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I mentioned this book very briefly once before, and now my copy has arrived I’m glad to say it was worth the mention. The Great Derangement centres around Matt Taibbi’s infiltration of John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church, and his adventures therein amongst the far-out reaches of American Evangelical Christianity. His experiences with the church are alternated with chapters on the current American political situation and his investigation into the conspiracy theorists of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
The chapters on the Cornerstone congregation, are, by turns, frightening and hilarious. Taibbi’s sacrilegious humour makes light of the situations he finds himself in, but the truth is, much of what these people are spouting is tremendously scary stuff, especially when (as the author finds) no critical consideration is given to any of their claims. Thus, Matthew Hagee is able to spout idiocies like:
“They want to use the environment to force America to reduce its population. And how do they want to do that? Through abortion.” M. Hagee, quoted in The Great Derangement, page 178
“They say we’re all going to die because the icecaps are going to melt,” he snorted. “No we’re not. We [sic] just gonna get wet – IF they melt.”M. Hagee, ibid, page 180
without fearing any backlash, since as Taibbi says, “Once you’ve made a journey like this – once you’ve got this far – you are beyond suggestible… you’ve left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion of things”. The cult-like indoctrination experience he undergoes – in a comparatively mainstream church – is truly frightening.
Wouldn’t want you to think it was all doom and gloom, though. Much of the tale is deeply funny; Taibbi’s fictitious alcoholic clown father is a stroke of genius, as is his tale of his environmentalist roommate, both brought out to show the credulousness of the people he is amongst. The humour and pace of the writing helps lift what could have been little more than a rant to the level of great journalism. As a Brit with little knowledge of the intricacies of American politics, many of the non-Cornerstone chapters were hard going; a degree of familiarity with the players and policies is assumed. Nonetheless, it was a gripping enough read for me to have devoured it in one sitting, and at 270 pages that has to be gripping indeed.
It has to be said, the American forces in Iraq do seem to be doing everything short of pissing in Iraqi faces to prolong the ill-feeling over there. If they aren’t gunning down other people’s holy books, they’re trying to muscle in on the sky-fairy market instead. Christianity at gunpoint – that’s one way to bump up the congregation, although I’m not sure Jesus would have approved.
We all know what would happen to Muslims in America who started handing out little coins with “Allah Akbar” written on them; they wouldn’t last five minutes before being assaulted, shot or arrested. Even better, how bold would you have to be to stamp up currency saying “There is no god”? Three minute survival rate, tops. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” does not apply to evangelism, it would seem.
In the same vein as my new Theist Vs Atheist project, PZ Myers has stumbled on the rather amusing Christian Vs Atheist game. Have crack and see if you can defeat the seemingly-invincible Evil Atheist!
Ex-PM Tony Blair has finally nailed his colours to the mast and decided to launch a “Faith Foundation”, aiming to tackle issues such as global warming, poverty and war. At least he had the decency to keep this under wraps when he was actually running the country – who knew how close we came to being a Catholic nation? I’ve addressed Tony’s idea that all religions can pull together peacefully before, but it’s just worth re-iterating here: The major faiths are, by their very nature, mutually exclusive. They can’t even agree on their own doctrines internally (Mr Blair, being a Catholic, no doubt believes in the authority of the Pope, whereas the Church of England emphatically denies that the Pope holds any special significance).
Here’s the full text of his founding speech, if you’re interested. The question I would ask is: why is faith needed at all in this mission? What’s wrong with distributing medicines and mosquito nets through, say Medicins sans Frontiers, or Oxfam? I fail to see why tying aid to an attempted interfaith dialogue makes it any more effective – in fact Mother Teresa demonstrates perfectly why religion should not be attached to humanitarian assistance.
They say one of the reasons atheists don’t have a larger political presence is that trying to organise them into a coherent movement is like trying to herd cats. I’m glad to say that Mr Blair may now have the chance to experience the very same problem.
A long time ago I was a D&D nerd (for the uninitiated, this stands for the fantasy roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons. If you didn’t know that, the rest of this post may not make much sense…). Eventually I sold off all my sourcebooks and novels (coincidentally at about the same time I met FutureWife – COINCIDENTALLY, I TELL YOU!), but a thought popped into my head today whilst I was indulging in my soon-to-be-abandoned habit of calculating stats and composing character sheets for people I meet. In D&D, there are six main attributes which are possessed in differing ratios by each character: three physical (Strength, Constitution and Dexterity) and three mental (Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma). It’s the difference between Wisdom and Intelligence that got me thinking.
