Hiyas

[vulcanlogician]

Welcome.

We had another TTAer intro himself earlier. I'm all for some cross pollination between forums. I like new faces.

If there's one thing that bothers me about religion, it's fundamentalism. I'd love to hear your take on it.

I think fundamentalism is what happens when people who are uncomfortable with complexity and nuance run up against religion.  (I'm writing about the Christian fundamentalist outlook here, since it's the most familiar to me.)  The fundamentalist outlook is exciting and imparts meaning to even the most ordinary of activities.  The world is not just full of interesting and distracting things, it's a battleground for your soul!  Every day, the forces of evil are trying actively to lead you astray.  Also, the rules are well defined, so it's easy to know if you're abiding by them.  There's a lot of autism in my family (me included), and one characteristic of that neurotype for us is that rules of social interaction are not intuitive and need to be spelled out.  Explicit rules are comfortable and reassuring.  I think fundamentalism also appeals to people who feel overwhelmed by their impulses by providing strong limits. Then for other people, religion’s a social thing that you shouldn’t have to think about too much.  Fundamentalism’s all answers, no questions (except for “have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”), and that’s okay with them: they’re at church to hang out with their friends.  

I see fundamentalism as comforting and stabilizing to some people, but at a cost of being extremely damaging to others.  The biggest victims, IMO: children suffering from attempted inoculation against critical thinking, and non fundamentalists whose behavior fundamentalists are trying to limit legally (for example, rules that prohibit atheists from holding public office, which are still on the books in many places, though not enforced currently).   I think the costs outweigh the benefits by far.This may be the wrong section for my thoughts—if so, sorry—but that’s a quick answer.

Also sorry for the two different typefaces--for some reason the typing in this box was very slow this morning, so I wrote the second half elsewhere and pasted it.

Fixed the typeface thing for you. When you write a post, above the text box you'll see two rows of icons. The one on the bottom right ("view source") makes it so that any copy/paste will conform to the default font and size used on AF.

There are a ton of fundamentalists in my hometown (in Appalachia). It was a bit more harcore, I found, when I lived in the South, but I'm familiar enough with it to dislike it intensely. The "attempted inoculation against critical thinking" is what bothers me the most. At best it stifles intellectual curiosity. At worst it leads to bigotry and interpersonally destructive behavior. I could go on.

AFAIK, this is not the wrong section for your thoughts on the matter, but feel free to start a thread/post elsewhere about it. I like how you look at it objectively for its positives and negatives.