Fundamentalism – descent into the new Dark Ages
13 Oct 2005
The 8th October issue of New Scientist caught my eye the other day in the newsagents. It has a special report with several articles on fundamentalism, touching on, science, faith, Christianity, Islam, and the collapse of modernity.
You have to be a subscriber to view the articles on online, but here is my summary of them:
1. End of the enlightenment: The first article, suggests that people around the world, are feeling threatened by the complexity and pace of change of secular life, with Muslims and Christians retreating into fundamentalist attitudes to cope. The growth of these groups in the US, Third World, and Middle/Far East is phenomenal and statistically documented (potentially 300 million evangelical Christians by end of this century alone). The article concludes by saying that the 21st Century will be a religious one.
One exception that is noted is Europe, which is portrayed as a wasteland of faith, unable to produce significantly large numbers of fundamentalist, and that Europe is different to the rest of the world. It’s a shame they do not explore the differences of Europe and what this might mean for other countries.
Also they do not include any other options, of people wanting to be post-fundamental/post-foundational, and yet not conceding to the agenda of enlightenment liberalism. Maybe the emerging church isn’t statistically large enough for their piece or they are unaware of it.
2. Meeting of Minds: This article explores the mind of a fundamentalist, how they can be nice people, seeking a sense of identity, but ultimately end up with simplistic world view that caused group exclusion and dislike of other peoples. As these groups are often at odds with the dominant culture and worldview, they become intolerant of diversity. Controversially, and beyond my ability to critique the article suggests that the identity crises of Christians with the collapse of modernity, and the re-surgence of fundamentalist/evangelical faith has caused the growth of Islamic fundamentalism.
3. Enemy at the Gates: An article about the campaign of Christians against science, their philosophy and funding by wealthy Christian businessmen. This article is set around the argument of intelligent design and belief in creation and the battle in the US against evolution. I’ve already written about how evolution and intelligent design are largely accepted beliefs in the UK and Europe, so this article was much more about some scary people plotting things in the USA to undermine scientists.
4. People in glass houses: The exploration of how science can be as fundamentalist as faith based fundamentalists.
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Comment by dh
7.30 pm on 13 Oct 2005
Evangelical fundamentalism causing muslim fundamentalist growth? that is ridiculous.
Also how can Evangelicalism or modern Christianity be on the decline when in particularly Africa and the Far East Modern Christianity is in a dramatic increase. It seems people are wanting answers that Emergent and post-modern Christians are unwilling or harshly against providing that God says we should “be ready to give an answer for the hope of your calling.”
Comment by Jason Clark
7.47 pm on 13 Oct 2005
I can’t follow your reasonning DH, the article tracks the growth of christianity, not it’s decline, and it is not written by emergent or emerging church christians.
Comment by dh
9.15 pm on 13 Oct 2005
I guess I do understand that from the ariticle and thanks for asking for my clarification on that. However, the commentary and term “collapse of modernity” and what you say about that confuses me in relation to the article you referenced. It seems the article goes against this notion inlight of the growing number of people who are becoming modern Christians as opposed to post-modern Christians. Hense my final sentence previously. Maybe it is addressing “modern” in a secular sense. If that is what your commentary is regarding I agree. However, I don’t feel one can make a conclusion that sense there is a collapse of modern secular that there is a “collapse of modern Christianity” as well. I personally feel the opposite and from reading the article feel stronger that more and more people are wanting the answers hense the growth of modern Christianity in the places I mentioned. I personally feel no bearing can be made from “modern” in a secular term to “modern” in a Christian way. I also feel “post modern” in a secular way has no bearing on post modern in a Christian way. For me we can help people who are secular to become Believers by Faith but Faith is the “evidence of things not seen”. To me that seems to be a very modern concept. Did what I say make sense.
Comment by dh
9.17 pm on 13 Oct 2005
Again I do know the article is neither emergent or not I was addressing what you were saying, your explaination, around the article. That is what confussed me because the conclusions from the article differed from what you said your conclusions were.
Comment by Jason Clark
8.10 am on 14 Oct 2005
DH the article postulates that there is a collpase in the ‘enlightenment project’ of secular modernity, and a subesquent growth of ‘fundamentalist’ christianity and Islam.
These articles do not use the term post-modern or emerging, etc.
Comment by dh
3.29 pm on 14 Oct 2005
Thanks for the clarification the term modern is refering only to secular modernity. Maybe I projected to much and I apologize.