Characters with high Wisdom scores tend to be more contemplative and have more faith in their instincts and common sense. They are also usually capable of performing Divine magic (magic spells in D&D are divided into Arcane (wizards and sorcerers) and Divine (clerics and druids)). High Intelligence scores tend to mean that the character learns new skills easily, thinks rationally and analytically, and may be able to perform Arcane magic (if he or she is has ranks in the Wizard class). You could argue that they correspond to right-brain and left-brain activity, respectively. It comes as no surprise to learn that highly pious characters tend to be Wisdom based, whilst an atheist character (if such a thing existed in D&D) would likely have a high Intelligence score.
It struck me that there is perhaps a different mode of thinking that separates theists and atheists, and that this division might be a good way of understanding it. Theism requires a thought process based in the imaginative and instinctive – there “must” be a God because his presence can be felt, it makes sense that someone created the world, God speaks to me, I want there to be a God, I have six level three Divine spell slots and prepared Call Lighting this morning, so believe or be toast! Atheists fit into the analytical mode of thinking: there is no evidence for God, God is logically impossible, I’m a level 3 Fighter so I can’t do any magic, and so on. If D&D has taught me anything (beyond “Nothing beats a natural 20!” and “They’re dice! Not sweeties!”), it’s that both these ways of thinking can work. Clerics have as much chance as Wizards against a band of orcs. The difficulty comes when Clerics try to cast spells like a Wizard…
What do I mean by this rather torturous analogy? Well, simply that religion only works when you think like a theist. Accepting that there are things we cannot ever know, believing that some nebulous higher power is at work, submitting to what you feel “in your heart”; all these are fine and dandy as arguments for faith. I don’t subscribe to any of them, but I can accept that other people may do so. As soon as you try to apply your INT modifier to religion, however, you’re in a world of trouble. Trying to argue rationally for the existence of a god will mire you in logical contradictions and convolutions, to say nothing of the lack of evidence. It was the atheist mode of thinking that led me out of Christianity, and I suspect it has done the same for many, many others. As long as the faithful rely on their Wisdom score, their position holds up, but when you start loading up your Intelligence stat, you can’t help but swing towards atheism.
Sorry for the slightly intermittent posts of late – I’ve been busy with Right To Think’s new sister site, Theist Vs Atheist, which is now up and running! Please take a moment to head over there and nose around. The premise is the creation of a two-handed blog: one of us argues for atheism, the other for religion (specifically Christianity, though I’m not ruling out additional writers from other faiths in the future). We’ll be posting short essays on the same subject each week, but in order for this experiment to work we need your input – otherwise it’ll just be me and andyinthepiewithalmonds arguing with one another, and we can do that just as well in the real world. So please drop by and leave your comments; we welcome readers from both sides of the fence.
Look forward to seeing you there!
I’m not normally one for the aethosphere’s internet memes (my iPod is down the back of the sofa somewhere…), but (((Billy))), by way of The Exterminator, via Friendly Atheist and Greta Christina, has just inadvertently created this one, and I thought it was worth answering.
Why do you blog?
It would be nice to say that I blog to improve the lot of mankind, to counter the omnipresence of theism and to create world peace. To some extent, that’s true, but my real reason is summed up in two words (and a link): Daylight Atheism. I found Ebonmuse’s blog quite by accident, and both it and Ebon Musings were instrumental in my embryonic atheism. Here at last was a thoughtful, insightful and above all hopeful message of humanism, which convinced me that I could be both an atheist and a fully realised human being. I don’t aspire to the same heights of philosophy, but I do hope that by alerting my readers to the illogical, contradictory and downright odd aspects of religion I can encourage other fledgling atheists to make the final leap out of the unknown.
I also blog because it helps me establish and clarify my own thoughts – it’s all very well to say, “I think this…”, but when your words are read by millions (alright, about six people really, but potentially millions) there is a certain imperative to consider your line of reasoning and phrase your argument well. This lets me know when my thinking is off-target, and makes me investigate things more closely.
What is our endgame as atheist bloggers?
We’re in the endgame already? I’m still working out how the pieces move! The endgame is a long, long way off… I don’t foresee an end to this process; reason and truth will always need a voice.
