Well, those Protestant Christians who hold that the Bible (the 66 books that they recognize as canonical, that is) is without error, do share a number of consequent beliefs and traits across denominational lines. Having a term that groups these people together is conversationally useful, otherwise we need to repeat longwinded phrases such as my first phrase above, when one word will do.
Fundamentalists, IMHO, are much more cohesive in their beliefs (at least those that impact the rest of us) than liberals are in their politics, yet people - including reasonably respected posters on this board - feel free to make sweeping generalizations about liberals. Such is life.
I was on a Wiccan site long ago and they had a section titled how to deal with fundies (truth is it was the first time I’d ever seen that term). In reading what they had to say: they felt that anyone that adhered to their own beliefs and insisted on others doing the same*, were fundies. They used the term Atheist fundies, which opened a whole new world of thinking for me.
But that’s just it. They are not as monolithic in their beliefs as non-Protestants seem to think (as demonstrated by this thread). Any five people can look at a passage of the Bible and come up with five different interpretations of what that passage means, all the while believing that the passage represents the “infallible” word of God. Interpretational disputes are the reason we have so many Protestant denominations.
Granted. Try “Protestants.” Or if you need to be more specific, “fundamentalists.” No one would call themselves that, but at least it is reasonably respectful.
I’m just saying that “fundy” is an unnecessarily insulting term. Similar to referring to Catholics as “Papists.”
Don’t I know it. And it’s annoying, isn’t it? You lose respect for a poster who makes such sweeping generalizations about “liberals,” don’t you? Same thing.
But hey, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. As I said, I’m an atheist. (And a liberal, for that matter.) I’m just suggesting a more respectful approach toward Protestants. It’s just good manners.
You seem to think that a “fundie” is a Protestant and likewise that all Protestants are “fundies”. This attitude to me qualifies as one that would be held by a “fundie” of another faith, including an Atheist fundie.
I wasn’t ignoring your post. My last post was in response to the post of RTFirefly. I was not responding to your remarks.
I will do that now.
It appears that you are not using the most commonly accepted definition of “fundamentalism.” Here it is (from Webster’s dictionary):
A “fundamentalist,” then, would be a member of one of the Protestant churches which follow a fundamentalist doctrine. And “fundy,” as used by most people, is a diminutive (and insulting) way to refer to such a fundamentalist.
No offense, but if you are going to use some definition of “fundy” other than the common one, then you shouldn’t be surprised if it creates confusion.
kniz wrote:
On the contrary, my post implicitly acknowledges that “fundamentalists” are a sub-set of Protestant churches.
How would I think that [ul][] Muslim fundamentalists []Christian fundamentalists [] Jewish fundamentalists [] Atheist fundamentalists [] Pagan fundamentalists [] Other fundamentalists[/ul] all have the same beliefs? You are the one that says they have to be Protestant.
The way it has been explained to me (from a church that most of you would see as Protestant fundamentalist on these sort of issues) is that God created us to be people who had a choice of whether or not to love him/worship him/whatever. Free will is null without the presence of a choice. If there had been no way for Adam and Eve to disobey, then they wouldn’t have had free will. The act of disobedience, perhaps more than the fruit itself (or whatever, I obviously don’t know)) opened their eyes to all of the possiblities of living outside of God’s will for their lives. They knew good and evil; they could begin to comprehend the immensity of what they had done and perhaps see the ramifications of separation from God. Now, this does not mean they had no responsibility for their previous choice; God had told them “Look, I have all this stuff for you. It’s the perfect life. Do whatever you want, just leave the fruit of that one tree over there (out of thousands, maybe) alone.” And the scripture doesn’t say “they were like gods, knowing good from evil”. They were able to see the difference, but that didn’t make them “like gods”. In fact, it did the opposite; it introduced them to death. And with evil in themselves, it was inevitable that it would be passed to their children.
I guess my attitude is that Fundimentalism is a specific movement within American Christianity. “Fundie” is a sort of derogatory nickname for that. If you want a word that means “intolerant”, which is how you seem to be using “fundie”, why don’t you just use “intolerant”?
It seems like linking fundimentalism with intolerance is kind of unfair to fundimentalists.
In one usage, “fundamentalism” is a term, usually derogatory in connotation, for anyone committed to a given religion to a point beyond what those not so committed would consider reasonable. Accordingly, there are fundamentalist Hindus, fundamentalist Moslems, and fundamentalist Jews. The exact significance of how one is “fundamentalist” differs from religion to religion. Karen Armstrong’s The Battle for God does a wonderful job of spelling out the varying fundamentalisms of the three Western faiths.
In another sense, it means what it was originally defined to mean, a Christian (of Protestant persuasion) who adheres to the five “fundamentals of the Christian faith” (which I’ll let the Google-iferous Duck Duck Goose post, since I know she has them at far readier reference than I do).
Since one of the major tenets of the latter sense is the literal truth of the Biblical narrative, such things as “creation science” and belief in a universal Flood are common concomitants of fundamentalism.