Dangerous Fundamentism

There's been a lot of talk in the recent years about fundamentalism.  It's always religious fundamentalism - usually Christian and Muslim.  The assessment is often that's it dangerous.  And much of the warning comes from secuarlists who think religion is patently wrong and often dangerous to society and rationality.

Does it ever occur to secularists that there can be a fundamentalist version of their view that is dogmatic,  threatens fundamental institutions of civilization, and is irrational?  Fundamentalism isn't just a religious problem. 

Comments

[RonH]

I think of fundamentalism as coming from The Fundamentals and I think some people self-identify that way. The authors, for example. If somebody doesn't like the term applied to them, in spite of having taken on the views, what are we supposed to do?

Also, I wish people wouldn't use secular when they atheistic. (Too bad for me!) Soccer is secular. The players and the officials can all have the same religion, different religions, or no religion. That makes no difference to soccer because soccer is secular. Soccer is atheistic, too, I suppose but it really makes no sense to describe it that way.

RonH

[Dave]

This is an interesting article by RC Sproul Jr.

http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/our-fundamentalist-betters/

[Boz]

Fundamentalism happens everywhere!

I'm sure we all have friends who say: "Don't buy XXX brand sporting equipment, they are all crap".

or, "XXX political party is for raving loonies that hate [country]"

[Robert]

I'm not convinced fundamentalist really means anything anymore—it's just a buzzword with negative overtones that is swapped interchangeably with those religious people. Pop culture would say of course the non-religious can't be dogmatic—they aren't religious!

It's so backwards.

[James]

I agree, you can certainly find fundamentalism on both ends of the spectrum.

However, it doesn't help remove the plank in the church's eye to point out the splinter in the atheist's.

[dave]

We should start calling political conservatives "fundamentalists" since they actually are. Perhaps it would help shed light on some things.