As I’ve commented before about fundamentalism - it doesn’t matter who the fundamentalist is. Whenever an individual or group know beyond reasonable doubt that they are right then they become judgemental and dangerous to the rest of us. This includes - in no particular order - Islamic, Anarchist, Anti-Capitalist, Socialist, Christian and New Atheist viewpoints. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks - if they believe they are right then they stop listening to others, they become fundamentalists.
In my life in the church I really got the impression that attitude should be true in pursuit of the Christian faith. That in order to be a Christian I must believe all the things contained in the bible beyond reasonable doubt. By my own measure I became a fundamentalist and in many ways I am, retrospectively, less than proud of my actions, no matter how small. This belief (that I now understand to be false) eventually caused the faith I had to implode as I discovered hypocrisy and contradiction in others and, eventually, in myself.
Today I saw a refreshing piece of comment in the Guardian by Madeleine Bunting entitled Real debates about faith are drowned by the New Atheists’ foghorn voices. The Guardian crowd are pretty anti-religion, and I can’t blame them as their views are formed from the unhelpful vocal fundamental minority who are always the loudest. As a result they are often anti-spirituality too which is sad. This piece however is very good and worth a read. I particularly like the start of a definition of faith that I’d be happy to use as a starting point for my own definition. Maybe another time… anyway, I encourage you to have a read.
[...] today’s Guardian was a response to a comment article I discussed a couple of weeks [...]