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People throw around the word "fundamentalist" much too loosely. This is true of atheists attacking religion, too. I get tired of both the "fundie" label used by some atheists for any religious person that holds an extreme position, and also the "fundamentalist atheist" label used by religious apologists who think you can refute someone's arguments by pasting a derogatory label on them.

Part of the problem is that if someone says that they feel that they can be reasonably certain that such-and-such religious belief is false, they only get the "fundamentalist atheist" label slapped on them if the religious belief they're calling false is a belief of one of the wealthy, powerful, popular religion. Minor religions or extinct religions receive no such privilege. Nobody has ever called me a "fundamentalist atheist" when I claim that I am reasonably certain that L. Ron Hubbard died of natural causes, rather than voluntarily releasing his spirit and traveling to another galaxy as the Scientologists claim. However, when I claim that I am reasonably certain that Jesus was not born of a virgin and did not rise from the dead, I'm a "fundamentalist atheist" who "dogmatically" rejects religion.

I'm quite certain (but not absolutely certain) that Dionysus did not resurrect from Zeus's thigh, that Baldur was not killed by Loki, and that Joseph Smith did not find any golden plates. For this, no one has ever called me a militant or any other such label. Not once. I'm equally certain (again, not 100% certain, but reasonably certain) that Moses did not receive any laws from any gods on Mt Sinai, that Krishna did not appear to Arjuna on a battlefield, and that Muhammad did not receive any messages from Gabriel. Yet I have been called "fundamentalist atheist" for expressing these views.

This is why I think labels like "fundamentalist atheist" have no concrete meaning. L. Ron Hubbard traveling to a far away galaxy isn't any less believable than God turning himself into a person and dying then resurrecting, yet publicly denying one and publicly denying the other get very different reactions. It all depends on how popular the religious belief being denied is. That's the only distinction I can find between a "fundamentalist atheist" and a person merely stating that a certain belief is wildly implausible. Scientologists and Raelians are unpopular, so criticizing their beliefs is acceptable. Christians and Muslims are popular, so criticizing their beliefs is "fundamentalist".

Posted by: wes | March 14, 2008 7:25 PM

Re Richard Dawkins

Having read most of Prof. Dawkins books and having downloaded and listened to a number of videos and podcasts featuring him I think I have a fair idea of where he is coming from.

1. Prof. Dawkins considers the existance of god to be a scientific proposition.

2. From item 1, it then follows that it is required that scientific evidence be produced to support that proposition.

3. Thus far, Prof. Dawkins has seen no such evidence. Further, he considers that there are instances in the bible where claims are made that are in conflict with science (e.g. Joshua making the sun stand still) which he considers to constitute falsification. Thus, in the absence of such evidence and in lieu of what he considers to be falsification, he has tentatively concluded that god does not exist. However, should such evidence be forthcoming, like any good scientist, he would be willing to reconsider his position.

The problem really is in item 1 above and the notion that claims made in the bible which are in conflict with scientific findings constitute falsification. For instance, he disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould who did not consider the existence of god to be a scientific proposition (non-overlapping magisteria).

Posted by: SLC | March 14, 2008 7:45 PM

I have to thank you for your heroic efforts Jason. Personally, I have a pretty strict threshold on the amount of blatant intellectual dishonesty I can encounter before I stop taking people seriously.

Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | March 14, 2008 8:08 PM

"This is why I think labels like 'fundamentalist atheist' have no concrete meaning."

I think that is half-true. Certainly there is a lot of variance in how the phrase is used, but the common denominator in all of the variant usage is that (1) certain atheists mirror the faults of fundamentalists, and (2) that they are hypocritical for doing so. It's probably not much use in asking whether Dawkins or other "New Atheists" is a fundamentalist. Asking whether some of Dawkins' behavior, or for that matter that of Hitchens or Harris, has been reminiscent of that of fundamentalists is another story.

Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 14, 2008 10:05 PM

Doh! I posted my comment on this question in the other thread. Which is to say, the wrong tab.

But short version; for historical reasons, Dawkins (and Myers in our shore) are not "fundamentalists" even though they sound a little bit like them. The resemblance is superficial, not foundational.

Posted by: decrepitoldfool | March 14, 2008 10:34 PM

As you pointed out, Chris was quite offended at the whole "Neville Chamberlain atheists" expression. Now he's getting his own licks in by slinging New Atheists and Atheist Fundamentalists around. It's disappointing.

