Fundamental or Fundamentalist? -- RSQUBF discussion forum

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Date Posted: 11:08:51 10/29/04 Fri
Author: Mike K.
Subject: Fundamental or Fundamentalist?
In reply to: SHane 's message, "Re: Once or all?" on 10:25:01 10/29/04 Fri

I have never heard of this "phenomenon" called fundamentalism. We can call UBF many things, but not fundamentalist. Perhaps your expanding the definition of fundamentalist.

Ah, well.
Actually, I'm not expanding the meaning of "fundamentalist". I also, a year ago, used to believe that "fundamentalist group" is even honoring UBF in a way which they shouldn't be called. With Chris, we were discussing the term "Bible-abusing" instead of "biblical fundamentalistic" cult.

Now, I had to learn that essentially, fundamentalism would go under the same definition as "religion", with two appendices: "with intolerance towards other world views" and "irrationally rejecting any alternatives".

So, what you'd get is: Fundamentalism is:
"An intolerant individual or corporate system of beliefs, attitudes and practices, which irrationally rejects any alternatives."
Essentially, every fundamentalist will believe that THEY hold the "full truth" and this gives them the right to squeeze everything into their pattern of thought, because no alternative is right anyway - so
...whatever we see, either we reject it (anything other than the Bible and the word of our leaders, see Fellow Christian's: You haven't shown me from the Bible that UBF is wrong) or we twist it until it fits into what we want it to mean.

This is the definition of "fundamentalism" which you will find in the cult study sector.
Do you believe that Al-Quaeda is a Koran-fundamentalistic group if "fundamentalism" means "taking this as the basis of belief"? No, Al-Quaeda is merely another fundamentalistic group which takes anything they can find that fits their ideology, and the rest they reject without any reason allowed.
UBF appears similar in that aspect (please, I don't compare UBF equal to AQ in *practice*, but in the underlying way of interpreting things!)

You should note that in the U.S., originally, "fundamentalism" was a counter-tendency towards "liberalism", because "liberalists" accepted many kinds of teachings, such as homosexual marriage etc., and of course, it's not bad to oppose such teachings.
However, it ended up that fundamentalists reject everything which they ASSUME to be wrong, and that is in many cases exactly what I defined above: intolerance towards other world views and an irrational rejection of alternatives.

Fundamentalism, please be aware, is a negatively-connotated term, even though fundamentalists like exactly the definition you quoted and call themselves proud to be fundamentalists. Yet, in reality, fundamentalists are just as blind as liberalists, because often, they refuse to examine themselves and other teachings in the light of the Bible since they assume they got things right anyway.

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Replies:

Re: Fundamental or Fundamentalist? -- Shane, 12:07:13 10/29/04 Fri
- Tolerance -- Mike K., 03:27:07 10/30/04 Sat
  - Re: Tolerance -- Shane, 13:49:52 10/30/04 Sat