Do we want religion to become eradicated?
Interesting one, this. My first response was: “Live and let live, y’know; all we want is for religions to respect other people, freedom of religion is important, everyone sees their own rainbow, man…” Then I looked again and found that my gut reaction was “Yes”. Which surprised me, I really didn’t think I believed that.
It might be fairer to say that I would like to see the eradication of organised religion. I have no real problem with the guy who feels the need to believe in something greater than himself, it’s just worrying when the greater something is, for example, the Roman Catholic Church. What I want is to see people thinking for themselves, considering the implications of their beliefs and basing those beliefs on what they themselves discover, not what they are told by a man in a dress. Hence the name Right To Think.
Do we want more theists to treat atheists and atheism with respect? — This would involve the notion that laws would not be passed based on religious beliefs.
Hell yes! What self-respecting atheist could say otherwise? The Golden Rule is just as shiny today as it ever was, and it glitters for atheists too.
Do we just want to rant?
What’s wrong with a good rant? In scouring the internet for material, I often come across stuff to which ranting is the only rational response (Ray Comfort, anyone?). That or derision, I suppose, but the two are closely related. Plus, ranting is funny. That said, “just” ranting is far from being a good reason to blog – there are many other ways to approach our audiences. A good rant is like Dave’s Insanity Sauce: firey, attention-grabbing, and applied in small doses.
Read this far? Right, consider yourself tagged. Let’s see these answers on your blog, then.
(for those who’ve just stumbled across this page, I should point out that it’s the work of my co-contributor to the now-defunct Theist Vs Atheist site)
There’s an element of second-guessing required within this concept. In constructing my own argument I am concurrently trying to second-guess yunshui’s main thrust of attack. I won’t spend too much time in doing so, but I should imagine he will argue that a loving God couldn’t possibly allow those catastrophes provoking our sympathy and horror at present in Burma and China, or perhaps the unimaginable disaster of the tsunami that decimated South-East Asia a few years back. In doing so, I’m guessing he’ll propose that such apparently random and murderous acts of nature disprove the involvement of a creator claiming any degree of ongoing control.
Well, given my remit within this project, you’ll be less than shocked to hear I disagree. Such an argument would perhaps be valid if the Bible I believe in claimed that we lived in a perfect world existing primarily for our enjoyment. It doesn’t. From the third chapter of Genesis (ie pretty near the beginning!) things are messed up by sin, the world is fallen and even ‘the ground is cursed’. The post-Christ, New Testament sees Paul write (Romans 8 ) that creation is in ‘bondage to decay’ and is ‘groaning as in pains of childbirth’. Now I know that passing atheists are unlikely to give much credence to the words of the gospel they reject. However, it serves to indicate that nothing we stand for as Christians is dependent upon a ‘good’ world around us. It is beautiful, yes, and a good gift from our creator, but we’ve totally messed it up, just as surely as we have our own lives. So is God not good? Well the goodness of God is not shown by his making our earthly life cosy – but by the rather more meaningful act of his having sent his only son to die in our place for our sins, thus meaning an undeserved and eternal salvation for all those who place their faith in the fact. That’s the meaningful context in which to understand the ‘God of love’. An unloving God would have done no such thing – but could quite justifiably have left all humanity to suffer the rightful consequence of their having rejected him despite the evidence of their conscience and creation.
Atheists generally reject the idea of depraved man or of a fallen world. They have to because man and nature are their only hopes in a godless world. The natural responses to a situation in which we come from nothing, go to nothing, and mean nothing are either nihilism or hedonism. Under such a model we are no more essentially significant than pondlife – nothing more than a pitstop on the road of evolution; glorified monkeys. It’s at best suicidally depressing and at worst an excuse to fill our boots in the most selfish way possible prior to our ‘game over’ moment. However, atheism’s way around it is by an optimistic adherence to humanism in which, as the most evolved species, it is the rationality, creativity and essential goodness of man that is worth living for and investing our hope in. Nature too plays its part, in relentlessly marching us on to a super-evolved future where those frustrating gaps in our knowledge might be conveniently filled (eg ‘how exactly did this world of ours spring forth out of nothing of its own accord??’). It is astonishing the godlike qualities some atheists will attribute to the world itself as it afflicts us with ice ages and all manner of catastrophes in order to take those all-knowing ‘evolutionary steps’ (see Dr Lovelock’s excited anticipation of the forthcoming global meltdown as the evolutionary solution to our over-population problem).
