Is it possible to be a fundamentalist and NOT be an igmoramus?

[BurtWorm]

Is there any excuse for believing in the inerrancy of any scripture other than sheer ignorance?

As provocative as the question may appear, I am interested in an answer that reasonably contradicts the premise with evidence. I am ignorant myself, I fully confess, to any reasonable argument to the contrary, as it seems to me totally unreasonable to prefer the word of a 2,000-6,000 year old book to the evidences of the senses and of science. One can reasonably call refusal to consider evidence "ignorance," right?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. No.

[BurtWorm]

2. Okay, then. Case closed.

Court adjourned. ;)

[ewagner]

3. Actually it's a good question....

IMO anyway.

Rephrasing it: are there any academicians out there who can or will say that the Bible is the absolute, literal truth?

And, ultimately,

Are the words of the Bible antithetical to Science and visa versa?

[BurtWorm]

17. There are academics who teach at "non-accredited schools"

;)

who are fundamentalists. Herb Titus, who wrote the Constitutional Restoration Act of 2004 and who represented Roy Moore in the Ten Commandments Case, was the dean of Pat Robertson's pretend law school, until Robertson wanted accreditation and decided he stood a better chance without a nut like Titus on his faculty.

[NoPasaran]

4. I think William Jennings Bryan made it work

Not sure about anybody alive today though.

[Warpy]

5. They need to put their god into a nice, neat little box

because any alternative to that is terrifying.

They're scared people who think that by putting limits on the universe, their lives can become more ordered and predictable and less scary.

Fear. That's why they reject anything to the contrary. They've heard it all before, but that would let god out of the box and an unrestrained and unlimited god horrifies them.

[Tux]

12. I beliefs in god is Deistic

And most Deists agree that the true word of god is the universe itself.

Of course a fundies is always ignorant. When they say thier physician is a godless liberal for giving them medication, they have to be stupid.

[trotsky]

6. Well, there was a poll posted a while ago...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x9666

There were at least a few votes for the inerrancy of scripture. Whether those were from freeper lurkers, I guess we'll never know.

[tsuki]

7. I tried to argue once with a literal fundamentalist about the old Testamen

being a collection of histories, laws, literature, and morality tales. I pointed to the fact that the Jews have stated such.

His reply, "What would the Jews know about the Bible?"

I no longer argue. Case closed.

[BurtWorm]

8. That would be hilarious if it weren't so sickening.

(I laughed anyway!)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. I think some of the people at the top of the fundamentalist

hierarchies are sociopaths who know exactly what the score is.

[BillZBubb]

10. By definition a fundamentalist is an ignoramus.

That doesn't mean they are ignorant in all areas. But belief in the literalism or absolutism of any religious tract necessitates ignoring or arguing against scientific facts. There is no getting around that.

Your question, though, goes deeper. Suppose a person knows the scientific data concerning the age of the earth and understands the basis of the data. Suppose that same person argues that the Bible is correct and not the science on this issue. There are people like that. So, are they ignorant? Not in the case just described. So, something else is taking place.

My sense is that these people suffer from fear of uncertainty. They have difficulty imagining a complex universe. They need a simple, easy to understand, and complete worldview that also supports their way of life. That is comforting and reassuring at a primitive level. Science can never be that. Fundamentalism can. So, they take the easy road.

BTW, I think that all conservatism is based on a similar phenomenon.

[Igel]

11. The church I was in was fundamentalist.

A fair number of folk with bachelors degrees, one minister had an MBA; the CPA was a member and had a grad degree; I had a MA in Russian language/literature. I'm not in the church anymore, but it's not because I dumped the theology; I dumped the organization.

The dept. chair in my grad program wound up converting to rather strict Russian Orthodox sometime after he was hired ... his wife stayed agnostic leaning towards atheist, as he had been.

People like to have things simple and black and white: fundie = ignoramus, everybody nicely put into their little boxes and properly categorized. It just ain't so.

[Tux]

13. However

The degrees don't matter. What separates a fundies from a real person is the use of free will and reason that god gave us. If they don't use them and the methods of gaining knowledge, we are attacking god by no longer using god' divine gifts.

[BurtWorm]

14. What, then, accounts for choosing to believe in words in the Bible

over words from people who study nature directly? How can that possibly be a reasonable attitude toward understanding the world? I'm puzzled by it.

