comprise of the global Christian community to give us an approximate figure for the role of Creationist fundamentalists as a percent of the global Christian faith community.

Why are you limiting number of US Christians according to weekly attendance? A quick glance at wiki gives percentages of 76-78.5% of Americans identifying as Christian. US population ~303.8 million x 76% = 231 million US Christians. (Okay, I see here the 10% is an upper bound for US "literalist" Creationists per US Christians, carried over from estimates of worldwide percentages for same... I think).

Average weekly attendance is the usual norm for adherance. That means about 12% of the US population is actively Christian, rather than thinking it is a nice idea?

No. 231 million / 2100 million [round-up] = 11%. About 11% of all Christians are American. 11% x 5% = 0.55%, which is 1100 times greater than than the figure you initially gave (0.0005%, see top quote).

Again, you misread the figures. 231 million? Where are you getting 231 million from? That would be every person self identifying as christian in the USA. Sure, that gives 11%. The 3% I mention as representing Christians in America as part of global Christain numbers is for regular attendees at a place of worship - which is what the missionary data for other countries is based upon? And if 5% of that 3% is Creationist and believes Evolution incompatible with Christian faith, then we have 0.015% of global Christians - rather more than I guessed, but still a rather minority figure.

Of course, data estimated from memory and experience are just ballpark figures; no problem there, though the figures do need be verified. As for the logic for some of the calculations above, at least as stated, I can barely guess. (Again, I may be misreading what look like rushed descriptions).

Yes sorry about that - I still need to check all these figures against second sources, and actually look at the original research again. IT is really difficult to get accurate data on US religiosity - but in fact extreme rejection of evolution has in the uK been seen to have a negative relationship with Church attendance. I'm wondering is that might be less true in the States, where some denomijnations include Creationism as an article of faith. Nonetheless in global impact Creationsim is small potatoes, and almost irrelevant i suspect?

And if this were to be a serious calculation, the definition of "fundamentalist" would have to be hammered out and fairly applied (I think JetLeg's which you quote above is very good). The calculations seem to rely on only American Creationists satisfying the definition for "Christian Fundamentalist". I think. My head aches.

Absolutely, and that is the problem with these figures. No you are doinga good job querying the limited data in the thread: I think if i can get some hard figures today you can probably understand them better than I do, andI did the fraction of a fraction thing myself initially - it s not very clear unless you have the data in front of you, and y presentation of it would mislead anyone.

I do actually have some data for how many US Christians self identify as Fundamentalist -- I'll dig it out.

cj x

 

[cj.23]

Fundie Atheism! I shall now rant - feel free to ignore - just letting off steam! My latest post on my blog is on this very topic, after i woke up to find myself banned from RD.net

"I have for the last few months been pursued by a small but incredibly tedious group of three or four fundie atheists, who in at least two cases I suspect have serious issues, around the Richarddawkins forum. Today I find that I am again warned and banned. Not in itself a big issue - I probably deserved it, and its only for a week -- but the issue is that the parties responsible seem to once again remain unwarned and completely free to continue their harassment.

The bigger issue is that in a website dedicated to Reason and Science no rule exists to forbid ad hominem attacks. Personal insults are banned (yet are employed extensively - the intelligent and astute poster Tim O Neil throws insults that make me cringe, and regularly tells people to F*** off - but the mods, in particular Peter Harrison who I have had several runs in with allow this -- but my use of gentler terms to rebuke those who keep harassing me, including the F*** off result in formal warnings .



Just a few bad mods letting things go to pot - and a bad set of rules, which preclude civilized behaviour by allowing one to cry tactics. I must say that there seems little point in trying to engage in any kind of constructive dialogue on the site anymore. This is a real shame.


Now I'm not saying that all the mods are bad - most are pretty excellent - but there is a definite bias towards some parties as with any forum, and the continued harassment of those with any kind of opposing viewpoint by a handful of dogmatic fundamentalist atheists is allowed to continue - but then again it mirrors Dawkins own polemical style of ridiculing those who disagree with him, not one of his more attractive attributes. I think at the moment however I prefer Dawkins to his forum.


Last year a substantial group of the RD.net community left when Richard Dawkins suddenly imposed new community standards, removing some of the the more risqué content, and they went off to pursue freedom from censorship at Thinking Aloud. I guess i might join them, but to be honest I will probably stay with the JREF, woo about Nazareth being more tolerable than personal abuse and constant harassment by a handful of morons.


99.999% of the posters on RichardDawkins.net remain fine fellows, as do all but one mod in my opinion - they are not shamefully partisan or just incompetent like this chap; but despite my oft voiced claim that Christians can post on RD.net freely and express their opinions and intelligently debate without harassment, and are not mistreated, and that the site is in no way a haven of rabid fundie loonies pursuing a dogmatic line -- well I was wrong. The vast majority are not like that, but the tiny minority who are allowed to conduct personal harassment can poison the place.