I do have one question though:
Why did they put together Fundamentalist Christianity and Islam as part of this rise being the same reason? I don’t feel there is any connection between the two with their respective growth. They maybe growing I don’t know. I just don’t know if there is any correlation between their respective growths.
Comment by Jason Clark
3.33 pm on 14 Oct 2005
Well that is what the article suggest with the evidence they provide, you read it and decide for yourself!
Comment by dh
7.10 pm on 14 Oct 2005
The article doesn’t give proof that the Muslim and Fundamentalism increase are for the same reasons. What did it say connected the two for I didn’t see where they said how the two increases are connected. I havn’t done my research but I would venture to say that fundamentalism (I’ll put modern Christianity in this which I don’t like but for discussion sake I will) is on an increase because larg numbers of people want concreat answers that “non-fundamentalism Christianity” doesn’t provide. They leave people “hanging” and to “fend for themselves” for answers that to me seem evident and solid. (that is not to say I don’t value “non-fundamentalism Christianity” but only on measures that are non-foundational).
Comment by Zero-Equals-Infinity
11.28 am on 31 Oct 2005
The question of fundamentalisms rise in the modern world is a very important one. Religion today is ignored at one’s peril. It is not just religion but the way in which religious forms are used which needs to be clearly understood. Some forms of religious expression are distinctly positive and can provide a basis for social cohesion and genuine charitable service to the suffering. This, however, is not what is found in fundamentalisms. Fundamentalisms, in my limited experience, work upon existential angst, the induction of ecstatic states, (of both the heavenly and diabolic realms), and associating a particular literal and exclusivist theology with these states. The result is a rigidity of belief in which literally heaven and hell and the eternal fate of the believer lie in the balance.
As both a mystic poet and a person of scientific bent, I understand that the filters through which I view and interpret the world are a distorted lens. Bias and attachment to a fixed identity and worldview are the things which must continously be struggled with. Failure to do so in the religious realm results in projection with attachment (“i”dolatry). Failure in the scientific realm results in poor science and the phenomena of paradigm shift.
Perhaps resistance to axiomatic change is fundamental to human identity and security. In our age, failure to comprehend this and struggle with it results in the severe aborations in human behaviour which we call “fundamentalist”. This is one of the primary struggles in the individual and collective realms. Our ability to successfully grapple with it may determine our suitability as a species. (But then that very statement may be symptomatic of what I am speaking of. We need to avoid apocalyptic projections and struggle with problems directly and without reduction.)
Comment by dh
10.30 pm on 31 Oct 2005
However, there is much in science that some scientists reject for their own loss. I also feel that the term “fundamentalist” is used in too broad a way then in previous years and I feel this does a disservice to the body of Christ. Why can’t we look at heaven and hell as literal? I feel that is much of the problem. While some things in the Bible for proper context cannot be taken in a proof text way some should be taken literal by the context of the passage given as well as Scripture in light of Scripture. I also don’t understand the term “exclusive”. If “I am the way the Truth and life no one comes to the Father but through Me” or “If you deny Me I will deny you before My Father.” in relation to Faith in Christ alone is exclusive then I can’t comprehend the opposite of these in light of these passages and many others. This is said with care and concern. I do appreciate people searching but at some time, once we become Believers or as Belivers, there must be foundational Beliefs of our Faith that are consistent with God’s Word or we like Jesus says (in paraphrase) foundation is on the sand rather than on the rock. I leave with this “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet Believe.” (This was said to Thomas who wanted a physical assurance of the resurrection of Christ) I want to be among those who have Faith that is not like Thomas as well as the Bereans.
Comment by Zero-Equals-Infinity
3.49 am on 1 Nov 2005
dh said: “Why can’t we look at heaven and hell as literal?”
The reason is very straight forward from a religious standpoint. To look at heaven and hell as literal leads to several problems not the least of which is: What does it say of a God that would create sapient forms to inhabit a place of unimaginable horror for eternity? This “God” makes the most evil of men look positively saintly in contrast. Hence I must dismiss this imagining of God as a projection of the tyrant that is attempted to be appeased out of terror. (This early type of God figure is the familiar tribal God of thunder, storms, earthquakes and other woes.) We see this God in the wake of disaster when certain religious people say: “God’s judgement fall upon us for our wicked ways.”. In the aftermath of the recent earthquakes in Pakistan some imams are preaching this very thing. It is not specific to Islam, and similiar statements have been made by prominent Christian fundamentalists in the wake of human or natural calamity.