[Lerkfish]

28. well, it would help if you read the bible with this in mind...

there are many things there that can help you in understanding facets of the world: ethics, relations with others, political strategy, earthly power and its excesses (and how to combat them), as well as the valuable lessons on compassion, forgiveness, tolerance and understanding those who are different from you.

Its all in there. The bible is like a big recipe book: it has both salt and sugar, flour and wine, etc. There are many rich and varied elements in the bible, when taken in gestalt and understood as a whole.

Read the book of Job. Really read it...there are some difficult yet meaty concepts to wrap your mind around in terms of man's relation to circumstance, adversity and judgement.

Agreed, the bible is not a science textbook, and it is not meant to be.
And, I agree with you on the idea of fundamentalists....however I disagree that the bible has no part in understanding the world.

The problem with the current crop of fundamentalists is that they really aren't immersed enough in the bible...they cherrypick passages that seem to corroborate their own prejudices and intolerances. If they bothered to read the whole thing (and challenge them if they have), they'd end up a lot more tolerant, a heck of a lot more liberal and full of compassion.

I think you are transferring your distaste for the fanaticism of right wing christians (justified) to the bible.

I wish people knew the bible as I do, a rich and diverse guide and provoker of thoughts. It doesn't have to be scientifically accurate. Shelley's Frankenstein was not scientifically accurate, but does that invalidate its themes of ethics and the conflict of permission and responsibility?

If you WANT to read the bible as a science text, it might fail in your eyes, but you're reading it for the wrong reason.

[BurtWorm]

30. But obviously you're not reading the book as a fundamentalist would.

You're not taking the words literally. You're applying some thought. You're allowing for interpretation. You're not taking the attitude that because it's in the Bible it must be literally true--even if it contradicts other words in the Bible.

I'm not enamored of the Bible, you're right. Did I let right-wing Christians ruin it for me? Perhaps. It could also just be that the Bible is not my cup of tea. I think it's overrated as a wisdom-source or even as a work of great literature. Not to say it isn't either of those. I'm just saying I wouldn't put it at the very top in either of those areas.

[Lerkfish]

31. but that wasn't your question...you asked "what would account for...."

and then seemed to be saying there was nothing of value at all in the book for understanding the world around you.

(which I should point out seems different from your last statement that it wouldn't be at the top as a wisdom or literature source..that would be an opinion, which would not have compelled me to answer you except to say you're entitled to that opinion)

I wasn't answering you to say that the bible had to be your cup of tea, only pointing out that there is much in the bible that has value in understanding the world around you.
That's true, whether I read it as a fundamentalist or a liberal christian.

I was saying that if you read it as a complete work, in gestalt, there is a melange of things to help you understand the world around you...there is much wisdom, philosophy and perspective. If you don't agree with that perspective, or wisdom, that's ok, but to say it isn't in there speaks of ignorance (I mean ignorance in the benign sense here...meaning just that you probably have not read it at all or read it with that in mind).

But the post I'm responding to now seems to be more open to accepting that wisdom or literature IS in there, just not the type or level of quality you prefer...and I have no problem with that.

[BurtWorm]

32. But again, fundamentalists do not read the Bible for the gestalt.

They read it for the final word on EVERYTHING. I'm saying, and have been saying, that to look for the Bible as the final word on what EVERYTHING in the world is about seems unreasonable and willfully ignorant.

[Lerkfish]

34. ok.

I don't disagree with you on that.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

26. Agreed

Ignoramus could mean either uneducated/poorly read/ignorant, or stupid/low IQ. While I would guess (with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I admit) that both of those correlate with Christain fundamentalism, there are a good number of Fundamentalists of whom neither is true.

What is the case, however, is that to be a fundamentalist one must be willing to deliberately disregard evidence in favour of what one "knows" to be true, I think. That's not quite the same thing as being an ignoramus, but it's a major flaw.

[eallen]

15. No. But for reason different from any given so far....

It's not because of any alleged conflict with science. Scripture can be interpreted in a manner quite safe from scientific criticism. Witness how the Catholic Church has finessed that issue since Galileo.