Grahbudd has left already, and I think others too - and after the debate is over I am planning to. For now I can only say what a terrible shame - and what a pity the place is associated with Richard Dawkins name, assuming he objects to ad hominem, personal insults and harassment and actually believes in reason, education and dialogue?


Ah well. The interweb is serious business. It's hardly worthy of Encyclopedia Dramatica - that spat is still to come. I'm preparing for it though! Fortunately working in the media gives one rather more options than just being irritated, and my vindication in terms of the ongoing actual debate at least in the eyes of the public may not be too far off now. I am working on a History of Science project which will not please this bunch, as it is a full blown assault on the conflict myth (regarding the suppose conflict between Science and Religion, which is mainly just bad history and myth), and hopefully it will prove very influential, so we will see, but for now, I am miffed!"


The thing is it only takes a few incidents like this, and the reputation of fundie atheism can build. The only thing an atheist web community has to do to give itself a reputation for intolerance and bigotry is to not act when this sort of thing happens. Yet this tells us f*** all about atheists generally - because atheist are defined by a single negative, not believeing in Gods, and to draw any conclusions from the actions of a few loonies is clearly insane. Yet Christians do it all the time. Bah! Well at least the JREF is relaly well moderated and extremely slick and professional - no complaints from me about here!.

 

[Ladewig]

Average weekly attendance is the usual norm for adherance. That means about 12% of the US population is actively Christian, rather than thinking it is a nice idea?

Again, I admit I originally misunderstood that your were talking about percentage of Christians worldwide. However, I do have some questions about your reasoning here. Why is weekly attendance necessary for someone to be classified as having fundamentalist beliefs? As the previously cited Gallup poll says, " About one-third of the American adult population believes the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word." What difference does it make whether or not these folks go to church three times a month or four times a month?

Furthermore, even if I were to agree with your definition. this chart from the same website shows that 51% of Americans who attend church at least once per week do believe that "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word." Therefore fully one half of the 21% of the church-going Christians are fundamentalists.

 

[fls]

I am working on a History of Science project which will not please this bunch, as it is a full blown assault on the conflict myth (regarding the suppose conflict between Science and Religion, which is mainly just bad history and myth), and hopefully it will prove very influential, so we will see, but for now, I am miffed!"

Have you seen the most recent issue of Skeptic and the article "How to Think About Scientific Claims: A Study on How Non-scientists Evaluate Science Claims"?

And hasn't this already been done (I'm thinking of Margaret Wertheim as an example)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Wertheim

(And to become even more off-topic, I'll use this as an excuse to link to one of my favourite topics:
http://www.theiff.org/main.html)

Linda

 

[Egg]

...to be honest I will probably stay with the JREF, woo about Nazareth being more tolerable than personal abuse and constant harassment by a handful of morons.

Their loss is our gain. I hope this means we'll be seeing more from you.

I am working on a History of Science project which will not please this bunch, as it is a full blown assault on the conflict myth (regarding the suppose conflict between Science and Religion, which is mainly just bad history and myth), and hopefully it will prove very influential, so we will see, but for now, I am miffed!"

Did you catch this BBC thingy? It goes into the history of fundamentalism and talks about "ultra Darwinists" rather than fundie atheists.

 

[blobru]

I can't follow this reasoning at all. The survey you cite, according to your description, seems to be about American attitudes to Creationism. "79% [of Americans?] believe that you can be a Christian and believe in Evolution" implies 21% don't (unless there is an "unknown" category). Arguably, these would qualify as fundamentalists according to JetLeg's definition above (rejecting evolution because it contradicts the Bible, presumably).

Nope, you are misreading it. These are the numbers from the survey, not percentages of each other!

No, that's how I read it: percentages of those surveryed. It wasn't specified, so I assumed the survey was a random sampling of Americans; I may be wrong: it may be American Christians only. I didn't see the relevance of the 83% to the 79%. And still don't, I'm afraid.

83% approve of the teaching of ID, Creationism or alternatives to evolutionary theory
79% of the original number surveyed, not of the 79% [83% - ed.] mentioned above, believe you can be a Christian and believe in Evolution.

Ok -- 83% approve teaching ID, etal., 17% don't (unless there is a "not sure" category); 79% believe Christianity and Evolution compatible; 21% don't.

So we can extrapolate that about 4% believe you can't be a Christian and believe in Evolution

Because 17% x 21% = 3.57 ~ 4%? That doesn't follow at all. The 21% who don't believe Christianity & Evolution are compatible may be completely within the 83% who approve of the teaching of ID, etal. (i.e., they are not independent statistics).