And, because it has to be said, I think he's got his head rather up his own fundament on this one.

Posted by: Alexandra | March 15, 2008 12:02 AM

I have to agree with what both Tyler DiPietro and J.J. Ramsey said.

I also should point out that as far as "fundamentalist-like tactics" go, that accusation doesn't apply to Richard Dawkins anywhere as near as much as it applies to Christopher Hitchens.

I found this article on Salon interesting, and the book looks like it might be worth reading. (Naturally, this expression of interest should not be interpreted as an endorsement.)

Posted by: Pseudonym | March 15, 2008 1:36 AM

The term "fundamentalism" comes from "The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth", which was produced as a multivolumne set of essays in the early twentieth century, as various conservative Christians tried to set out what they considered "fundamentals" for their faith. Much of it was a reaction against "higher criticism", in which the text of the bible was analyzed much like any other text to look for authors, redaction history, and so on. The fundamentals include such things as biblical inerrancy, virgin birth, the doctrine of atonement, Jesus' bodily resurrection, and so on. Curiously, young earth creationism was not part of these "fundamentals"; the one essay in the collection which addressed the idea took an old earth creationist perspective.

For me, "fundamentalism" is essentially this attempt to set up a set of basic fundamental principles to distinguish right from wrong belief.

I find it rather self-serving to insist that atheist fundamentalism is a contradiction. Some atheists do, in fact, seem to have a kind of "fundamentalist" approach, in which they attempt to set up some basic fundamentals which distinguish real atheists from not-quite-really atheists, and in ways which have nothing much to do with actual disbelief in God, but go to how you express that, or respond to believers.

Very few atheists have done this as drastically and deliberately as the Christian fundamentalists, but there is a whiff of fundamentalism that does appear from time to time.

Dawkins does not generally show this kind of approach, from what I have read. He's certainly got strong views of what appropriate tactics in speaking up for atheism; but that's fine. He seems pretty good at avoiding setting up his strong ideas on tactics and the worth of religion as being some kind of test for real atheism, so I do not think Dawkins is a "fundamentalist" in this sense.

Some months ago, there were rather foolish ideas floating around the web, in which some atheists were trying to run down other atheists for failing to behave or speak as they felt atheists ought to speak. This approaches my understanding of fundamentalism.

It's self serving to insist by definition that only a religion can be fundamentalist. In fact, atheism, politics, social activism, and so on can all be blighted by a "fundamentalist" approach. I don't think atheists have anything like the problem with this style of fundamentalism as do religious groups. But there are a couple of "fundamentalist" style atheists around, as I understand the term, and a few others who may stray in that direction from time to time.

Posted by: Duae Quartunciae | March 15, 2008 6:13 AM

Fairly simple answer, if you define fundamentalist as someone who absolutely believes in something with unwavering confidence, Dawkins is a fundamentalist. He absolutely believes that when there is evidence for something, especially properly researched evidence and which follows a scientific model of repeatability and testability, that it is true. What makes differs between that and religious fundamentalists, is that they believe what they know is absolute despite all contrary evidence.

Posted by: David | March 15, 2008 9:38 AM

What makes differs between that and religious fundamentalists, is that they believe what they know is absolute despite all contrary evidence.

With a heavy dose of skewing the definition fo the word "evidence". The feeling that a fundamentalist has inside him or her is evidence, in their book.

Posted by: decrepitoldfool | March 15, 2008 11:02 AM

'Fundamentalist atheist' appears to be little more than a slur, and a 'tu quoque' one.

Posted by: chancelikely | March 15, 2008 12:23 PM

Abbie: "The only thing I can imagine they mean by fundamentalist atheist is- fundamental materialist or empiricist. Taking the scientific method as the end-all and be-all of knowledge."

I don't think that's quite true. For example, when R.J. Eskow used the phrase, he wrote, "For people who advocate reason and the primacy of hard data, they're surprisingly dismissive of both when it comes to religion." You can see a similar complaint from Chris himself on Mixing Memory, in the post "Respecting the Religious (or the A-Religious)": "One of the reasons I have so little respect for most "New Atheists" is because it's quite clear that they haven't thought a whole hell of a lot about religion, but they still spend much of their time attacking it." As I said, the phrase "fundamentalist atheist" pretty consistently is used to deride certain atheists as hypocritical, and in this case, the purported (and to some extent, actual) hypocrisy is the tendency of the "New Atheists" to be cheerleaders for reason while being lousy at actually using it.

Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 15, 2008 1:58 PM

That Eskow article is pretty ridiculous. Just one example:

They chose this name even though one of the leading figures of the atheist 'skeptic' movement wrote a piece called "Why Smart People Believe Weird Things." The author, Michael Schermer, cites a study which demonstrates that people of faith are just as smart on average as atheists.

(It's only Schermer's opinion that what these smart people believe is "weird," of course, but he writes an interesting and provocative piece. His central thesis is that smart people can hold illogical ideas because they're effective at defending ideas they arrived at non-intellectually. That's a valid point, and it certainly helps explain fundamentalist atheism.)

Only Shermer's "opinion"? I've read Shermer, and he does more than merely give his opinions. Creationism, holocaust denial, new age, etc are "weird" because they grossly conflict with the facts. This is not just Shermer's opinion. These things are just plain wrong.

Eskow makes a lot of false generalizations about "new" atheists in there. Then he drops this doozy:

They lack a sense of the mysterious and beautiful. Today's fundamentalist atheists lack the poetry or vision of a Carl Sagan, a John Lennon, or other great atheists of the past. They use scientific thought in much the same was as religious fundamentalists use sacred texts - as the source for unquestionable and rigid truths that can't be challenged.

Both types of fundamentalist hold an accountant's-eye view of the universe, one which neglects its mystery and wonder.

11 years ago RC Lewontin was accusing Carl Sagan of doing many of the things that Eskow is now accusing Dawkins et al of doing:

Most of the chapters of The Demon-Haunted World are taken up with exhortations to the reader to cease whoring after false gods and to accept the scientific method as the unique pathway to a correct understanding of the natural world. To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test. So why do so many people believe in demons? Sagan seems baffled, and nowhere does he offer a coherent explanation of the popularity at the supermarket checkout counter of the Weekly World News, with its faked photographs of Martians. Indeed, he believes that "a proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us in all times, places and cultures." The only explanation that he offers for the dogged resistance of the masses to the obvious virtues of the scientific way of knowing is that "through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science." He does not tell us how he used the scientific method to discover the "embedded" human proclivity for science, or the cause of its frustration. Perhaps we ought to add to the menu of Saganic demonology, just after spoon-bending, ten-second seat-of-the-pants explanations of social realities.

http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm

But now Sagan's dead, and he's a "poetic" atheist, one of "the great atheists of the past"--a classic example of how we tend to turn our heroes into mythic figures once they're dead. Whatever. Sagan wasn't nearly so different from Dawkins as Eskow would like to think. Read through Lewontin's criticisms of Sagan and then through Eskow's criticisms of the "New Atheists" and tell me if you don't see similarities--accusations of "elitism", accusations of "authoritarianism", accusations that they aren't following the "scientific method" enough, accusations of "dogmatically" held beliefs, etc etc etc. Same shit being thrown at a different target.

The charge that Dawkins doesn't pay enough attention to the scientific study of religion is correct--and David Sloan Wilson makes that point much more forcefully and convincingly. Dawkins' meme theory is almost certainly wrong and conflicts with a lot of the evidence from the scientific study of religion as an evolutionary phenomenon. But there is no "evidence" at all that Jesus is anyone's savior or that Zeus birthed Athena from his head--and usually when people call Dawkins a "fundamentalist" they do so by charging he didn't consider the "evidence" for that type of nonsense. His atheism--ie his rejection of religious belief--is no more fundamentalist than David Sloan Wilson's atheism, who rejects religious belief just as strongly as Dawkins while criticizing Dawkins for the sloppiness of his meme theory. (Of course, Wilson called Dawkins a "fundamentalist" because of how Dawkins rejected group selection theory, and he doesn't use the word any more carefully than the others who bandy it around...)

As I said, this assignment of the label "fundamentalist atheist" is almost always arbitrary. Dawkins denies Raelism just as much as Christianity--but it is only for denying the latter that the label "fundamentalist" is whipped out. He rejects religion just as much as Carl Sagan did, yet Sagan, being dead and well-respected, has avoided the label.

No religion has provided any substantial evidence of any sort to prove their gods or spirits are real. Sneering at the notion that the ruler of the universe turned himself into a person and died and resurrected isn't any different than sneering at the notion that Sun Myung Moon is God's Messiah sent to save the world, or that a UFO is hiding behind Haley's comet. These beliefs are ridiculously implausible, and it's not "fundamentalist" to say so.

