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Any fundamentalism be it Islamic, Christian (Klu Klux Klan, westboro baptism, lgbt murders), Buddhist (Rohingya killed by Buddhists in Myanmar) is incompatible

Any fundamentalism be it Islamic, Christian (Klu Klux Klan, westboro baptism, lgbt murders), Buddhist (Rohingya killed by Buddhists in Myanmar) is incompatible with the modern world. Not just Islam. The problem is not religion, it's that some fundamentalists who are not right in the head use it as an excuse to commit horrifying acts.

rcstank 6y ago
Westboro Baptists are fundamentalists? I’d say they’re hateful, not fundamentalists as they preach that God hates people which is not what the Bible says.
- leephillips 6y ago
  I must have a different translation from yours.
- vaidhy 6y ago
  Isn’t it just that their interpretation and your interpretation of bible are different? They claim that their position is a literal interpretation of the book. They are fundamentalist by the same reason Wahhabism is the fundamental strain of Islam.
thatguy0900 6y ago
As an atheist, I never really understood how a religious person can not be a fundamentalist. Isn't that just reading the book and doing exactly as it says, which is required by the God? I don't get how people disregard sections of the books and still consider themselves members. How much of the book can be ignored before you are no longer following the religion in peoples eyes?
- mdifrgechd 6y ago
  Atheism is a very strong stance. Consider that not everybody needs to think in such absolutes.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    But a religion is a very absolute thing, is it not? Do religions say you are free to ignore some of what the book says if it doesn't fit current social values, or does it say you have to do all of it?
    - mdifrgechd 6y ago
      > Do religions say you are free to ignore some of what the book says if it doesn't fit current social values, or does it say you have to do all of it? Yes, sure. Religion is super personal, it doesn't automatically mean you believe every word of a text. There may be some that demand that, but it's a broad spectrum that definitely admits looser interpretations.
      - thatguy0900 6y ago
        I just have trouble believing that's not a modern interpretation to allow current human rights oriented social ideas to mix with religion, but I'll admit I have no particular knowledge of historical religious interpretation
  - 1over137 6y ago
    Atheism is not a strong stance. I think maybe you think atheists believe with certainty there is no god. Some surely do, but most merely believe there's no evidence and it's therefore super-unlikely. Even Dawkins put himself at 6.9 of 7 on his scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability#Dawkins'_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probabili...
- nicolas_t 6y ago
  As an exercise, try and read the different translations of the bible, you'll notice that it's easy to have different meanings just because different translators interpreted the text differently. Even with a single translation, it's completely possible to interpret different parts of the bible in different ways. Fundamentalists take one extreme interpretation and tend to only acknowledge the parts of the text that seem to agree with them and ignore the ones that don't. It's the same with the Quran, the Torah, the Bardo Thodol. Religious text tend to have a lot of allegories and ambiguous texts that are ripe for different interpretations... And someone who is religious could always easily claim that god may be perfect and omniscient but men are fallible and that the text has been imperfectly re transcribed over time (the oldest copy of the complete Bible, the Codex Vaticanus is from the 4th century for example). But then again, I don't think in absolutes and that's why I'm an agnostic... I don't find any religion likely but I can't claim to know everything and be completely sure that there is no god, or entity or whatever.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    It doesn't seem like some of it is different interpretations to me but just disregarding some things. Like how jesus said when asked that rich people don't go to heaven. I have alot of religious friends who weren't aware of that part, which seems extremely important to me.
    - nicolas_t 6y ago
      One of the famous quote is "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" but then you also have scholars who claim that the eye of the needle was a gate in Jerusalem, others who claim that "camel" is a Greek misspelling and that kamêlos (camel) was written in place of kamilos, meaning "rope" or "cable". Then of course you have quotes like "The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts.”... It's not like any religion is completely self-consistent.
1over137 6y ago
>Not just Islam. Islam is worse because it claims the Quran is the literal word of God. That doesn't really allow for the reinterpretation gymnastics that Christians can do, because they at least acknowledge their book is written by man.

rcstank 6y ago

Westboro Baptists are fundamentalists? I’d say they’re hateful, not fundamentalists as they preach that God hates people which is not what the Bible says.

leephillips 6y ago
I must have a different translation from yours.
vaidhy 6y ago
Isn’t it just that their interpretation and your interpretation of bible are different? They claim that their position is a literal interpretation of the book. They are fundamentalist by the same reason Wahhabism is the fundamental strain of Islam.

thatguy0900 6y ago

As an atheist, I never really understood how a religious person can not be a fundamentalist. Isn't that just reading the book and doing exactly as it says, which is required by the God? I don't get how people disregard sections of the books and still consider themselves members. How much of the book can be ignored before you are no longer following the religion in peoples eyes?

mdifrgechd 6y ago
Atheism is a very strong stance. Consider that not everybody needs to think in such absolutes.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  But a religion is a very absolute thing, is it not? Do religions say you are free to ignore some of what the book says if it doesn't fit current social values, or does it say you have to do all of it?
  - mdifrgechd 6y ago
    > Do religions say you are free to ignore some of what the book says if it doesn't fit current social values, or does it say you have to do all of it? Yes, sure. Religion is super personal, it doesn't automatically mean you believe every word of a text. There may be some that demand that, but it's a broad spectrum that definitely admits looser interpretations.
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      I just have trouble believing that's not a modern interpretation to allow current human rights oriented social ideas to mix with religion, but I'll admit I have no particular knowledge of historical religious interpretation
- 1over137 6y ago
  Atheism is not a strong stance. I think maybe you think atheists believe with certainty there is no god. Some surely do, but most merely believe there's no evidence and it's therefore super-unlikely. Even Dawkins put himself at 6.9 of 7 on his scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability#Dawkins'_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probabili...
nicolas_t 6y ago
As an exercise, try and read the different translations of the bible, you'll notice that it's easy to have different meanings just because different translators interpreted the text differently. Even with a single translation, it's completely possible to interpret different parts of the bible in different ways. Fundamentalists take one extreme interpretation and tend to only acknowledge the parts of the text that seem to agree with them and ignore the ones that don't. It's the same with the Quran, the Torah, the Bardo Thodol. Religious text tend to have a lot of allegories and ambiguous texts that are ripe for different interpretations... And someone who is religious could always easily claim that god may be perfect and omniscient but men are fallible and that the text has been imperfectly re transcribed over time (the oldest copy of the complete Bible, the Codex Vaticanus is from the 4th century for example). But then again, I don't think in absolutes and that's why I'm an agnostic... I don't find any religion likely but I can't claim to know everything and be completely sure that there is no god, or entity or whatever.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  It doesn't seem like some of it is different interpretations to me but just disregarding some things. Like how jesus said when asked that rich people don't go to heaven. I have alot of religious friends who weren't aware of that part, which seems extremely important to me.
  - nicolas_t 6y ago
    One of the famous quote is "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" but then you also have scholars who claim that the eye of the needle was a gate in Jerusalem, others who claim that "camel" is a Greek misspelling and that kamêlos (camel) was written in place of kamilos, meaning "rope" or "cable". Then of course you have quotes like "The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts.”... It's not like any religion is completely self-consistent.

1over137 6y ago

>Not just Islam. Islam is worse because it claims the Quran is the literal word of God. That doesn't really allow for the reinterpretation gymnastics that Christians can do, because they at least acknowledge their book is written by man.