The claim is about 4% of Americans believe Xtianity & Evo are incompatible, right? (Unless there's some data missing, I don't see any other way to get to 4% than this illegit calculation).

- and that 4% represents about 5% of those who believe Creationism should be taught in schools, so 95% of Chritsians don't agree with this. You are instead taking &9% of 83% - but no, bth figures refer to the same population.

Because 4% / 83% = 4.82% ~ 5%? That might follow if the [miscalculated] 4% of Americans who believe Xtianity & Evo incompatible were completely within the 83% who approve teaching ID, but we don't know that (though I suspect there would be considerable overlap). It seems to also assume the 83% who appove teaching ID are all Christians, which is almost surely wrong (the most recent figures put Christians at 76% of all Americans: though your data is earlier, many non-Christians could support teaching ID).

Ya see?

No... sorry. (Extra sorry if my sporadic obtuseness is to blame).

The conclusion: "So that means about 5% of Creationists doubt that Christians can believe in Evolution" -- ??? That calculation is perfectly opaque to me, I'm afraid. If 21% of Americans don't think Evolution and Christianity are compatible, then the percentage should be much higher among American Creationists, given their beliefs.

On the contrary, the belief that Christianity and Evolution is incompatible seems to be very high among American Atheists, far higher than among Christians generally? Of course i base this on nothing more than anecdotal evidence - I am this very morning however talking to my local university to arrange a survey on a related topic, so shall have some hard data in a few months.

I would expect it to be higher among both groups, given their polarized beliefs (compatibility being a moderate position).

Either you've jumbled your data or I've misread your labels for it.

No you are reading the second figure as a fraction of a fraction not a fraction of the original population.

No. I'm failing to see the reasoning behind your calculations so far.

Ok, you've taken the mysterious 5% (US figure?) and applied it to the 10% Creationist Christians (worldwide or US? -- is this an extrapolated creationist frequency for US Christians?) and gotten a figure of 0.5%. The math is correct, but I'm not clear what any of these numbers is supposed to mean. Sorry.

Have I? No I took 5% [4%? - ed.] as level of Creationist based on the above who think Evolution is incompatible with Christian faith, which group I thought could reasonably be called fundamentalists in the popular sense employed here, and then looked at what percentage that constiututes of US Christians, and then divided [multiplied - ed.] by what percentage US Christians comprise of the global Christian community to give us an approximate figure for the role of Creationist fundamentalists as a percent of the global Christian faith community.

Ok, the 10% is US Christians per global Christians. Thanks. So if there are approximately 2100 million global Christians (rounded up from your prior source), then there are approximately 210 million US Christians.

Why are you limiting number of US Christians according to weekly attendance? A quick glance at wiki gives percentages of 76-78.5% of Americans identifying as Christian. US population ~303.8 million x 76% = 231 million US Christians. (Okay, I see here the 10% is an upper bound for US "literalist" Creationists per US Christians, carried over from estimates of worldwide percentages for same... I think).

Average weekly attendance is the usual norm for adherance. That means about 12% of the US population is actively Christian, rather than thinking it is a nice idea?

But you've already implied a figure of 210 million for US Christians in the previous calculation. Now you're introducing a new criterion to reduce it to 60million.

No. 231 million / 2100 million [round-up] = 11%. About 11% of all Christians are American. 11% x 5% = 0.55%, which is 1100 times greater than than the figure you initially gave (0.0005%, see top quote).

Again, you misread the figures. 231 million? Where are you getting 231 million from?

Calculation in the previous quote, based on wikipedia figures for 2008-9 (US census: pop. = 303.8 million; 76% Christian [in one survey; 78.5% in another] ).

That would be every person self identifying as christian in the USA. Sure, that gives 11%. The 3% I mention as representing Christians in America as part of global Christain numbers is for regular attendees at a place of worship - which is what the missionary data for other countries is based upon?

I don't know. I doubt very much all of the non-US data is missionary data (Europe, for example). And as mentioned above, you aren't being consistent with how you tally Christians.

And if 5% of that 3% is Creationist and believes Evolution incompatible with Christian faith, then we have 0.015% of global Christians - rather more than I guessed, but still a rather minority figure.

Well. Both those figures appear to me to have been calculated incorrectly. But notwithstanding, now your math is wrong: 5% x 3% = 0.15%, not 0.015%.

Of course, data estimated from memory and experience are just ballpark figures; no problem there, though the figures do need be verified. As for the logic for some of the calculations above, at least as stated, I can barely guess. (Again, I may be misreading what look like rushed descriptions).

Yes sorry about that - I still need to check all these figures against second sources, and actually look at the original research again. IT is really difficult to get accurate data on US religiosity - but in fact extreme rejection of evolution has in the uK been seen to have a negative relationship with Church attendance. I'm wondering is that might be less true in the States, where some denomijnations include Creationism as an article of faith. Nonetheless in global impact Creationsim is small potatoes, and almost irrelevant i suspect?

