Why there's nothing wrong with fundamentalism.

'Fundamentalism' is defined in two ways:

(1) strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline

or, as it's more commonly used:

(2) strict adherence to the basic principles of a religious doctrine sourced in the literal interpretation of inerrant scripture, often Islamic or Christian.

Ask yourself, has anybody ever complimented another for being a fundamentalist? It seems to me that when the word is used, it virtually always has a negative connotation suggesting inflexibility and intolerance of other viewpoints, as though that's always bad.

Surely intolerance of intolerance is good and worthy of inflexibility. Here’s a short list of other things of which we should be intolerant: hypocrisy, polio, bigotry, child abuse, nuclear proliferation, unfriendly AI, symptomatic bradycardia, and intellectual dishonesty.

I don't intend for this post to serve as a launching platform for a discussion of the virtues and potential exceptions to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), but suffice it to say that I strongly support its articles. If one were to say that I am a therefore a fundamentalist about that, then I’d be guilty as charged. This document is nothing if not a list of things of which to to be intolerant. Dissent is to be discouraged, not merely tolerated. Countries can impose sanctions upon other countries that violate the UDHR to try to change the unacceptable behavior. Newspaper editorials might publish cartoons that mock or ridicule the offensive government.

Intolerant? Inflexible? Good for the UDHR, I say. Good for the people who, in response to the smoky crematoria of Nazi Germany, made it happen, and good for the people who enforce it and try to obtain its global acceptance.

This is good fundamentalism. Why? Because the fundamentals of the UDHR are good.

Now, consider another example of fundamentalism from the imagination of Sam Harris. Someone else strictly adheres to the sacred scripture of his small Pacific island tribe that states, “Every third shall walk in darkness”. And so every third born child in the community has both eyes ritualistically removed shortly after birth. One third of the population is blind and celebrated for having been chosen by birth order for this special rite of passage. As they age, it is these children alone who are eligible to become the spiritual leaders of the community.

Why is this kind of fundamentalism wrong? I hope the answer is obvious: what’s wrong with this particular fundamentalism is the fundamentals of this particular religion. Similarly, what’s wrong with Islamic, Jewish, or Christian fundamentalism is, let's face it, certain fundamentals of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Since the sacred texts aren't going to change, it's critically important to change the way problematic passages are interpreted - a task that's probably best performed by moderates (people who find ways to take the literal interpretation of the problematic fundamental passages less seriously).

Of course, many non-religious ideologies also get fundamental principles wrong. In a free society, all should be open to criticism and even, when appropriate, ridicule. Reason, evidence, satire, & ridicule, all play important roles in changing incorrect and/or otherwise problematic but malleable beliefs and desires. Ridicule and mockery played an important part in the decline of the Ku Klux Klan, for example.

Here’s something to watch for: those criticized for endorsing bad principles often retort that the criticizer is an intolerant and inflexible fundamentalist. This is an all too common tu quoque that gets dragged out when religious principles are criticized. Don’t do it, and don’t fall for it. The issue isn’t whether one is a fundamentalist: there are things to be inflexibly intolerant of. It’s whether one's fundamental principles are good or bad. So if you disagree with someone, figure out precisely what principle you think they are endorsing that you disagree with and criticize that instead of calling them a fundamentalist. Because at the end of the day, there’s nothing necessarilly wrong with fundamentalism itself.

Ham-strung

On February 5, 2014, Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") debated Ken Ham (President of Answers in Genesis and The Creation Museum) on whether the Genesis account of creation is a viable model of origins given what science has taught us so far. Both of these guys are characters and they were very well behaved, so it's actually a reasonably entertaining debate as far as these sorts of events go. I thought that Nye could have done a better job, but he clearly did a good enough job. A poll at Christian Today - a Christian Website - had Nye winning by a land-slide. Ham was very clear and polite and he actually garnered a few laughs along the way. You've got to hand it to him for doing a great job of exposing the Christian fundamentalist/literalist mindset.

Ham repeatedly made a distinction in the debate between “observational science” and “origins or historical science”. This distinction is based upon what one can observe in the present and conclude about the present (what he calls “observational science”) and what one can observe in the present and infer about the past (what he calls “origins or historical science”). There is a difference here, to be sure, but it’s not the difference Ham needs for Creationism to be considered as science. Here’s what he says in his introductory statements explaining what is different about what he calls “origins or historical science”:

“At the Creation Museum, we make no apology about the fact that our origins or historical science actually is based upon the Biblical account of origins.”

Well, Ken, your science isn't science. Science doesn’t proceed from the bible. It proceeds from efforts to assess evidence as objectively as possible and it leads to whatever conclusions that assessment produces. If the best explanation for the evidence we find around us is that Yawheh exists and that He created the universe 4-6,000 years ago with all of the “kinds” in their present form, then that would be a scientific conclusion. But Ham starts and ends there, without providing any evidence or justification for doing so. This is textbook circular reasoning and it’s just one of the many fallacies and biases that science tries its best to avoid.

As he demonstrates in the debate, Ham is both woefully ignorant of the evidence and guilty of the most wishful of thinking in trying to conclude that the evidence around us is best explained by the creation account in Genesis. In this regard, the debate exposed the reality of the situation quite well: there is no debate. There is no controversy. The matter has been settled, and there is only ignorance and wishful thinking on the literalist creationist side.

Since Ham’s “origins or historical science” begins with the conclusion it "proves"(according to Ham, at least), it can’t possibly represent anything anybody would rightly call science. Moreover, the evidence doesn’t support that presupposition. A real scientist - any reasonable person, actually - should reject it. Accordingly, creationism, at least Ham’s version of arriving at it, while appropriate for religion classes, has no place in science class. If that is one of Ham’s goals (and surely it is), I’m afraid he has handily defeated it all by himself.