II. Another Dangerous 'F' Word: Fundamentalism

I think the fallacy here is equating rudeness with extremism, where rudeness is effectively any criticism of the religious position.

The religious have had a free ride long enough. Get used to the fact that they're going to get called on their bad ideas now, and that it is NOT extremism to point to a cock-eyed wacky proponent of a stupid idea and tell them straight out that they're wrong.

We cannot deny that much of the world holds a religious view and it does no good to ignore these folks and pretend they don't matter or exist.

Well, to be frank, I'd love to be able to ignore the religious and pretend they didn't exist (I don't say "matter"). I don't seem to be able to. They won't let me.

Yet I'M the rude one?

I agree. While I think rudeness should be avoided, it is NOT extremist. Saying someone is wrong is not extremist - if it were, every member of every religion would be extremist. Saying someone is stupid is not extremist either. Nor is highlighting the specific region of human anatomy where an individual's head may or may not be stuck extremist. Is calling for people to stop believing lies extremist? Again, all religion fails this test.

What it comes down to is exactly what behavior is "extremist" and who the pot and kettle are.

Where science is prevalent, is there less religious fundamentalism?

http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=205#

No one gets a free ride.

What's interesting is at the core of this, I think PZ and I are advocating the same thing which is encouraging people who think for themselves to participate in thoughtful dialog.

It's just I see passion too often getting in the way of an otherwise sound discussion when folks react first with anger rather than the patience required for a convincing explanation.

Last post on this coming soon..

Sheril, a few days ago:

Any breed of fundamentalism (atheism included) usually results in alienating good folks and losing credibility among everyone who thinks or believes differently.

Sheril, today:

While I did not write atheism is fundamentalism, I clearly hit a nerve.

In order to communicate, you must maintain an understanding of how others interpret your words. Regardless of what you intended, many people have interpreted 'fundamentalism (atheism included)' to 'label atheists as "fundamentalists"'. These people have explained how their interpretation is consistent with typical English communication here at scienceblogs. Rather than explain your interpretation of 'fundamentalism (atheism included)', you have denied saying 'atheism is fundamentalism'. In other words, your opponents have made a clear and convincing case for their interpretation of your words, while you have failed to do so. If you did not intend to label atheists as fundamentalists, you should apologize for your communication error, and resolve to avoid similar errors in the future. If you continue to deny that 'atheists are included among fundamentalists' is a justifiable interpretation of your words, your ability to communicate will decline.

To be honest, I agree fully. I am atheist myself, and I have been reading Pharangula as well as a few other atheist Sci bloggers over the last while. Sadly though, they have become more and more what I hate about religious people.

It's one of the reasons I find myself reading sciblogs less and less these days.

Sheril, you still seem to be using the word "fundamentalism" as if it's synonymous with "being strident and forceful in stating one's beliefs." You also seem to be using the term as if it's a pejorative.

As Austin Cline already pointed out to you, that's not what the word means. My grandmother is a Christian fundamentalist, and she's a very quiet and kindly old lady. She's also not a bad person, despite being a fundamentalist, because being a fundamentalist has nothing to do with your personality.

I'm getting the feeling you might live in a part of the country where there are very few fundamentalists, because you obviously don't know what a fundamentalist is. My quiet kindly grandmother is a fundamentalist. Loud, strident Richard Dawkins is not a fundamentalist. Being a fundamentalist has nothing to do with how strongly you state your point of view. It has nothing to do with one's personality, nor with one's method of argument.

Sheril,

You claim here that responses to your earlier post "demonstrated your point." But after this post, I am completely uncertain as to what your point is.

Has your claim all along simply been that sometimes people are rude when they argue -- and that rudeness tends to produce anger and shut down conversations? If so, then who would disagree? Who would argue, rudely or not? (Of course, what counts as "rude" is an extremely arguable point, but you have given no examples of such rudeness, so it's hard to tell.)

Before this post, however, I thought that you were making a case about particular beliefs -- the content and import of certain beliefs -- and arguing, along the way, for an ethic of universal respect of all beliefs. (Although you now say that we can and should argue, just not in a way that is disrespectful, the way "all this arguing" has. Huh?)

But if you are going to argue about the content of certain atheistic beliefs, then you have to address those beliefs and not just "belief" in general.