Impossible for me to speculate based on the above.

And if this were to be a serious calculation, the definition of "fundamentalist" would have to be hammered out and fairly applied (I think JetLeg's which you quote above is very good). The calculations seem to rely on only American Creationists satisfying the definition for "Christian Fundamentalist". I think. My head aches.

Absolutely, and that is the problem with these figures. No you are doinga good job querying the limited data in the thread: I think if i can get some hard figures today you can probably understand them better than I do, andI did the fraction of a fraction thing myself initially - it s not very clear unless you have the data in front of you, and y presentation of it would mislead anyone.

Yes. There may be some survey data you've omitted which would clear things up. I can only guess at your reasoning based on what data you've provided, of course. And sorry to be so picky; I'm just having a hard job reconstructing your argument from this [limited?] data set.

I do actually have some data for how many US Christians self identify as Fundamentalist -- I'll dig it out.

That would be interesting, though given the negative connotation of "Fundamentalist", probably not too reliable. In addition, I would be astonished if Christian Fundamentalism is restricted to the USA. (In my own country, Canada, our government of cretins has just appointed a Creationist as federal Minister of Science.)

 

[cj.23]

Yes. There may be some survey data you've omitted which would clear things up. I can only guess at your reasoning based on what data you've provided, of course. And sorry to be so picky; I'm just having a hard job reconstructing your argument from this [limited?] data set.

Yeah, my apologies. Unfortunately I have been so busy reviewing the Science of Ghosts event on my blog and attending meetings regarding a forthcoming Cheltenham Festival, plus doing other bits and bobs that I have completely failed to address your critique properly, (And it is a good one), or look at the data again as promised. I may well be talking absolute nonsense - so assume i am for the moment, and as soon as I have a few minutes spare I'll get back to you - I have to deal with some stuff on paradigms of play this morning, but hopefully free late tonight.

I'll also check out my reasoning with my housemate (A sociologist/historian of the Religious Right) and get her perspective. I still believe that actual fundamentalist beliefs are VERY uncommon - if by fundamentalist we mean absolute literalism. In fact I suspect US Christians would not recognise someone who read the bible literally as a Christian...

cj x

 

[blobru]

Yeah, my apologies. Unfortunately I have been so busy reviewing the Science of Ghosts event on my blog and attending meetings regarding a forthcoming Cheltenham Festival, plus doing other bits and bobs that I have completely failed to address your critique properly, (And it is a good one), or look at the data again as promised. I may well be talking absolute nonsense - so assume i am for the moment, and as soon as I have a few minutes spare I'll get back to you - I have to deal with some stuff on paradigms of play this morning, but hopefully free late tonight.

I'll also check out my reasoning with my housemate (A sociologist/historian of the Religious Right) and get her perspective. I still believe that actual fundamentalist beliefs are VERY uncommon - if by fundamentalist we mean absolute literalism. In fact I suspect US Christians would not recognise someone who read the bible literally as a Christian...

cj x

Hey, no problem and no rush. It looks like a case of trying too much to fit the numbers to a conclusion you feel should be true, which everyone's prone to (it's the reason I gave up on Physics: either the laws of physics are wrong, or my experimental technique stinks).

I think literalism is tied to fundamentalism, though I don't know that one has to believe in the literal truth of the whole Bible ('fundies' often say something like when they haven't read the Bible, in whole, part, or at all; their commitment seems to be to as straightforward and unsophisticated a congregational reading as possible; where some practice is [grossly] out-of-step with their own culture, it will be ignored or reinterpreted, but this tends to be the exception; whereas with 'progressive' Christians, it tends to be the rule; hence, where to draw the line?) Imo, however we define it, Christian "fundamentalism" worldwide is at a low ebb, thanks to much of Western Christendom adapting itself to the ascendance and prosperity of secular democracy (progressive xtianity, with its laissez-faire interpretations of scripture, would likely be as unrecognizable to the mainstream of traditional Christendom as some brands of fundamentalism might).

I'm not sure about the future of fundamentalism, though. With Christianity declining in the Northern hemisphere in importance and population, and exploding in the [for now] less affluent South, there's liable to be a return to an older, more fundamentalist sort of faith, given how much these poorer communities resemble the original audiences for whom the Bible was written; and wherever Christianity butts halos with aggressive rival religions, one might expect a response in kind. Such at least is the thesis of Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor Religious Studies & History, Pennsylvania State Univ (in books such as The New Faces of Christianity). If current demographic trends do continue, by 2025 both African and Latin American denominations will outnumber European; and Asian, North American. So who knows, rather than the end of fundamentalism, we may even live to see a revival of the Crusades!

However, that's for the future (and getting off-topic, it seems).