Fundamental differences
From a different conversation; someone wrote: I think there's a distinction to be made between religion and fundamentalism. Fundies, of whatever persuasion, are certainly dangerous.
I try to be careful with the term "fundamentalism". While I am a lifelong atheist, my understanding of "fundamentalism" as it is used today is "belief in the literal truth and/or divine origin of sacred writings". It originated with a sect of the Christian church in the US about a century ago, but the term is applied to many others now (with confusing or misleading results, in my opinion).
When you use it to describe someone as "dangerous," you're faced with two different situations:
First, nearly ALL Muslims are described by this term. The Qur'an is accepted as the literal words of God dictated to Muhammed through the Angel Gabriel, and is still read in its original language so translation issues don't play the same role that they do in Bible/Torah-based religions. Nearly all Muslims ascribe to this divine origin, at least verbally, and to a lesser extent the Sunnah and al-Hadith (the writings about and quotes of Muhammed himself). Yet it is not true that all Muslims are "certainly dangerous".
Second, there are millions of Christians who could fairly be described as "fundamentalist" in their beliefs -- but they are not ganging up and committing acts of terrorism in the name of their religion (or at all, for that matter). You'll often find them deeply involved in charity work, feeding the hungry and sheltering homeless people and battered women and disadvantaged youngsters, and so on. They are not "certainly dangerous" people.
By using "fundamentalism" that way, you make fuzzy the real distinction -- that large numbers of people are willing to intentionally kill civilians, individually and en masse, to protect and expand their faith's domain. In the modern world, this is almost entirely the province of a radical subset of Muslims, and I use the term "jihadists" to make that distinction.
But religion itself? Not necessarily a bad thing. One thing annoys me about RD... his zeal against religion is almost fundy-like at times. Pot, kettle, black.
I see in the Wikipedia entry (caveats apply; Wikipedia is *very* political) that Richard Dawkins is now described as a "fundamentalist atheist". ];-)
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I try to be careful with the term "fundamentalism". While I am a lifelong atheist, my understanding of "fundamentalism" as it is used today is "belief in the literal truth and/or divine origin of sacred writings". It originated with a sect of the Christian church in the US about a century ago, but the term is applied to many others now (with confusing or misleading results, in my opinion).
When you use it to describe someone as "dangerous," you're faced with two different situations:
First, nearly ALL Muslims are described by this term. The Qur'an is accepted as the literal words of God dictated to Muhammed through the Angel Gabriel, and is still read in its original language so translation issues don't play the same role that they do in Bible/Torah-based religions. Nearly all Muslims ascribe to this divine origin, at least verbally, and to a lesser extent the Sunnah and al-Hadith (the writings about and quotes of Muhammed himself). Yet it is not true that all Muslims are "certainly dangerous".
Second, there are millions of Christians who could fairly be described as "fundamentalist" in their beliefs -- but they are not ganging up and committing acts of terrorism in the name of their religion (or at all, for that matter). You'll often find them deeply involved in charity work, feeding the hungry and sheltering homeless people and battered women and disadvantaged youngsters, and so on. They are not "certainly dangerous" people.
By using "fundamentalism" that way, you make fuzzy the real distinction -- that large numbers of people are willing to intentionally kill civilians, individually and en masse, to protect and expand their faith's domain. In the modern world, this is almost entirely the province of a radical subset of Muslims, and I use the term "jihadists" to make that distinction.
But religion itself? Not necessarily a bad thing. One thing annoys me about RD... his zeal against religion is almost fundy-like at times. Pot, kettle, black.
I see in the Wikipedia entry (caveats apply; Wikipedia is *very* political) that Richard Dawkins is now described as a "fundamentalist atheist". ];-)
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