Optimism towards humanity and the world is fine apart from that it doesn’t work. History doesn’t bear it out. As a history teacher, I would struggle to give you any example of a demonstrably ‘good’ people or era. Mankind is capable of huge dignity, but such acts are generally enacted by individuals against the tide of ‘progress’ which has always blighted the majority in favour of the grasping few. As man increasingly rejects God and instead puts faith in the alternate gods of democracy, capitalism, liberalism or science they have helped usher in the vast catastrophic wars of the Twentieth Century, the mass exploitation of the third world, the rapid and topical breakdown of moral accountability within society and the disastrous rape of our planet’s resources. Did religion play any part? Well yes, religion stands as accountable as any other man-assisted construct . Catholicism was basically a mutation of the Roman Empire, the Church of England was set up so Henry VIII could nab a new wife and the wealth of the monasteries, whilst the American ‘Bible Belt’ has allied Christianity to a wealth and power that the New Testament would never recognise, ‘riches in heaven’ rather than on Earth being the key (Matthew 19:24!). There was probably something wrong with every church in between as well, but that’s because people, and the world they live in, are corrupted by sin. God, however, remains unchanging and unbound by the limitations of those who act in his name. Whoever you are, you know that, by the end of the day, you will have let yourself and others down to some extent, whether by thought, word or deed. We need the intervention of God and his word to save us. We’re incapable of doing it ourself. Natural disasters are a reminder that we’d better get on with it as life is fragile and death will find us all, whether at the hands of a tornado or in comfortable old age.
So, back to Burma or China… do they challenge me as a Christian? Yes – we are called to be distinctive in this world; an advert for our faith. Our response then, as is modelled by Christian charities such as Christian Aid or Tear Fund, should be especially compassionate and generous – so we may demonstrate something of the revolutionary and practical kindness Jesus showed towards the despised and afflicted in society. But do they threaten my faith?? Not in the slightest. It is a very modern Western notion to be asking of our creator not ‘What can I do for you?’ but ‘What are you doing for me?’. It is as if the goldfish refuses to acknowledge the existence of its owner because it has issues with conditions within its bowl. We are not in a position to demand a better world than that we were given. Rather we are in a position where we need to decide how to respond to the fact of our mortality.
Although I also resent the atheist attempt to pin every atrocity on the church: eg the oft-repeated falsehood that the British Empire was a religious endeavour; in truth missionaries saw in it an opportunity to spread the word, but they were not often government-sanctioned or welcomed (and were indeed even banned from the British Raj following the Indian Mutiny). Hobson argues for an overriding economic motive, Taylor for international relations. No historian argues meaningfully for mission being key.
The past few weeks have seen catastrophic disasters devastate China and Burma. Literally millions have been affected, and thousands killed, the numbers are almost too huge to contemplate. The last statistics I heard put the number of dead in the Chinese earthquakes at 80,000 – that’s equivalent to the entire population of Bath dying at once. My question, then, is this: Why would a loving god choose to indiscriminately slaughter so many of his people?
As I see it, there are three possible answers. Firstly, God may not be able to intervene in human affairs. It may be that God, being outside of space and time, has no power to influence events in our reality. This view is not borne out by reference to the Bible:
“Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” Genesis 18:14
“Then Job answered the LORD, and said, I know that thou canst do every thing…” Job 42:1-2
“Ah Lord God! … there is nothing too hard for thee.” Jeremiah 32:17
“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for the Lord?” Jeremiah 32:27
“With God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26, Mark 10:27
“For with God nothing shall be impossible.” Luke 1:37
“The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” Luke 18:27
“The Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” Revelation 19:6
A god with no way of affecting the world is not the god of Christianity. This answer requires the abandonment of so much of the Christian ideal that it cannot really be a good response to the question. Why would a god who had no foundation in the real world be worth worshipping?
