There can’t be atheist fundamentalists in the sense of Christian fundamentalism as there are no fundamental writings of atheism.

The word “fundamentalist” or “fundamentalism”, historically speaking, refers to those who followed Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, a set of essays published in the early 20th century.

Modern “fundamentalists” (and US-style evangelicals, who occasionally define themselves as “an evangelical is a nice fundamentalist”) generally don’t follow the Fundamentals, or emphasise things that the Fundamentals don’t even mention (e.g. homosexuality and Biblical literalism).

Conversely, if you think about those you would consider “fundamentalist”, there are more than a few “fundamentals” (e.g. the Golden rule, and the Islamic prohibition on killing innocent people) which they tend not to follow.

The point is this: Just because someone is a fundamentalist doesn’t mean they actually subscribe to or espouse the fundamentals of a religion. You can quite correctly be a “fundamentalist” without doing so and, indeed, most arguably don’t or, at least, carefully pick and choose which ones they will do.

The last three times this topic came up, I proposed a simple thought experiment: Would a 1st century Christian would recognise modern US evangelicalism as being in any way “Christian”?

Final point.

A moderate or liberal religionist, who uses the term “fundamentalist” as a derogatory term, has only one reason to call some Atheist a “fundamentalist”. Clearly they don’t believe that Atheists follow some hypothetical Atheist fundamentals. After all, they don’t think that Islamic fundamentalists actually follow the fundamentals if Islam, right?

So by the term “fundamentalist atheist”, what they mean is that the Atheist acts like a fundamentalist. Rob Knop made this point well.

I think anyone who is stuck in black-and-white thinking, who views situations as “us versus them,” and who has trouble understanding how anyone could hold a different viewpoint than they hold suffers from fundamentalist tendencies. I think atheists can fall into this trap just as easily as people who follow religions.

well said! I agree

If someone claims pigs can fly I can’t prove that’s impossible because I’m not aware of all pigs that have ever existed or will ever exist. And yet I’m not going to advocate for the installation of roofs above pig stys “just in case”, and that’s based on the observable evidence at hand. Again, possiblity vs. probability

If I were to add a few items, and order them based upon available evidence from most-probable to least-probable, it would look something like this:

[Most Probable]
Pigs Don’t Fly.
Sun comes up tomorrow.
…
Sun does not come up tomorrow.
Pigs fly.
God Exists.
[Least Probable]

So if one was to classify ‘Pigs Fly’ as near-impossible, why would God-Exists be only Improbable?

For ‘God Exists’ to be more probable, this would imply that even if the only evidence for ‘Pigs Flying’ is that one day, evolution may allow it, then there must be even more evidence for ‘God Exists’.

There can’t be atheist fundamentalists in the sense of Christian fundamentalism as there are no fundamental writings of atheism. That’s an important point, it’s not about fundamental beliefs but about writings/teachings/whatever. A rulebook to follow in some guise. One of the things about atheists is that they come in all stripes – left/right wing, peaceful, violent, drunk, sober, bigoted, tolerant. Nothing at all unties them except a lack of belief in certain fairy stories. Some may even believe in ghosts or tarot cards so they can’t even be united under a banner of lack of belief in the supernatural. Fundamentalism just can’t work in such an environment.

This is absolutely correct, you can’t have fundamentalism without fundamentals, and for fundamentals you need sources of authority as you say “writings/teachings”. You have to give authority to something and someone, which is a component of religion. People can believe in whacky things like astrology, but without the authority or dogma placed irrationally onto something there can be no fundamentalism.

Miko,

Stalin comes to mind. Not in an atheism-caused-Stalin kind of way, but in a Stalin-pushed-atheism-for-his-own-ends way (although he’s probably more accurately a nature-is-god type).

You’re right, it’s nonsensical to say that atheism caused the deaths of anyone, acts are never done in the name of atheism. Atheism, a lack of belief in gods, says nothing on how we should act, what is right, what is, or what will be.

The motivation for Stalin to push people to atheism and discourage religion was to weaken the influence of religion in Russia, which was seen as a threat to his authority, since much of it was against him. Stalinism has the necessary components for fundamentalism, although I don’t know enough about the history of Russia to say that there were any movements wanting to get back the fundamentals of it.

Extremism is different though. As I commented in another post I don’t think atheists really tend to protest in the name of atheism. However, that’s not to say they couldn’t do so and in such a case it is possible that some would resort to extreme measures to get their point across. I think this is vanishingly unlikely as atheists tend to be pretty rational people but this is only a tendency, not a hard and fast rule.

