I was inspired to write this article by an exchange of comments on a science blog that I got involved with a while back. It reminded me of how similar people are regardless of their education and point of view, and how fundamentalist behavior can be found just about anywhere.
The discussion was started by a news item about the Texas School Board narrowly defeating an attempt by Young Earth creationists to force the teaching of science in Texas to include material that cast doubt on the scientific validity of evolution. It was a narrow margin for sure – a tie vote that kept the creationist amendment from passing.
The same week there was another news item reporting that the United Nations Human Rights group approved a proposal from a group of Islamist states to recommend that all criticism of religions be outlawed. The only religion mentioned by name was Islam.
Both of these items, plus the comments about them on the science blog, got me thinking about what fundamentalist thinking really is. The term originated in the 1920’s in the USA from a conservative Protestant religious movement inspired by a small book called “The Five Fundamentals of the Faith.” Over the years it has come to be associated with the strict literal religious beliefs often practiced by that movement. But I’ve noticed that fundamentalist behavior can be found in any belief system, not just in religions, and it is marked by a few common characteristics.
The first characteristic is commitment to a set of basic beliefs which are not open to discussion. Usually in religions they are based on some sacred text or teachings, but they can come from anywhere. The important thing is that they are not open to discussion, other than the kind that says “I’m gonna show you what an idiot you are.”
A second characteristic is a strong intolerance for any other point of view. In fact, people holding other points of view are usually demonized as heathen, or evil, or just plain stupid, as I mentioned above.
A third characteristic is that fundamentalists do not want to associate with people holding other points of view, to the point where, in extreme cases, they actually want to kill them. This makes dialogue very difficult, to say the least. In the present day it seems that only Islamic fundamentalists are that way, but a brief tour through the history of Christianity and other belief systems would illustrate much of the same behavior. Fortunately most fundamentalists are not nearly that extreme, but they do usually choose to associate only with their own kind and as a result are not often exposed to other points of view.
Fourth, they are usually convinced that they are members of a special privileged group that has some kind of elite status either now or in the afterlife. This is what gives them the right to look down on or set straight everyone else. They have the truth, and they have the right to proclaim it. A great illustration of this attitude is a popular bumper sticker that reads, “God said it, I believe it, That settles it!”
Fifth, within any larger group of religions or secular associations, the fundamentalists are the most noticeable because they are the loudest and most insistent about their views. Because they are certain they are right and everyone else is a sinner or idiot, or both, they try to monopolize the debate around anything of importance to them. That can lead others to think that everyone in that larger group feels that way, when in fact it’s just a loud, opinionated, and sometimes dangerous minority.
We can see this last principle at work today in the news, since the Christian fundamentalists are very active in public affairs, such as the Texas school controversy and Republican Party politics. This can lead observers to conclude that all spiritually minded people are scientifically ignorant and rabid right wingers. Fortunately this is not true, as the many friends and fellow ministers (my wife is a minister) that we know would attest. Our friends are mostly scientifically aware, and politically moderate and diverse. But quiet about it.
The same is true within the Muslim community. When we lived in Kansas City we had the opportunity to attend an interfaith dinner put on the local Muslims. They were a delightful group and quite disturbed by the bad rap that all Muslims were getting from the actions of the fundamentalists. The Muslims have a real PR problem here in the west because most Americans know little about Islam and its history and so have no way of evaluating the actions of the Islamic fundamentalists, some of whom are running countries with nuclear weapons. That’s rightfully a scary situation. And it’s these Islamic fundamentalists that want to prohibit public discussions of their actions. I can’t blame them. If my actions included some of the things they do in the name of God, like “honor killings” of women, I wouldn’t want to discuss them either! The important point is that they do not represent all Muslims, any more than Young Earth creationists represent all Christians.
I was kind of amused when I found that fundamentalism exists in the science community, too. When I participated in a discussion of the Texas school controversy on a science blog it was quickly apparent that some of the participants were convinced that all people who weren’t atheists were Christian fundamentalists. They didn’t appear to realize that there were millions of people with both a diversity of spiritual beliefs, and scientific expertise. They thought anyone who went to church was a Young Earth creationist. Their position was a very fundamentalist one – they were ignorant of other points of view, believed atheism was the only valid spiritual path and anyone not on it was an idiot. They saw themselves as superior and elite. Actually I thought it was pretty funny that these guys could believe that they were superior to fundamentalists by using fundamentalist behavior.
Since then I’ve seen signs of the same behavior among scientists when confronted with evidence that challenges materialism as the basis of science. There’s a community of self-proclaimed “skeptics” that are completely closed minded about consciousness, parapsychology, precognition and other mind-matter topics, regardless of the results of many well designed research projects that show significant results. This attitude was expressed by an researcher quoted in one of the books I’ve been studying who, when asked about something in the parapsychology arena, said determinedly, “I don’t believe it’s true! And even if it was true, I still wouldn’t believe it!” That’s a fundamentalist position, for sure!
So, what’s the solution to this kind of conflict? I like the approach that Ken Wilber took. He tells of making a breakthrough in his synthesis of a “theory of everything” when, instead of trying to figure out who was right and who was wrong, he realized that everybody was right, about something. If we can remember to approach every difference of opinion from the place of looking to see where the other person is right about something, we’ll not only learn things we might have missed, we’ll also contribute to harmony. People love to be heard, and to have their opinions valued. We can do that without having to agree with everything they say.
