Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism represents perhaps the greatest threat to peace on a world-wide scale that human civilization faces at the moment. In particular, religious fundamentalism.
Religion has carved for itself a sacred space in society and demands respect, even from unbelievers, for its funny dogmas and historical traditions. One is led to believe that since these traditions have been around for so long, they must have their roots in truth; must somehow reflect the true condition of humankind. But it doesn’t take much historical awareness to realize that the roots of the two great religions responsible for much of the fundamentalism of the modern world - Islam and Christianity - are located in unverifiable assertions of historical fact. To say so much is to effectively assert that the Bible or the Quran are no more deserving of respect when it comes to understanding the human condition than a Shakespeare play or the Genji Monogatari.
A Shakespeare play may inspire us with its insight into human affairs, and so may, at times, the Bible (though I would suggest that Shakespeare does it better). It is high time that our approach to written texts matured enough to recognize that their kind of ‘truth’ is entirely relative and not absolute. University students of literature will be familiar with the post-structuralist understanding of and approach to written words built on the works of Derrida and Foucault, but such theories have yet to spread throughout society; perhaps due to the kind of anti-intellectualism that provides a breeding-ground for the very kind of religious dogmatism that these ideas have the potential to bring down to size.
Perhaps we cannot rely on literary theorists to change society at the grassroots level - unfortunately their ideas, though sometimes brilliant, get trapped in a world of ivory towers and impenetrable academic theorizing. But the logic is simple enough for anyone to grasp. We all have our own beliefs, our own pet theories, our own political stance, our own moral standards; these may be said to represent our own individual ideology. The post-structuralist essentially asserts that this individual ideology is that and nothing more - it is the opinion of one social individual, no more valid or worthy of respect than any other individual’s ideology. One man’s self-evident truth may appear as nonsense to another. It is only after recognizing the plausibility of this idea that we can learn to respect people from other countries or religions or political groups. No-one has the monopoly on truth, and neither does any organization.
Not until morally-robust people no longer feel the need to appeal to a Higher Power to justify themselves will the age of fundamentalism end. Not until fundamentalist religion is discredited will the morally-dubious lose their ability to claim a sacred space in our societies, immune to criticism and above rational debate.
Dromiceius wrote:
I believe, on one level, that one should maintain respect for all points of view, apropos of the “golden rule”.
On the other hand, this appears to be a slippery slope: if one is to accept creationism being taught in school, could a separate science class for Pastafarian theory be far behind?
Incidentally, I really hope HTML works in these comment boxes.
Posted on 13-Oct-06 at 4:29 pm | Permalink
bamboo4 wrote:
Religions are based on “faith” which is a collective mental state of a given group of humans and there is nothing in faith that is remotely based on “truth.” All religious faith stems from the aspiration of humans for perfection and their inability to control the behavior of nature, resulting in an assumption that there must be an omnipresence which controls all the phenomema that take place in the Universe. Some of them call that imaginary omnipresence as God, or such as in the case of Japanese, multiplicity of gods (八百万の神-yaoyorozunokami). The faith is engrained with the belief that if you worship and pray to it or them, and if you are sincere and lucky to boot, you get what you wished.
Christian and Islamic faith are both concerned with a single supreme being, but many a religion in the rest of the world often has a different idea and approach. However, they all stem from the same basic mental root, i.e., fear of nature.
Science is not a product of faith, but it is an assemblage of hypotheses, and here again, there is nothing that has to do with truth. It is correct that some of these hypotheses happens to fit with nature and serves to explain the workings of nature, thus removing the fear and providing opportunities to control some aspects of nature, but when you get right down to the core, as the thought experiment of Erwin Schrödinger involving his famous cat and the so-called Copenhagen interpretation appear to suggest, even under the modern physics one cannot find what can be termed as “ultimate truth.”
It is unfortunate that, throughout history, those who adhere to the monotheism, in particular, often get carried away with their religious faith and become belligerent like the fundamentalists of today - more so today because any resulting conflicts become further complicated because of the economic, political and other various factors that get implicated as well.
Among the mental and intellectual exercises of humankind (although I have reservations as to whether religious exercises are intellectual in eseence), “faith” I think is a byproduct of fear and ignorance and salvation of the mankind from that is the task cut out for the future generation, which would have to get busy if we were to reshape the world.
These are the reasons why I remain an atheist.
Posted on 14-Oct-06 at 5:09 am | Permalink
ben wrote:
I agree basically with respecting all people as people, since everyone is free to find their own way in life. Whether we have to respect all viewpoints, though…
Posted on 14-Oct-06 at 3:48 pm | Permalink