FORMS OF FUNDAMENTALISM - WARNING "PROGRESSIVES" CAN BE FUNDAMENTALIST TOO!

Fundamentalism is defined as claiming that you know what you do not know and thus it pays attention only to truth when it suits it. You may not be aware that you claim this but actions speak for you that you do.  For example, the Christian who has never hardly looked at the evidence for or against the Bible being true may say, “I just know it’s all true.” The extremism of the fundamentalist is not what makes him a fundamentalist. It is the arrogant know-it-all attitude. This attitude results in extremism. A fundamentalist and an extremist are two different things. 

Fundamentalism starts with a preference for believing that natural things are not really of natural origin but from God.  So the Bible for example is seen as authored by God and not just the work of God.  Or a cure is seen as done by God not the doctors who treated you.  There is some form of psychopathology at work here.  Or fundamentalism may give rise to it.  To turn the natural or human into God is obviously bad.

The label, liberal, is not very useful or clear. It usually is manipulative. When a person wants to be seen as open-minded and forward-looking and progressive they will want to be classed as liberal. When a religion is man-made or false, the believers who want to change the faith to fit the facts are called liberals but in fact they are just liars. The decent thing to do is admit the truth about the religion.
 
A belief can be fundamentalist. You can be liberal and have one fundamentalist belief. That one belief could be enough for you to do something terrible. Nice beliefs in a religion make the nasty dangerous belief feel and look better and thus empower it.

A fundamentalist religion means a religion that is fine but has at least one dangerous belief. Or it might have a number of beliefs that are dangerous when they are together though each individual belief seems to be little to worry about. A religion of peace that orders its members to let the enemy kill them when it asks them to abandon the belief is being passively fundamentalist. A religion that there is no trouble with is yet being fundamentalist when it commands you to believe that holy books that speak of a God who commands evil things. That is active fundamentalism and made worse when you are told that you call God a liar and will go to Hell forever unless you believe. A good example of active fundamentalism is when Islam cuts the hands off thieves.

The best definition of fundamentalism is that it seeks to put doctrine before people because it sees the doctrine as the simple truth and it does not care about the real truth.

Another definition of fundamentalists are individuals who identify with their religion so that any criticism of it is perceived not as an attack on a belief or doctrine but as an attack on them. It is very demeaning to see yourself as being about doctrines rather than being a person. Such a person is claiming to know the doctrines are true for it is worth identifying with them so much that they become him and he becomes them. The person obviously puts more value on religion than people. The person perverts their regard for themselves and so that will distort their attitude for others and their relationships with others. The offence one feels and expresses when one's religion is not followed by others or contradicted by them is deployed as a weapon to silence.  They will be made afraid to say anything in case one will take it personally.  One may even threaten them into silence.

Such an individual shows signs of addiction for if you are a qualified nurse you do not consider being a nurse as part of what you are to the extent that you cannot drop out of the medical profession and become an accountant. Your career is not you. Fundamentalists act like addicts.

Every religion demands that you believe certain doctrines and it asks you to make huge sacrifices for what it says. Even if you don't make them you are still invited to. A religion claiming its rites and/or its message can save you from everlasting damnation is a huge thing. A man-made religion then is necessarily harmful in itself. Only God can create a religion that saves or whose existence is justified. A man-made religion is necessarily fundamentalist. If religion were really concerned about truth, then say if the Mormons were a false religion and the evidence against it were sufficient, the leaders would depart and the membership would look for another religion. That is not what happens. The silliest and most implausible religions seem to withstand whatever evidence and proofs are directed at them that they are wrong. The reason they survive is that they don't really care about real truth but about what they want to believe about the truth. Science is able to get rid of rubbish medicine but rubbish religion persists. Each religion likes to think the others are guilty of not caring about the truth. This leads to division and sectarianism.

Fundamentalism and supernaturalism go together. Even atheistic fundamentalism is supernatural in a sense. It implies that certain ideas must get an exemption from being checked out. They must be treated as knowledge. Such an attitude is treating the ideas as sacred. The sacred only makes sense if you feel and or think the supernatural is real. People can treat anything at all as sacred - even atheist beliefs! True atheism cannot be fundamentalist. Also, have those who are professed atheists and who behave in a fundamentalist way learned this from religious fundamentalism?