The second possibility is that God doesn’t care about his creations enough to preserve them. An indifferent, or even actively malignant god would have no problem with the suffering of millions of Burmese (they’re mostly Buddhists, so they don’t really count in His scheme of things) and Chinese (Communists! Even worse!). This is again not supported by the Bible:
“The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.” Exodus 34:6
“For the Lord thy God is a merciful God.” Deuteronomy 4:31
“Let us fall now into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great.” 2 Samuel 24:14
“O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever.” 1 Chronicles 16:34; Psalm 106:1, 107:1, 118:1, 136:1; Jeremiah 33:11
“Good and upright is the Lord.“ Psalm 25:8
“For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.” Psalm 86:5
“For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting.” Psalm 100:5
“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.” Psalm 103:8
“For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.” Lamentations 3:33
“For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.” Joel 2:13
“Blessed be God … the Father of mercies.” 2 Corinthians 1:3
“For the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.” James 5:11
“God is love.” 1 John 4:16
One of Christianity’s principle tenets is the love God has for his creation. A cruel, unmerciful god is not the god of Christianity. This ignores the genocides perpetrated at Yahweh’s command in the early days of Israel, of course, but Christians are ever ready to point out that Jesus sacrifice apparently made all that “chosen people” shtick irrelevant. As a result, God loves the whole world equally, Burmese and Chinese too – he’s just chosen to visit them with an especially large dose of misery, death and torment this year.
The third, simplest and most obvious solution, is of course that there is no god. Natural disasters occur because of plate tectonics, weather patterns and other natural phenomena. There is no longer any need to answer the question.
The above is, of course, an expression of the problem of evil. Many Christian apologists (as well as those of other religions) have attempted to answer it. Some of the arguments offered include: that evil exists because of Mankind’s sin; that evil exists because suffering is beneficial; that evil is not a thing in and of itself, merely the absence of good; or that evil is necessary in order that we can appreciate and understand the concept of “good”. None of these really addresses the principle thrust of the problem, which is that the simplest and most likely cause for evil is the absence of a god, but nonetheless I think it’s important to at least supply a brief rebuttal of the main contenders.
The most popular argument of these is the argument from free will. This states that God gives humanity a choice of whether to follow him or not. The upshot of this idea is that evil results when we choose not to follow God’s dictates. This idea may work reasonably well in instances of war, theft, murder and so on, but against natural disasters (what insurers would call “acts of God”) it has little strength. Humanity did not decide to die by the thousand in China and Burma as an act of rebellion against God. A development of the argument from free will claims that Adam and Eve’s original sin in the Garden of Eden resulted in the then-perfect and harmless Earth falling into a state of disrepair, but for that to work you have to take Genesis literally, which I, for reasons too extensive to go into here, don’t.
The other principal apology is that evil is somehow beneficial, either because it enables us to comprehend the idea of God’s “goodness” by providing a diametric opposite, or because it allows us the opportunity to display virtues such as charity, compassion, courage and benevolence and thus attain greater holiness. The first part of this argument falls flat when one considers that a god who created evil in order to show off his ineffable goodness cannot really be considered to be “good” at all. “Hey, you’ve all been killed in an earthquake! Wouldn’t it be great not to have been killed in an earthquake? Well, that’s me, God! I’m the Way, the Truth and most importantly, the Life – which you no longer have, since I killed you so you could have a yardstick to compare My goodness with.” Such a god would be an utter bastard, not a paragon of virtue. The second part of the argument assumes that suffering brings us closer to God. This would suggest that, if God were truly interested in forming a closer relationship with all of us, we would see an equality of suffering. Surely it would be unfair to deny everyone the chance to get closer to God? Furthermore, why should God designate certain “inspired-by-suffering” virtues to be the criteria for holiness? Given the chance to choose a holy virtue, I would instantly pick “love”, which requires no suffering for its genesis, or maybe “peacefulness” or “joy”.
To a degree, I am just playing games with semantics here. In doing so, I hope that in doing so I’m highlighting the fundamental reason that I don’t seriously consider these arguments – they are mere games with words and logic, seeking desperately to demonstrate extenuating circumstances for God. Trying to redefine “evil”, or claim that “God works in mysterious ways” is an attempt to sidestep the issue. The answers I can accept to the problem of evil are those outlined above: in the light of recent events, God is either feeble, fiendish or fictional.