I'm not saying anyone has to agree with Dawkins--I disagree with him myself on many issues. But labeling him or the other "New Atheists" as "fundamentalists" is nonsense.

Posted by: Wes | March 15, 2008 4:42 PM

for me "fundamentalism" is about "othering". In this sense, there are times I think Dawkins (and many sciencebloggers) are guilty. They spend considerable effort othering religious folks. I would say there are many far more guilty than Dawkins...the folks attacking the "appeasers" several months ago for instance. Appeasers were not pure enough for them.

Posted by: randy | March 15, 2008 5:13 PM

Wes: "Eskow makes a lot of false generalizations about 'new' atheists in there."

True, but that doesn't mean that his article isn't useful as an example of how the term "fundamentalist atheist" has been used.

BTW, Wes, it's been a while since I read my library's copy of Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, but IIRC, he acknowledges that "weird" is a fuzzy term.

Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 15, 2008 6:43 PM

I'm getting the message that it's clearly not enough to simply identify yourself as an atheist. You must in addition demonstrate that you are a politically correct atheist, because there is undoubtedly out there some platonic standard of atheism that is not otherwise immoral and a sign of the hopelessly ignorant. And anything that smacks of the fundamental just won't do, as fundamentalism implies a certain intolerable stance of certainty, and the arrogance that certainly goes with it.

Posted by: royniles | March 15, 2008 7:07 PM

Oh, and Jason, if you'd like to see some more of what I call "naive scientism" (often, it seems, a position that people aren't even aware they're taking), read some more of the comments over at my posts. There you'll see people wondering what sort of truths there could possibly be that science can't discover.

And these people are not getting very good answers. If someone does not believe in moral or aesthetic absolutes, they are guilty of naive scientism? People might simply disagree that "truth" is a good word for describing moral or aesthetic experiences.

(for disclosure, I disagree that science delivers "Truth", but I assume (although can't be completely sure) that it delivers at least an approximation of truth more often than not, but "facts" or "reality" might be better or less loaded words for it)

Posted by: windy | March 15, 2008 7:40 PM

windy...

(for disclosure, I disagree that science delivers "Truth", but I assume (although can't be completely sure) that it delivers at least an approximation of truth more often than not, but "facts" or "reality" might be better or less loaded words for it).

Posted by: Jim | March 15, 2008 8:23 PM

Someone mentioned false generalizations. Are not all generalizations to some extent false by definition? Just wondering if that's a new phrase in the ever-growing list of newly minted logical fallacies and politically correct terminologies?

Somebody also asked me how many atheists can dance on a pinhead? I was a bit offended at the false assumption that I was qualified to answer that, or to think there was an answer to that.

Posted by: royniles | March 15, 2008 8:49 PM

Hi Jason :)

I'm an 18 year old A-Level Biology student and have only a very rudimentary understanding of the modern evolutionary synthesis. I'm a very open-minded Atheist and agree that the title fundamental is used far too easily by people on both sides, resorting to mud slinging and 'name-calling', instead of engaging in rational debate.

A so-called 'creationist' has recently posted on my blog, coming forward with the usual 'proof' against evolution. I was wandering if you, or anyone else for that matter, had any advice on dealing with creationists, and perhaps even explaining evolution to mild mannered ones, without resorting to verbal aggression or condescending arrogance? ;)

Thanks :)
Mark

Posted by: Mark | March 15, 2008 9:19 PM

Jim: Ah, but if some generalizations need to be called false, does that not leave others in then category of true? And was it not Mark Twain who said: "All generalizations are false, including this one." But it could be a false assumption that Twain was all that much of an authority.

Posted by: royniles | March 15, 2008 9:39 PM

Mark...
Wendy is right. That guy goes on at some length essentially over his confusion of evolution & the origin of life. He also somehow misconstrues book passages that he has just quoted:

...The text adds "About 3.8 billion years ago, Earth's surface cooled enough for water to remain a liquid" (p 424).
In summary, evolutionists state that the earth was so hot that everything was molten. Toxic gases were prevalent, there was no water until 3.8 billion years of cooling and life without life was impossible...