What, for example, is this "extreme" form of atheism that you are characterizing? What exactly would a fundamentalist form of atheism look like? Who are these atheists who want to pretend that religion and religious people don't exist? (And actually, aren't you implying that "extreme" atheists are the ones who actually confront religion -- admitting that it does exist, that its theism is incorrect, and saying as much?)

It seems that you are saying that people should argue, but only if they don't actually believe the things that they are arguing for -- since to do so would impel you to let the other person know that you think they are wrong. And that would be intolerant.

Simply put, people have been raising good questions about the argument you are making and the terms you are using. But you seem unwilling to take those questions seriously -- this time by brushing them off as more examples of atheist intolerance.

And that is just plain rude.

I think the New Atheists really shoot themselves in the foot with their "my way or the highway" attitude. The New Atheists have strapped themselves down to the Hume/Russell/Dawkins school so hard that they react with kneejerk contempt toward anything different--not a good way to win friends and influence people.

If you just step outside the Anglophone "card carrying rationalist" tradition, to say, the tradition of German philosophy, and things look completely different. This article in a British magazine describes a meeting between Jurgen Habermas (the philosopher who coined the famous "public sphere" phrase about the Enlightenment) and Joseph Ratzinger (the pope):

[The meeting's] conciliatory tone will come as a particular surprise to English readers. Here, the periodic spectacle of "science versus religion" has acquired something of the character of a Punch and Judy show. (See Richard Dawkins's piece on "Gerin oil" in last month's Prospect.) Things are different in Germany. There, the long tradition of Kulturprotestantismus--a diffuse, non-denominational religiosity--guarantees the churches widespread respect, if not attendance. The German philosophers, although rarely conventionally pious, always took religion seriously. Not for them the sneering scepticism of Hume or Russell. Habermas is in this tradition. Like Kant and Adorno, his aim is to disentangle religion's ethical vision from its dogmatic claims.

...

In the face of the uprooting effects of technology and the global market, the liberal state should "treat with care all cultural sources on which the normative consciousness and solidarity of citizens draws." Religion is pre-eminent among such sources. "In sacred writings and religious traditions, intuitions of sin and redemption, of deliverance from a life experienced as unholy, have been articulated, subtly spelt out and kept alive through interpretation over millennia." Thus although the civic bond is not based upon pre-existing religious ties, it should treat them with the greatest delicacy, recognising them as important allies in its own struggle against the alienating forces of the modern world.

Religious insights become available to the secular world through a process of what Habermas calls "saving translation." Thus the Biblical vision of man as made in the "image and likeness" of God finds a profane expression in the principle of the equal worth of all human beings. Such translations are not--as Habermas himself has admitted--always successful... But even if imperfect, the translation of religious into secular language still remains our best hope of avoiding the savage conflicts that so often beset the passage of modernity.

Habermas is an atheist, by the way.

Not that I'm a fan of the pope, whose statements I frequently find objectionable, but I really don't understand the contempt and hysteria about all religion. what gives? I think frequently, science types only know the Hume/Russell/Dawkins view, and contemptuously dismiss anything else. This is a politically dangerous stance, because historically, people who've had the Hume/Russell/Dawkins view have been a minority. And if you think that's going to change, then you're being naive.

Let's take a recent PZ Myers post about Charles Taylor. Taylor happens to be a philosopher in the German tradition mentioned above (he cut his philosophical teeth on Hegel, and is also a Roman Catholic) and was given the Templeton Prize. PZ felt a three paragraph sneer was enough to dismiss his life's work.

So PZ feels that his science degree gives him universal competence, so he can dismiss someone's life's work in three paragraphs. Excuse me, but that's complete BS. (By the way, Amazon has a sample of Taylor's work online, you can judge it for yourself: http://tinyurl.com/33qe39 )

Llewelly and Wes beat me to it.

I'd say it's a little frightening that you contradict yourself without noticing that you've done it. That's a common tactic of politicians, but not such a common tactic of people who believe in honest communication.

Try a thought experiment:

You answer a knock on your door to find a number of people wanting to talk to you.

One is selling gasoline pills, just add water. One has plans for a perpetual motion machine with 110% efficiency. One is selling strychnine as a homeopathic cure-all, at '30C dilution'. One is selling tinfoil hats to protect your brain from penetrator rays. One is selling a book, The True Story of UFOs. One has free copies of The Watchtower and a compelling argument for why you should subscribe. And one has lots to say about Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints.

