Converting to/from Fundamentalism

December 28, 2012 by James F. McGrath

David Hayward shared this older cartoon of his today:

The title seems to me precisely wrong. There is indeed a dividing line between those who see the world in terms of binary opposites, and those who see the world as rich, complex, deep, beautiful, and defying simple categories. But that line cuts through the whole of humanity, distinguishing between different sorts of religious believers, but also between different sorts of atheists, while placing some in those categories together on the same side of the dividing line.

The irony, of course, is this. The very fact that there are atheists and Christian fundamentalists who agree on the meaning of the Bible, even while disagreeing whether that meaning is true, while other Christians and atheists insist that the interpretation and approach offered are fundamentally flawed, illustrates precisely why fundamentalism is a flawed view of reality, whatever sort of fundamentalism it may happen to be. Reality is more complex and multicolored and multifaceted than any fundamentalism is willing to acknowledge. And a recognition of that state of affairs can be found among some religious believers and among some atheists, but not all of either.

So on this David Hayward seems to me to be wrong. His cartoon makes an important point. But it is about the fundamentalist mindset, and not about all religious mindsets.