The irrationality of fundamentalism is more basic. Fundamentalists claim that specific scripture is the literal word of God. This raises three, related problems. (1) How the literal word of God made it unscathed through the hand of man. Most fundamentalists believe prophets delivered the word. But prophets also were men, raising the issue of why God would deliver his word through the mouth or hand of a prophet, and how the fundamentalist can be so certain that what he now receives is what God literally spoke. Mormons, of course, say that an angel gave their scripture to John Smith. Who then lost it. In any case, whether Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, or Mormon, there is nothing but frenetic handwaving when it comes to explaining how the word of God made its way into the printed book the believer purchases in a religious store, and why God doesn't just present his scripture to each individual in a way that makes obvious that it comes from something other than a human source. (2) A related question is how the fundamentalist knows that his scripture really is from God. Fundamentalists love to answer all answers from scripture, and often will refer to scripture to answer even this question, a procedure appropriately labeled cranial-rectal inversion. Those who try to do better again are terribly bad at justifying this leap of faith. (3) It's not enough to have the literal word of God. A fundamentalist also has to know how to interpret it. This is where most fundamentalists shift into high-speed irrationality. Many even try to pretend that they are not interpreting their chosen scripture, when plainly they are.

[BurtWorm]

16. You've certainly made a strong case for the manifest irrationality

behind fundamentalist belief.

Well done!

:toast:

Just one question: is irrationality necessarily ignorance? Can one be irrational and NOT be an ignoramus? I think so. I've met a few brilliant nutcases. They're not at all ignorant in any conventional sense: they're well read; they're well educated; they're profoundly thoughtful; they're sophisticated intellectually. Yet they develop an idee fixe of somekind and fall deeper and deeper under its spell and into its trap. I don't think the same thing happens to fundamentalists, no matter how intelligent they may be. They seem to try to keep deep thought reserved for the Bible; that is, they seem to want all deep thought to have begun and ended with the bible. The believer, they seem to think, has no business thinking deeply about anything. That seems so fundamentally ignorant to me.

[ewagner]

18. Well said...

thanks

[BurtWorm]

19. PS: Sorry about misspelling ignoramus in the thread title!

:blush: (Of all the words to misspell!)

[Disturbed]

20. The words of God?

Old Testament


Slave Quotes

Psalm 123:2
As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy.

Ephesians 6:5
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.

Ephesians 6:9
And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

Colossians 3:22
Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.

Colossians 4:1
Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.

1 Timothy 6:1
All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered.

Titus 2:9
Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them,

1 Peter 2:18
Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.

[immoderate]

23. Substitute "employee" for "slave" and it all sounds familiar

Master becomes manager. Any good capitalist knows this stuff.

--IMM

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. In the name of civility and tolerance, I keep trying to convince myself so

But reality keeps on rearing its ugly head, sadly.

[Zhade]

22. I have to say, biblical literalism is idiotic.

Anyone who is willing to discard established scientific and historical facts is quite ignorant, or scared.

Hope that offends no one, it's just how I feel.

[Me.]

24. I Wonder If It Is Ignorance So Much As Fear

Afraid of being self determining, using the free will God gave them. A rigid set of rules to follow in living one's life would seem to absolve the person of responsibility, as they didn't make the rules, they are "merely" obeying the "law", and therefore are not in danger of making the wrong choice. It also speaks to the need of control that fear brings, to keep "Satan" from the door. Satan being equivalent of their fears.

[BurtWorm]

25. Excellent point.

I was thinking of that possibility myself. You put it all very well. "I was just following orders" is the standard excuse of the coward.

[Lerkfish]

29. They are the new Pharisees...

seduced by the letter of the law (or their interpretation of it) and bypassing its intent.
Content to judge others by outrageous strictures, but unwilling to examine their own lives for its ethical rightness.
Exclusionary and intolerant of others, considering themselves sole possessors of righteousness, making money off religion to the detriment of God's will, pretending to speak for God instead of listening to Him.

They are the new Pharisees...and just like the old ones, they will not listen, even if the Son of God appeared before them.

[Me.]

33. I Would Agree To That

Especially as the interpretions often given are myriad and seemingly one can find one for any point of view however contrary to what I believe was the real message of Jesus. That being love yourself, love thy neighbor (there are many mansions in my father's house) and the kingdom of God is within you. These I believe (but not exclusively so for many can be found) speak to intent and not interpretation. Intent being an excellent point and one which is coming up these days in many, many ways; with the bible, our laws and the intent of our founding fathers.

[shawn703]

27. I think it may be possible

Since you can take the Scripture literally, and just interpret it differently as new discoveries are made. The shape of the earth is a good example I think. It used to be heresy to say the earth was round, but now people can point to verses in Scripture that show that the writers of the books were somehow ahead of their time and knew the earth was really round.