Islam is not based on jihad…at least not in any sense of phyiscal violence. Jihad refers to a apiritual struggle, not a violent one. Only a few extremists have distorted the meaning of jihad to include physical violence and terrorism.
This isnt GD, and I don’t want to ruin this thread.
I know that jihad is not ONLY physical violence. But it’s a philosophy that got its start in physical violence, and only later emphasized the struggle as a spiritual one.
Like the Spanish Inquisition–it’s a spiritual quest gone totally wrong. But unlike the Spanish Inquisition, it still has millions of advocates, including entire countries.
This is flat wrong. The word means “struggle,” and in the Koran it only refers to a spiritual struggle. Mohammed advocated violence only in self defense. The religion of Islam is NOT founded on any principle of physical violence. Get your facts straight and quit demonizing hundreds of millions of people based on your own misunderstandings.
I’d like to add Extreme Free Market-ism: the idea that there should be no regulation or taxation of business, and that the market, left to its own devices, will solve all of its own problems, and those of its society besides, because that’s where the profit is.
Don’t get me wrong: a market economy is, on the whole, a good thing. Human greed is a constant, and the pursuit of profit is just a way to harness this energy for the general good.
The key word, to me, is harness. Relying on a completely free, unregulated, untaxed market would be like turning one’s oxen loose in a field and expecting them to plow it on their own. History shows that the market works best when it is lightly regulated, delicately steered, gently supervised. (To extend the farming metaphor, enforcing a top-down state-controlled economy is sort of like requiring people to drag the plow around themselves.)
In general, money will win if we let it win. Most of the time, we do want money to win, because that’s the most efficient way to do things. But sometimes, that won’t provide the best solution, and open-minded analysis is the only way to separate the occasional exceptions.
Free-market fundamentalists believe otherwise; their belief in the ultimate power of the unregulated market is, basically, on the level of a religion. Note that I’d distinguish this from Libertarianism, because while Libertarianism encompasses most of the economic ideas of free-market fundamentalism, it goes beyond them into the sociocultural arena. Social issues, like gay marriage or government regulations about what you can name your children (which are enforced in some countries), are largely irrelevant to the free-marketers, and its adherents may or may not agree with one another on those questions, while Libertarians tend to be somewhat more consistent about determining what is state coercion and what isn’t.
Re DtC’s rejection of the term “fundamentalism,” he’s right if we use the narrow, legalistic definition referring to the fundamental content of a source text. I don’t buy into it myself, because I join with Mr. Borgia in advocating a somewhat more expansive definition, taking the close-minded, immune-to-counter-evidence worldview familiar in hardcore religious types and applying that, but not the need for a source text, to other areas of philosophy. I think it’s quite possible to identify and encapsulize a fundamental set of beliefs, as I tried to do above, without any requirement for their having been initially set forth in some sort of ur-Scriptural form.
Thanks (and apologIes for the mess-up).
I’ve run across a few in person who deny any religious involvement at all but insist that we couldn’t possibly have evolved. The ones I’ve met do seem to be influenced on this issue by the religious creationists around them, even though they deny it. Maybe they should be reclassified into ID-ers. Then Friar Ted’s mention of Ayn Rand pulled her from the back of my mind; I was sure I’d read years ago of someone prominent who held such a view, but couldn’t remember the name.
(Of course I really lost track of the “secular” part of the OP while typing my previous post, or I would have put in the disclaimer then. Sorry.)
Not quite creationism, but Stalinist Russia rejected genetics in favor of Lysenkoism.
This is probably true. Fundamentalism virtually by definition is defined by opposition to secularism. And one specific definition of fundamentalism relies on strict adherence to one textual interpretation of the bible and several key principles derived from said interpretation.
I think the secular equivalent is perhaps absolutism. Although that in itself does pose the problem that absolutism is a word that can mean two fairly different things. And most people tend to associate absolutism with the political theory as opposed to using it as a way to refer to an absolute doctrine or principle.
Jihad is very similar to the term crusade. A word which also carries great negative connotations but for which there are also many positive examples. For example I’ve seen food drives called “Crusades against hunger.” And it’s questionable if the negative connotations associated with “The Crusades” is justified since all the participants didn’t consider themselves on a crusade or to be crusaders but considered themselves to be pilgrims on a pilgrimmage.
AHunter3, are you by any chance an athropology graduate student? I saw my share what you’re talking about when I was in the program. The worst insult that could be hurled at you (other than “racist”) was to be accused of “reductivism.”
I’m still not 100% sure what that means in context.
I have to agree with DtC here. Fundamentalism has a well defined meaning that can not be just waived away by calling it a narrow, legalistic definition. The word means, “A return to fundamentals and adherence to those principals.” Thus, its impossible for there to be fundamentalist Bush haters, becuase there was no deviation, and return to fundamentals. Fundamentalism is not necessarly a bad thing, although its typically portrayed that way. Using it to simply mean extreme, or unbending adds more to the meaning than there should be.
“1. A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism.”
I’m well aware of what the term Fundamentalist usually/conventionally/perhaps even technically means, but I think it’s fairly fair to say I defined what I meant by it when I took it out of context (which I acknowledged doing). It’s an analogy- what secular ideologies are persued with as much vigor, irration, intolerance and refusal to compromise for any reasons as many people apply to their conservative religions?