The other thing, which I see from my own, albeit personal and hence suspect, experience is that there are two paths to theophany in the approach to death. One is the collapse towards emptiness, which from an egoic standpoint is an approach to the hell of existential horror (the end of self, the disintegration of personal identity, and the unmasking of the many form which constitute the individual.) The other is expansion into infinity and timelessness, a place where the self slides away into the eternal presence (the heavenly.) Now neither of these approaches to emptiness (of “self”) is anything but the approach to the eternal in itself. The difference experientially is a matter of whether the ego is thrashing against the experience of its disintegration or is approaching the threshold of eternity without resistance and in fact desirous of the process and the outcome. The veils that fall are either ripped away or surrendered, but the Beloved will part the veils and the lover will not be but the self-same as the Beloved, lacking anything in itself.
The Sufi poet Rabi’a says it far more eloquently, and I quote her below:
“O Lord, whatever share of this world You could give to me,
Give it to your enemies:
Whatever share of the next world
You want to give to me–
Give it to your friends.
You are enough for me.
O God, my whole concern and desire in this world,
Is that I should always remember you
Above all the things of this world,
And that in the next
I should meet with you alone.
That is why I always pray: ‘Your will be done.’
O my Lord,
if I worship you
from fear of hell, burn me in hell.
If I worship you
from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.
But if I worship you
for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face.”
The role of the believer is not to construct representational forms, but to surrender any form that distorts the countenance of the Divine. This is a process of surrender of attachment and the tendency to create forms that are related to as God. It is a stripping away of the delusions and illusions of the ego, and an embracing of what is in itself for the one pure purpose of love of the Beloved. It is the longing that strips away the layers and reveals the in itself, as each layer falls away. The thing is, God is irreducible and any frame that is placed around it cannot hold. Look directly, do not avert the gaze, and being burnt as a moth that circles into the candle’s flame, burst the seams of form, the imaginings of ego, and the fears and hopes of the false “self”.
When approached from this point of view, science offers no challenge to faith, as faith is not bound to form. Hence, the physical universe and the theories that arise out of science pose no threat. Such a person can fully explore within the scientific rubric without fear that any new theory or discovery will undermine a treasured axiom. Already accustomed to the act of surrendering, such a person is not challenged, and any new and more comprehensive narrative merely opens a new portal, a new frame of reference to see.
Comment by dh
2.26 pm on 1 Nov 2005
I guess who are we to say to make questions about God’s character? This isn’t an ego thing but if God says what it takes to enter His Kingdom and what it takes to not be in His Kingdom I have to take Him for His Word. If not how can there be true Faith if God says this and I think the opposite? This is not constructed by man but by God. “Except A MAN be Born Again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” “All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.” “Without Faith it is impossible to please God.” This sure does sound individual to me to be apart of the Body of Christ.
Comment by dh
2.28 pm on 1 Nov 2005
I also am not challenged or undermined by “new theory”. For just because it is “new” doesn’t mean it is correct. As you know science back tracks all of the time. Also, just because science says something doesn’t mean it is correct either.
Comment by John
2.35 pm on 1 Nov 2005
If there is a God other than in our own minds, then He is who He is, regardless of what we believe about Him or want to believe about Him. If we “construct our God†on the basis of what we want to believe and dismiss anything that strikes us as difficult or objectionable then we are effectively making our own God. In the Old Testament this was called idolatry.
“What does it say of a God that would create sapient forms to inhabit a place of unimaginable horror for eternity? This “God” makes the most evil of men look positively saintly in contrast.â€
Well let us just think about this for a moment. If I tell my child not to run across the road without looking, I am not doing so because I am a killjoy but because I want to protect my child from harm. If my child chooses to ignore what I have said, runs across without looking and is injured or killed as a result, is that me, as a Father, punishing my child for not listening to me? Of course not. But it is fair to say it has happened because my child chose to ignore me.
Then of course, some will say a kind Father would not take the risk of allowing his child to cross the road. Very true, if the child is young. But do we never let our child out on their own? Do we refuse to let them out of our house even when they reach adulthood? At some stage, if they are to experience life and function fully as a human being, we have to let them go and that means RISK.
We are God’s children. God does not imprison us but has given us freedom. That is not the act of a harsh uncaring God but of a God who loves us and wants the best for us. He gives us freedom to reject him and go our own way though it causes him great pain.
Matthew 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
God has not left us to our fate but came himself to die on a cross so that NO ONE need perish but enjoy eternal life. But it is not imposed on us. We all have a choice. Eternal life is a free gift available to all who want it. But if someone says no, they don’t want it and continues to reject God, he will not force them to spend eternity with Him.