We in the atheosphere bandy about the term “fundamentalist” with about the same frequency we use the word “and”, since it’s often highly relevant to the more extreme edges of the religious spectrum. Two of my favourite sites, Bay of Fundie and Fundies say the darndest things! dedicate themselves almost exclusively to cataloguing the instances of epic wrong that seem to define the fundamentalist worldview. Fundies are easy to caricature, fun to debate (as long as you don’t expect them to change their opinions) and great for quoting – you don’t even have to mine for the good bits! Poking fun at them, as DamienSansBlog wittily pointed out over at Daylight Atheism, is like shooting fish in a barrel that’s full of fish poison, so it’s a common hobby among atheist bloggers (and I make no exception for myself here). But a recent thread at Primordial Blog got me thinking about these people, and what they actually believe.
The Oxford English Dictionary has the following entry for “fundamentalism”:
fundamentalism
• noun: 1 a form of Protestant Christianity which upholds belief in the strict and literal interpretation of the Bible. 2 the strict maintenance of the ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion or ideology.
— DERIVATIVES fundamentalist noun & adjective
We tend to hear about fundamentalism in association with Christianity or Islam, since these are the two cultures that have a specific holy book to follow. One rarely hears of “fundamentalist Buddhists” or “Jain fundamentalism”, though they could be said to exist. I will however limit the scope of this discussion to Christianity, with occasional references to Islam, since the literal interpretation of a sacred text is in many ways the defining characteristic of the movement.
Although based in the most ancient of tenets, fundamentalism is actually a fairly modern phenomenon. The term itself was coined from a book published in the early years of the twentieth century, The Fundamentals, which was a collection of nearly a hundred essays arguing primarily for a literal interpretation of the Bible. It was widely circulated as the sponsors, oil magnates Lyman and Milton Stewart, sent it for free to ministers and missionaries across the United States. The Fundamentals found a ready audience amongst the anti-modernist movement, who were keen to “rescue” religion from the diluting effects of modern society. The subsequent revival spawned the fundamentalist movement we know (and love!) today.
Literal interpretation of the Bible seems to so permeate modern Christian culture that it is a surprise to find that this was not always the case. Early Christianity in particular, founded in the Jewish tradition, used the Jewish ideas of exegesis to form the base of their religion. It was felt by the Church Fathers that much of the Bible was allegorical, and was to be interpreted through communion with the Holy Spirit, prayer and study. Origen (once he had gotten the literal interpretation idea out of his system by castrating himself) or Pope Gregory I would have been astonished to hear people talking about the books of, say, Daniel or Genesis as though they described historical events. In many ways, the non-literal interpretation is greatly empowering to the Bible: literally it can speak of only one thing, but taken as an allegory it can mean so much more. Biblical characters begin to represent concepts and principles, and their actions represent the interaction of emotions and reflect human relationships with the Divine.
It was not really until the Protestant Reformation in 1517 and Martin Luther’s theology that scriptural literalism really came into its own. Luther was the first major religious reformer to argue for the historical accuracy of the Biblical texts – others had done so in the past but had never gained such a substantial following. In part, his position stemmed from his belief in biblical inerrancy, which formed the bedrock of the early Protestant movement. The literal interpretation gained strength from this point onwards, but until the twentieth century was never the dominant approach.
The apocalyptic elements of modern American Protestantism, rooted in the literal interpretation of Revelation, were actually formulated by an Englishman, John Nelson Darby. His conviction that the Rapture was imminent found little acceptance in Britain, but was avidly devoured by American Protestant groups when he visited the States in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In some ways, the end-times vision that he preached is as much a defining characteristic of fundamentalism as the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.
One of the results of taking the Bible or Qur’an literally seems to be the development of a somewhat militaristic streak. This is understandable, given that the propagation of both religions was always dependant on the subjugation of competing beliefs. Hence, both the Bible and the Qur’an contain many proscriptions against unbelievers and other faiths, and following these exhortations verbatim results in isolationism and intolerance. It is these traits that have prompted the current ideological clash between Islam and Christianity, with neither side willing to allow any leeway in their narrow interpretation of what they perceive to be the word of God. We also now live under the cloud of the “Rapture-ready”; the belief that God’s final judgment is imminent engenders a worrying naiveté towards environmental and social issues – the underlying thought process being: “Who gives a shit? God’s a-comin’!”
Fundamentalists are a gift to atheist commentators, being both “fun” and “mental”. We should perhaps consider, though, that there are a great many moderates out there who read the Bible allegorically and do not necessarily soil themselves with glee at the thought of us atheists burning in Hell forever. In some ways, our arguments are perhaps best directed at them, rather than the fundies – debating Biblical literalists is after all a lot like playing chess with pigeons.
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