Posted by: Jim | March 15, 2008 10:24 PM

Thank you both, Wendy and Royniles, for your replies :)

It appears that 'righteous Ronald' has earned himself a bit of a bad rep around here :P I've given up even trying to 'deconvert' him from creationism, I'm just considering it a welcome opportunity to consolidate, and expand, my understanding of evolution :)

I chose not to moderate any of his comments, as I think any Atheist's blog would be incomplete without a few ranting lunatics, plus I've nothing to fear from creationists anyway ;)

Posted by: Mark | March 16, 2008 6:21 AM

I've had a couple 9/11 conspiracy nuts stop by my blog, and they remind me of creationists. If you want to believe something badly enough, I suppose...

A little more on Sagan vs. Dawkins. Sagan really understood why people believe in god; I am not certain that Dawkins does. Of course their critics said similar things about them based on the fact that neither would give an inch on the question of god's existence.

A specific example on Dawkins is his interview with Ted Haggard. It is interesting to see how believers view that interview. They see Dawkins as on the attack, but it seems to me he was just asking questions. The question of "fundamentalism" has to have a definition wrapped around it and if you see it as only "othering" then sure, he's a fundamentalist and so is an electrical engineer who insists that Ohm's law is correct, against postmodern engineers who feel that resistance, voltage, and current will find their own frame of reference based on the culture that surrounds them and what movies they've seen.

There's a certain, superficial resemblance in attitude between someone who is certain because he has checked the evidence, and someone who is certain because he read the bible (or more likely was told by his pastor what the bible says). But they're - pardon the pun - fundamentally different kinds of certainty.

Fundamentalism was a specific, historical movement that still exists today and has Muslim and Christian counterparts.

Real fundamentalists, who have a set of non-negotiable Truths derived from scripture, would love to pull science down to their level. But unlike religion science insists on being vulnerable to being proved wrong and they aren't up to that challenge. Going all the way back to the second comment by 6EQUJ5, "fundamentalism" is orthogonal to science.

Posted by: decrepitoldfool | March 16, 2008 8:42 AM

Re Mark

If Mr. Mark goes back into the archives of this blog, he will find a lengthy thread in which a young earth creationist argued with many of us about various topics. I made the mistake of trying to engage this numbnuts and can testify that it is a waste of time. Their minds are made up and the facts are irrelevant. In addition, they will find some nutcase "expert" to support their views. When it is pointed out to them that their "expert" is full of prunes, their response is that we have our experts and they have their "experts," mostly found on Answers in Genesis. All in all a total waste of time and energy.

Posted by: SLC | March 16, 2008 9:57 AM

Re J. J. Ramsey

On the thread in which several of us made the mistake of engaging a clown going under the moniker JonS, I don't recall seeing any comments from Mr. Ramsey. Perhaps my memory is faulty. If Mr. Ramsey were to go back in the archives and retrieve that particular thread, he would get some inkling of why I think it is a waste of time to engage YECs. Just as an aside, My PhD thesis adviser was an old earth creationist, it being rather difficult for an elementary particle physicist to be a YEC. I have the feeling that Mr. Morton is one of those rare exceptions. Certainly, there was no hope for Mr. JonS.

Posted by: SLC | March 16, 2008 11:39 AM

After participating in a long thread here recently with mixed results, I went over to the Dawkins site and perused their threads, and even participated in a few of them, and I have to say, on first impression, that I don't think Dawkins is a fundamentalist, at least not in the sense that the term is commonly used. I noticed that all the people over there seem to be quite polite and respectful of religious people, and don't seem to play the usual fundamentalist-type gotcha games that make threads degenerate into name-calling and overt hostility. In my experience with internet forums, the character of a site tends to reflect quite well the character of the people who are in charge. My sense is that Dawkins has quite effectively created a rather benign and benevolent site, and that the people there respect his attitude and attempt to emulate it. So in the sense of rabid scientism-as-religion, no, I don't think Dawkins is a fundamentalist.

That doesn't mean that there aren't some aspects of Dawkins arguments that we can't say are “fundamentalist” in the philosophical or rhetorical sense. Science, after all, seeks to uncover the fundamental laws of the universe, and in that sense it isn't a bad thing to be a “fundamentalist”. The same is true of religion, in that religious people are trying to understand the fundamental nature of God, and how the universe works. The problem comes when people think that having found an answer they have satisfied themselves to be true entitles them to act out various obnoxious patterns of neurotic and even sociopathic behavior. This pattern is obvious in many religious people, and I think it's also obvious in a number of non-religious or atheistic people. One can be a fundamentalist about literally anything, even things that are actually true, and it doesn't change the negative character of the fundamentalism that its basis has some truth to it. However, I don't think Dawkins falls into this category.