Your questions: 1) In which order will you entertain your visitors? 2) How much time will you allot to each?

My point? They are rude simply for coming to your door to bother you. All of these people are there to waste your time. You owe them nothing. It is your civic duty to chastise them.

Rose Colored Glasses, I don't understand your point. Maybe Jehova's Witnesses are being rude. What does that prove? Is that a license for someone secular to be a jerk as well?

Well said Laurie, Wes, and Llewelly!

Of course, according to Sheril, the fact that we all object to the term fundamentalist reveals that we actually are.

Eh.

Sheril R. Kirshenbaum wrote:

...the very thing I despise about all this arguing is that it breeds intolerance and anger.

Not always. It depends on your approach and who you're trying to reach. You can never reach everyone with a single argument or blog post, but here on the net anyone can drop in and read what you write. PZ is writing for his audience and I tend to agree with him about feeling surrounded by delusional people. Rob Knop butts in to complain about PZ on his blog and gets dumped on. Soon, it even shows up on HuffPo and the Reality-Based Community.

Like PZ said, "get used to it." We're not unhappy with the results. When we don't say anything, quite a few people will call us worse than rude or bigoted.

OK; another quick lesson in logic.

Assumption 1: "Mouse" is a noun.
Assumption 2: A mouse eats cheese.
Conclusion: A noun eats cheese.

So if I say "I know an idiot that's an atheist", this does not state that, in my opinion, all atheists are idiots. A sensitive person may indeed read an unintended implication in such a statement, however.

As is my wont in such matters, I'll recommend some reading material and you'll ignore it; who has time to read these days? "Science and Sanity", by Korzybski, has some interesting things to say on (among other things) the word "is".
Sounds dreadful, doesn't it? And yet it actually is interesting.
-J the G

PS - No, "interesting" does not eat cheese, and yes, I realize mice do not react well to cheese diets. -J

Misuse of the word "fundamentalism" has got my goat since I first heard it misused over ten years ago. Wes said something very close to what I said those many years ago, and more often after Dawkin's participation in the "New Atheism" movement.

The root word "fundamental" means (paraphrasing) "getting to one's basics" or "focusing on the underlying rational for one's argument". We have used the word "fundamentalISM" to describe someone who is intense about their underlying reasons for their argument. It was rarely used to describe anyone other than the certain sect of Christianity that focuses on their FLAWED epistemology of Young Earth Creationists or biblical literalists. Even though the word applied to those who also focused intently on a logically SOUND underlying basis of reasons for their argument, it was rarely used to describe such a person. Thus, it became a "pejorative" not by definition, but strictly in the context by which it was used in reference to the aforementioned sect of Christianity.

Now we have Dawkin's being intense about his basics... he is indeed a fundamentalist, but one must show that his basis for his fundamentalism is FLAWED and not SOUND before it becomes a pejorative. Perhaps his basis is flawed, but you must demonstrate how ti is before using the word as a pejorative.

One can think of many ways that intense focus on one's basics (fundamentalism) can be good. In an obviously hypothetical scenario, imagine you are watching a man sell villagers a pill that will make them fly, and then sends them to a cliffs edge to jump, which they do... to their deaths below. Imagine you are now trying to warn someone that they should not trust what the man says an not jump off the cliff. Here you are, if you are so inclined, passionate about trying to educate these less-than-intellectual villagers that they are not applying the thinking skills they need to realize this is not a good idea to trust what the man says nor to ever jump from a cliff's edge. Imagine the villagers are still finding reasons to believe the man, despite what you are seeing with your own eyes. You are passionate, direct, perhaps even rude when you are applying the very basics of critical thought, the very basics of the physics of gravity, and the very basics of "if/then" thinking. You are indeed now a fundamentalist, and obviously that is a good thing.

So, being passionate about one's views may be accurately labeled "fundamentalist". But so what? The onus is on the assigner of such a label to explain why that fundamentalist's basics are flawed.

As for rudeness, I agree that it should be avoided.. but also, we are mere human, and when those of us who pride ourselves on being diplomatic, fair, and polite in most conversations can't help but occasionally show disgust for abhorrent thinking and despicable reasoning by many theists that foster harmful factors in our society.

Joe