For me, the best definition of Hell is “eternity without Godâ€
Comment by dh
4.24 pm on 1 Nov 2005
It is not my construct of God but God’s. Saying there is a hell is not me saying but God saying because it is mentioned in God’s Word. Much of what appears to be difficult or objectionable can be explained. I feel there is a consistency in the Bible and it isn’t me that says this but God. Not that I place the Bible equal to God but I value what God says. If God says how we enter or not enter the Kingdom then by golly I’m going to Believe it.
However, I love this post. You worded freewill perfectly and I agree. I to believe that hell is an eternity without God but I feel it is more than that as well especially when looking at the pit, lake of fire and pillars of smoke, etc refering to those whose names are not written in the Lambs Book of Life. Your definition is the best but there are secondary things that should be included. Seperation from God is the greater torment but there are additional lessor torments of what I described earlier.
John while I showed too much of my disagreement, I really appreciated your post and I agree with your statement on freewill. You worded it perfectly and you helped me with those atheist’s, agnostics and liberal Christians who don’t believe in the choosing seperation from God. Your great John. Love in Christ, DH
Comment by Zero-Equals-Infinity
1.39 am on 3 Nov 2005
Is free will something which we actually possess, or is it a persistent illusion?
Like everyone else I have spoken to I have the sense of choosing, and it is a strong bias when trying to consider whether free will is illusionary or real. Do I choose, or is my state continuously being shaped by antecedents and events?
Before bringing the question of God’s role into this, just consider how your thoughts are currently taking shape in response to many things. This message, as you are reading it will stimulate or evoke a response, which without reading it you would have not been able to do by yourself. Likewise, many events are happening around you moment by moment, some of which you are aware, many of which you have no conscious awareness whatsoever. Perhaps a phrase reminds you of someone, maybe you missed lunch and your stomach is bringing your attention to a desire for food. Did the music on the radio just alter your emotional state, or perhaps the phone started ringing. I can go on, but I think you get the idea. Events shape our state, and we have no control over these events as they interact with us.
Secondly and just as importantly we have no control even in a uniform environment to control or determine our thoughts. Anyone who has ever been in a floatation tank or meditated will recognize how the mind races from thought to thought even in the absence of a noticeable change in the environment. It is as though the conscious mind is like the surface of a lake where winds and currents form the waves. The surface has no will to exercise but is shaped and reshaped. Even if the conscious mind has the benefit of memory, the events of the past shaped the creation of those memories, and the events of the present evoke or stimulate memory to alter one’s conscious (and unconscious) state.
If we now introduce God, (as omnipotent, omnipresence, and omniscient), the quality of omnipresence results in there being no place where God is not, and no time which is not from the Divine frame of reference experienced as present. How is there room for that which is not God, when all space and time are immersed in the Divine presence? Surely then we are not separable in fact from the presence of God, and hence the only will that can possibly be expressing is the Divine will. Despite the persistent illusion of having choice, there can in fact only be one will at work.
Comment by dh
3.39 pm on 3 Nov 2005
Zero, you totally forgot about God’s Holiness being part of His omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience. Part of God’s perfection is Him not sinning. His Holiness and lack of sin shows Him as the Deity. Thank God for His Holiness and Him not sinning as part of His perfection. Thank God that He loved us enough to give us a choice to choose Him rather than be robots with no ability to choose.
Comment by John
5.19 pm on 4 Nov 2005
I find it helpful to think of God’s holiness as meaning we cannot come into his presence unless we are perfect. Anything less than perfection cannot survive in his presence. If this was not the case, God would be less than perfect. Pure gold cannot be pure gold unless it consists purely of pure gold. Add anything less than pure gold to it and it ceases to be pure gold.
This means that without action on God’s part, no one could come into God’s presence or enjoy a relationship with God. We would all be condemned to eternal separation from God.
But God has not left things like this. Through Christ, we can be made perfect, not because of anything good within us but because of his grace. We remain imperfect in this life but are given robes of righteousness. In heaven, perfection is attained.
We boast not of anything good in us but of what God has done for us and will do for ANYONE and EVERYONE who wants it.
But in one sense we have to receive it with both hands and that means letting go of everything else.
Or you could think of it as being a free train ticket. Anyone can have a ticket. But the only people who actually ride on the train are those who choose to get on and LEAVE the rail station behind.
Comment by dh
8.21 pm on 4 Nov 2005
Wow, John loved this. This was such an encouragement to me. This was fabulous.
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