I'm not sure that Dawkins himself has put it in these exact words, but an early poster on this thread summarized his argument in these three propositions

1. Prof. Dawkins considers the existence of god to be a scientific proposition.

2. From item 1, it then follows that it is required that scientific evidence be produced to support that proposition.

3.Thus far, Prof. Dawkins has seen no such evidence.

These notions are not, in themselves, fundamentalist. But I sense an underlying attitude that is, in that Dawkins seems to think that all truth propositions are really scientific in nature, and that all truth propositions can be broken down into a set of true/false dichotomies. The problem is, when one reduces the subject of truth to scientific propositions, and when one reduces science to a set of true/false dichotomies, one is setting the stage for fundamentalism.

First of all, it should be noted that the religious idea of God is not a scientific proposition. It was not created with science in mind, nor is its truth intended to be discovered by scientific means. It preceded science by many thousands of years. That said, it's certainly true that there are many religious propositions about God that can, indeed, be subject to scientific testing, such as the notion put forward in the Old Testament that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and was created in six days. Science can tell us with a great deal of confidence that this is not true. This suggests that at the very least, religious people attribute various things to God that are not true. It doesn't at all mean that there is no such thing as God, or that the existence of God is dependent on the kinds of propositions that are scientifically testable. Only a subset of the religious ideas of God are scientifically testable, and not all of them are outlandish. For example, in Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies, the age of the universe is said to be in the billions of years, and they further suggest that there is a cyclic nature to the creation and destruction of the universe which is not unlike modern scientific theories. One can't pretend that these cosmologies pretend to produce scientific calculations, but their general time-frame is at least in the ballpark, unlike Old Testament notions. That doesn't make them “true”, but it doesn't make it as easy to scientifically refute them either.

In the last thread I pointed to something that Heisenberg once said, which is that “The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a great truth is another great truth.” The problem I see with Dawkins is that he doesn't recognize the categorical distinction between true facts and great truths. He is trying to reduce all religious statements to factual statements that can and must either be true or false. He's not recognizing the existence of “great truths” which are not falsifiable by merely demonstrating that their opposite is true. Falsifiability is of course a great scientific principle regarding factual claims, but it is not a great principle about non-factual claims. In other words, the opposite of falsifiability is also a great truth that should be recognized. As I pointed out in that thread, our own claims of self-awareness are not scientifically falsifiable, and yet they remain a great truth nonetheless.

The reason I bring this categorical distinction up is that the history of religion does not itself adhere to the either/or dichotomies that either science or Dawkins himself tries to abide by. Most of the history of religion is polytheistic in nature. In other words, most of religion is perfectly able to acknowledge the existence of many Gods, many truths and Truths, all quite valid and even “true”, and yet not genuinely in conflict with one another. Hinduism, for example, has hundreds, thousands, even millions of Gods, and yet they are not presumed to be in deathly conflict with one another, and their society has shown remarkable tolerance for all kinds of Gods, notions about God, practices in relation to God, even atheistic notions of God. This in stark contrast to the monotheistic cults of the Middle East which have grown to have such great influence in the world.

When we talk of religious fundamentalism of the dangerous, negative variety, we have to keep in mind that we are mostly talking about monotheism. Yes, there's bad religious customs and superstitions all over, but it's primarily in monotheism that we get the truly dangerous phenomenon of “fundamentalism”. Why is this? Well, because in monotheism there is only one God that is acknowledged to be true, and all others are considered false Gods. This sets the table for deep conflicts with all other religious systems and philosophies and practices. It also sets the table for the kinds of religious cultures that go to war with other religious cultures, and seek to dominate and even destroy them. This same kind of thinking thus came to dominate politics and the relationship between nations in monotheistic cultures. Thus, while India was able to tolerate tremendous religious diversity for thousands of years, when the Muslims invaded they killed almost everyone in their path who would not convert to Islam. Buddhism, which had dominated Northern India since the time of the Buddha, was almost completely destroyed and eliminated from the subcontinent, and survived only in enclaves outside of India. Conflicts between Hindus and Muslims persisted for centuries, into the present day, primarily because of the aggressively monotheistic nature of Islam, which has a difficult time tolerating the claims of other religions.

