Fundamentally Wrong

When confronted with a conflict between understanding, acceptance, freedom, and other positive values and conformity to doctrine, which do you side with? If you said the later, then I think you possess what seems to me to be the dominant view within fundamentalism.

This choice to place religious traditions and practices above values which provide for a more just, verdant and equitable world is to me the real harm that fundamentalism brings to the table. It seems a little ironic, because so often much of the religious text expounds these very virtues, and yet, they are often ignored and in place persecution and intolerance are substituted. An example is homosexuality and fundamentalist Christians. I don't remember reading anywhere in the bible about Jesus speaking out against homosexuality. In fact, there is a Christian sect called the Red Letter Christians, who focus only on the actual words of Jesus, and they have a pamphlet. On the cover, the pamphlet reads: what Jesus had to say about homosexuality. And the inside...totally blank.

What Jesus did speak out about was protecting the weak and disenfranchised. And yet, so often these fundamentalist Christians are out fighting against the very rights of this group of people who are often persecuted by the majority, just as Christians were in the early days of their religion.

A quote I like is that the danger is not in "not knowing" but it is in "thinking you know, when in fact, you do not". What is really dangerous to me about fundamentalism is the conviction that the believer has the ultimate Truth with a capital T. More than this, it is the belief that this truth is morally right. Now you take this, and you bring it into a field like politics or science. It is one thing to disagree with someone's political stance or someone's scientific conclusions, but if you truth is morally right, then by definition they are immoral. Now, that is a difficult chasm to cross. No amount of factual objections will change the fact that in your mind the other person is still on the side of immorality.

I want to clarify that fundamentalism isn't rooted only in Christianity or Islam, it is found in virtually every major religion. It is only that the deep political divisions within the U.S. and the War on Terror have brought these two religions to the forefront.

I am glad that in many of our universities we still teach critical thinking skills. I hope that critical, analytical thinking skills will allow people to sincerely gaze upon views that they may have previously taken for granted and ask about not only their truthfulness but also their utility to a positive functional society. David Hume famously said regarding religion: "A wise man...proportions his belief to the evidence".

I ask that we take a long hard look at the evidence and ask ourselves: Do the benefits of fundamentalism outweigh the negatives?