When John P. Walters is described as as the nation’s current Drug Tsar I honestly never gathered from the description that he has actually been crowned “monarch and autocrat of all the Russians” [or of Bulgaria or other nations that use the title] by the appropriate Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the seal of St. Vladimir around his neck, a scepter in one hand and a gilded Faberge crack pipe in the other. I don’t think anybody else does either. It’s a non-literal use of the word to imply power and authority. Fundamentalism as used here (which again, I’ll admit is not it’s usual or literal meaning) is likewised altered a bit but meant to imply a specific mindset.
sheez…
Sociology, cultural anthro’s close cousin.
Past tense, by the way.
Nonsense. You’ve apparently never met a truly dedicated Marxist; they’re fundamentalists absolutely perfectly in line with your definition. They have sacred writing (The Manifesto, and Marx’s other texts) and hold to it, and the values it professes, just as firmly as any religious zealot. It’s fundamentalism in its purest form.
I agree that most of the examples cited this far are preposterous, and amount to little more than redefining “Fundamentalism” as “People who seem intolerant that I disagree with.” But hard-core Marxists do fit your definition, and the ideology even resembles Christianity in many ways; they have a Bible (the Manifesto) a Messiah (Marx) and any number of prophets and kings - Hegel is a sort of Saint Peter.
To be fair, I should admit that my boss, is actually a person who rejects evolution because of its sheer complexity and scale, without having any firm ideas of what should replace it.
I only asked because I thought you might be referring to the elusive throng of non-religious scientists who accept ID that many religious IDists keep heralding (in the sense that you might have uncritically accepted the claim of the existence of this fabled group)
After further thought, I have to say Diogenes and Treis have a point. If you view fundamentalism as the literal interpretation of sacred texts, then it may not make sense to speak of some secular fundamentalisms. It would still make sense to speak of a fundamentalist Marxist, IMO, largely for the reasons RickJay mentions. But it seems to me Marxism basically is a religion.
However this is largely a semantic point. I stand by what I said in my first post. The phenomenon I described and Sampiro encountered pretty obviously exists. If you want to call it “fanaticism” or “absolutism” or “irrationalism” instead of “fundamentalism,” that’s fine by me, at least.
The people I was speaking of were reasoning pretty much like your boss, though one or two were probably not smart enough to be reasoning at all. I don’t recall ever meeting one of those non-religious scientists who accept ID.
Something I’ve always thought resembles fundamentalism is the strict devotion of some to particular operating systems (MacOS, Linux, Windows, whatever - they all seem to have their fair share). Indeed, often ‘debates’ between such groups are referred to as holy wars, which is a pretty big clue.
In terms of the ‘strict adherence with a sacred text’ definition… I’ve occasionally been struck by the close resemblance between some people’s treatment of a religious text and a country’s constitution. It seems like for some, if a constitution says something, that is absolutely all there is to it - so, arguments then fall on whether the constitution is really saying that, if it’s literal, if it’s archaic, etc. No argument takes place over whether something is a good idea or not; it seems that simple adherence to the constitution is the top level goal. I should note that I can see that this is fair enough in legal discussions - it’s when a moral stance is backed up with ‘the constitution says so’ that it seems a bit dogmatic, to me, anyway.
~ Isaac
Only if all belief systems are religions. They’re not though; the reason we have the word “religion” is to indicate which belief systems are based on a faith in supernatural powers. Marxism is not, despite its other parallels with Christianity - a Messiah, a holy text, a Peter, a Judas, a John the Baptist, even an Armageddon and a Heaven. I can’t think of a Virgin Mary.
So if you want to restrict the word “fundamentalism” only to religions, I guess you can do that and eliminate Marxists, but as you point out, that really is not what the OP was asking. Sampiro SPECIFICALLY defined what he was looking for; **DtC’**s effort to invalidate his definition is a hijack. Marxism is a perfect example of what Sampiro was asking for; a secular belief system that has every single element of fundamentalism aside from belief in a God or Gods.
By comparison, “Racism,” which has been cited more than once, isn’t “fundamentalist” in any way. There’s no “Racist bible,” no real belief system you can point to there. Some will cite Nazism, specifically, but even that has no clear ideological underpinning the way Marxism does; Hitler himself was pretty inconsistent on who was or wasn’t racially superior or inferior.
Only if all belief systems are religions. They’re not though; the reason we have the word “religion” is to indicate which belief systems are based on a faith in supernatural powers. Marxism is not, despite its other parallels with Christianity - a Messiah, a holy text, a Peter, a Judas, a John the Baptist, even an Armageddon and a Heaven. I can’t think of a Virgin Mary.
So if you want to restrict the word “fundamentalism” only to religions, I guess you can do that and eliminate Marxists, but as you point out, that really is not what the OP was asking. Sampiro SPECIFICALLY defined what he was looking for; **DtC’**s effort to invalidate his definition is a hijack. Marxism is a perfect example of what Sampiro was asking for; a secular belief system that has every single element of fundamentalism aside from belief in a God or Gods.
By comparison, “Racism,” which has been cited more than once, isn’t “fundamentalist” in any way. There’s no “Racist bible,” no real belief system you can point to there. Some will cite Nazism, specifically, but even that has no clear ideological underpinning the way Marxism does; Hitler himself was pretty inconsistent on who was or wasn’t racially superior or inferior.