This is of course also true of Christianity, and to a lesser degree Judaism. Christians are famous for their self-righteous fundamentalism, based on the notion that only the Christian God is true, and that the only salvation comes through belief in and obedience to these Christian Gods. Other Gods are considered false, heretical, and dangerous, and to be eliminated if possible from society. So Christianity has tended to not only be intolerant of others, but fundamentally opposed to the very idea of tolerance. “Why should one tolerate falsehood?” is their way of looking at it.

Why do I bring this up? Because I suggest that it's no accident that science has arisen primarily within monotheistic cultures. Why? Because the scientific method is itself a set of true/false dichotomies aimed at discerning what is true from what is false, in the same mode as monotheistic religion itself. Science presumes from the outset that all truths can in fact be dealt with in this manner, and I'm suggesting this way of thinking would only develop in a predominantly monotheistic culture, which already tends to see the world that way to begin with. A more tolerant, polytheistic culture not inclined to declare other Gods as false is not so inclined to see the whole world as a set of opposing truth-claims, only one of which can be the actual truth. So there's a stronger relationship between science and religious fundamentalism than most scientists would like to admit, in that they are so strongly opposed to religious fundamentalism itself. But in a very real sense this is itself an outcome of their both being conflicting forms of monotheistic truth-claiming, sharing a similar mentality in relation to the very character of truth being a set of true/false dichotomies.

I'm not saying that only monotheistic cultures can do science, or that discrimination doesn't exist in polytheistic cultures, only that it develops very differently there. Indians, for example, have a strong tradition of discrimination in their religion, but they don't use their discrimination to set up a chain of true/false statements that determine which is the true God among their many Gods. One use of discrimination in their eyes is to see that this approach is itself not a true approach, but an artificial one that leads to many illusions. Their approach to the “science of the soul” is not an exclusionary one, but an inclusive one. The disadvantage is that it didn't produce science itself in the modern, western sense, but the advantage is that it produced a generally peaceful, tolerant society.

Western science is, I think, wedded to a great degree to its origins in monotheistic thought, and this too has great advantages and disadvantages. The advantage, of course, is that it allows the scientific method to proceed without metaphysical concerns for inclusiveness. The disadvantage is that once it has found a result by that method, it isn't sure how to reincorporate those truths with other, competing systems of truth, and achieve any kind of metaphysical inclusiveness, because the way it proceeds from the outset is to separate all things from one another. The word “science” itself means “to separate”, and thus inclusiveness is not a part of either its intent or its modus operandi. This tends to lead science to conclusions that are incapable of being incorporated within a larger, more inclusive context, but instead lead toward the same kind of exclusive claims upon truth that plague monotheistic religion. Because science conceives of truth in the exclusive manner of monotheism, it tends to produce results that reinforce that conception of truth – just as monotheism itself does.

Science begins by reducing the world to a set of true/false dichotomies, and thus it can only produce answers to those dichotomies which are mutually exclusive. Likewise, it reduces our experience of the world to material processes, because these alone can be further reduced to a set of true/false dichotomies. It often ends up concluding that the world itself is merely a materialistic affair, digitally reducible to dichotomies of pure factual information. And then, naturally, it creates a monotheistic true/false dichotomy between this view and all other views, such that only this view is true, and all others are false.

I'm suggesting that this way of thinking, even in the most rationalistic, scientific manner, is actually a form of monotheistic fundamentalism, regardless of whether it rejects all religion as false or not - in fact, precisely because it rejects all of religion as false. That is precisely what monotheistic fundamentalism is all about. Of course, like all fundamentalists, such people will claim at some point, “yes, I know all about fundamentalism, and that's not what this is, this really is the one great truth.” To which wiser minds will say, no, there are no exclusive truths, only exclusive facts within a reduced viewpoint.

I'm not suggesting that scientists are incapable of tolerance. Even “monotheistic” scientists can at least recognize the intelligence of not being overly conflicted with other viewpoints. I think Dawkins is of that variety. He's more of a Church of England scientist, one who is firmly certain that his view is the one true view, but perfectly willing to have tea and crumpets and civilized discourse with those less able to discern this truth, confident that most will come around over time to what seems perfectly obvious. And this is of course not fundamentalism as it is commonly decried. But it is fundamentalism in the philosophical sense.