(These should answer the first question i.e. fundamentalism is dedication to following the fundamental writings of your religion/cause whereas extremism is using extreme measures to defend your beliefs or impose them on others)

An “atheist extremist” would be a fundamentalist atheist who goes a step further, trying to FORCE others to adopt the same worldview. Mind you, I don’t mean trying to restore the Pledge to it’s original text, I mean trying to ban religion altogether, forcing their children into their worldview through indoctrination and showing overt (violent or not) hatred of the religious.

All the above has to carry the caveat that I think the proper term would not be “fundamentalist atheist” or “atheist extremist” but “fundamentalist anti-theist” and especially “anti-theist extremist”. The term “fundamentalist atheist” could be applicable if it only describes an absolute conviction in the non-existence of god(s) but once you get into negative behaviours towards religion or the religious, you’re discussing anti-theism.

What’s the difference between a fundamentalist and an extremist?

Can there be atheist fundamentalists? What would that look like?

Can there be atheist extremists? What would that look like?

The way I see it, a “fundamentalist” is anyone who believes that whatever set of beliefs they subscribe to should be the underlying structure of society as a whole.

What exactly an “extremist” makes is hard to say. My initial reaction was to label an “extremist” as a fundamentalist who would seek to enforce his/her will using violent as opposed to legal or social means. Then again, what society doesn’t enforce it’s doctrine through militaristic means? Does that make us all extremists? So, having given the matter some thought, I think an extremist is anyone whose beliefs drive them to make radical lifestyle choices. Of course “radical” is a relative term, but this can be applied to modern holy warriors, Benedictine monks who take vows of silence or Jainists that wear face masks and sweep the ground before they walk so as not to kill any lifeforms that may be indigenous to ground-like places.

So ultimately I think that “fundamentalism” and “extremism” are two very different things, that an individual can be one without being the other and that neither is universally a bad thing to be. I guess it really depends on what you stand for or -more importantly- what your intentions are.

As for atheist “fundamentalists” and “extremists,” yeah sure. A fundamentalist atheist would be into things like censoring literature and prohibiting religious practices. An extremist would blow up churches and creationist museums. I suppose non-violent atheist extremism wouldn’t get any weirder than not involving oneself with any type of fantasy-fiction or refusing to live within n miles of any religious institution.

Really though, and the opponents of atheism will cry all day that it isn’t true, you don’t hear a lot of this kind of stuff from the atheists. If you really looked, I’m sure you could find a few (it’s a wide, wide world and there’s one in every crowd) but statistically, the “new atheists” as some call them even though there’s nothing new about it, are pretty liberal and seldom will you hear even the hardest of them advocate anything resembling outright prohibition of any religion. Mockery perhaps but never prohibiton.

Both seem negative, both seem to be on the far end of a spectrum, but, to me, extremist seems like someone who is much more focused to their ideology of Atheism, effecting everyday of their life, much like a religious fundamentalist, but more motivated to proselytize and push their views onto others.

It also is semantics, every time I searched for the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’; I was always directed to a description of religious belief, so I went with ‘fundamentalism’ and extracted part of a sentence with adjectives:

Fundamentalism: “….rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views …..”

As for the other word ‘extremist’ I fared no better:
Extremist: “One who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics”

Both ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘extremist’ could be used to describe the same person, (idea etc), my conclusion is that is depends on in what way the words are being used (what is being describes) and by who is taking in the information given.

p.s.
On a side-not, I would like to thank all the religious fundamentalists and extremists who have tried to destroy public education, (which I am a survivor of), for allowing me to spend the rest of my adult life using websites like Dictionary.com, (where I got the explanations from of these words), because of a poor understanding of the English language, spawned by their desire to take tax-payer’s money from where it should go; public education, and sending it off to a religious school that will teach fundamentalists and extremist religious views.

So when Richard Dawkins says that there probably isn’t a god, I sorta raise my eyebrow at his, well, wimping out. The proposition that there is a god – or at least a god in any sense recognizable to actually existing religions – is so crazy out of bounds and discredited that I wonder why anyone would bother to put the “probably” in there. It’s kind of like saying light is probably made of photons to me.

Dawkins might say it’s improbable, and that would be correct. He wouldn’t dare say it’s impossible because there isn’t a way for him to show that’s the case. Claiming something is impossible would require absolute certainty and Dawkins knows he doesn’t have that. What he does have, what mosts atheists have I’d imagine, is enough reasonable doubt to say, “The existence of a God is possible, but highly improbable.”
If someone claims pigs can fly I can’t prove that’s impossible because I’m not aware of all pigs that have ever existed or will ever exist. And yet I’m not going to advocate for the installation of roofs above pig stys “just in case”, and that’s based on the observable evidence at hand. Again, possiblity vs. probability.

The “weak atheism” page on Wiki is sorta-kinda related to this.