> Hi Mary, > > I think you make an excellent point. > [Mary Replies] Thank you, Steve. And I think you've written an excellent post.
There are so many ideas in it to be explored. Tangents. Sparks. While reading it, a new idea popped into my head (new to me anyway). If we can agree that Western Civilization is built on the idea of the self as supreme and eternal; that all monotheisms are based on that, then it seems pretty clear to me that a religious fundamentalist is simply someone who has taken this notion to its logical conclusion. I would suggest that fundamentalists have so completely bought into the twin Western ideas of the supreme individual combined with the scientific method as the supreme foundation of our culture that they are inexorably compelled to express their faith in scientific (that is, provable) terms. If you believe in God and eternal life, while at the same time believing that the physical world is all of reality, then you have really no other choice than to couch your religion in terms of historical fact. You could say that a fundamentalist is (in an odd juxtaposition of their own position) someone who believes in science more completely than the most dedicated scientist. I say this because a scientist at least knows the limitations of his own craft, and realizes the futility of attempting to answer mystical questions using the scientific method, while a fundamentalist does not. Does that make sense? Mary Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