In other words, Dawkins can't bring himself to say, “Science is just one way of approaching truth. There are many such ways, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, I just find the scientific path to be the best for me, or for certain purposes I hold dear.” He's a monotheist, not a polytheist, in other words. He truly does believe that science is the only true path, I don't have much doubt of that. (Correct me if I've gotten the wrong impression). He's just not trying to cram it down people's throats. He's merely advocating it as best he can, and criticizing other paths as best he can. Nothing terribly wrong with that.

Posted by: conradg | March 16, 2008 6:49 PM

Science is also about the probable versus the improbable, and contrary to the lengthy thesis above, may have developed in the monotheistic world precisely because it was a reactive attempt to deal with their true/false dichotomies. That lengthy piece seems to be in "fact" an attempt to counter the criticisms against Hinduism and its multifariousness, and perhaps to justify the paucity of scientific discoveries that have come from that part of the world.

Posted by: royniles | March 16, 2008 8:58 PM

Jon S...

It's good to know I haven't been forgotten.

Wish I would have noticed this thread earlier so I could have contributed more to the 'fundamentalist atheist' argument more.

Your description of YEC reminds me of my own view of atheists and evolutionists: "Their minds are made up and facts are irrelevant.

I think the word 'fundamentalist' applies in a very real sense.

Posted by: Jim | March 16, 2008 9:40 PM

Science is also about the probable versus the improbable, and contrary to the lengthy thesis above, may have developed in the monotheistic world precisely because it was a reactive attempt to deal with their true/false dichotomies. That lengthy piece seems to be in "fact" an attempt to counter the criticisms against Hinduism and its multifariousness, and perhaps to justify the paucity of scientific discoveries that have come from that part of the world.

I would agree that science has to a significant degree evolved in opposition to monotheism, at least once it got underway (Newton, Galileo, and Kepler were hardly at odds with monotheism, even if they had some clashes with the Church). But so have all the other forms of monotheism. Christianity and Islam all evolved from, or in opposition to, rival forms of monotheism - each other. They did not question the basic idea of monotheism, or the mode of thinking in terms of exclusive true-false dichotomies. Nor has science. So I think that science evolved a reaction to true-false dichotomies that were at odds with its own, but it did not question the very notion of seeing the world as a set of true-false dichotomies, it just saw the specific ways that religion saw the world as lying on the "false" side of the divide. And I have to think this was because their whole culture was immersed over thousands of years in this way of thinking, so it simply seemed natural to them.

I'm not aware that this forum has ever launched any criticism of Hinduism, so no, I'm not trying to defend Hinduism. I'm just offering it up as an historical example of a highly developed polytheistic culture. As for the paucity of scientific discoveries from India, they need no more "excuse" than any other non-European culture on that ground. However, I will point out that they did come up with the most important invention/discovery in the history of mathematics, without which there would be no modern science at all - the zero. In fact the whole "Arabic" decimal numeric system was actually invented in India, and came to the west via Arabs, who did not actually invent it at all, despite the name.

Posted by: conradg | March 16, 2008 9:56 PM

Mathematics is an extremely important system of measurement, but is not a scientific discovery in any empirical sense. It is not a subject of controversy (other than perhaps within its own discipline) and is not a disputable truth, nor is it even a tautological one.
It's not even what some would call the only certainty - it only represents an attempt to determine a certainty by measurement. It's an extremely valuable scientific tool, but so are language, reason and philosophy - none of which are exclusive to India or to the west.

Posted by: royniles | March 16, 2008 10:17 PM

JonS...

Many people seem to think there are no more miracles in today's world, but this certainly isn't true. A visit to your local Christian bookstore will produce many books with supernatural events (I was just reading a book "Miracle of Miracles" about a family of radical Muslims that converted to Christianity based on a supernatural event).

Posted by: Jim | March 16, 2008 10:51 PM

It is far more likely that the supernatural event which they think they witnessed was a natural event that they didn't understand.

Let's see:

"In Mina's book she tells of the Lord Jesus' miraculous radiant appearance to an elderly Muslim theologian in Iran., and about Jesus telling this man he is not Allah! Jesus then tells this man that He is "the Bread of Life", and words similar to His (Jesus') blood washes sins away. Realizing whom he is dealing with, the man asks Jesus to accept him."

Nope, doesn't sound like a misunderstand natural event to me. Sorry!

Posted by: 386sx | March 17, 2008 12:14 AM