What if you are wrong? - Beliefnet Forums: "What is it with the term fundie, anyway? Everybody seems to be offended as if it is a terrible insult.
I used the term for a common attitude on this board which is the refusal to accept the testimony of theists that the experience of God changed their behavior in observable ways as evidence for the existence of God.
To take an extreme example Paul Hill maintained through his execution for murder that God instructed him to save babies by killing a doctor that was aborting fetuses. The fundie atheist will say that God had nothing to do with this, that the man was insane, filled with religious fervor, deluded, or anything but that God actually told him to do it and therefore must have existed at least for Paul Hill. Personally, I think the simplest, most efficient explanation of Paul Hill's behavior is that an entity separate from Paul Hill exerted a powerful influence on him to cause his behavior, that might as well be called God just as Paul Hill said it was.
Is God going to affect me? No, I am an atheist. I do not accept God in my space. But do I believe God exists? For Paul Hill certainly. For my other friends who experience God? Of course. I will even pray for them. Hey, it is their God, Hesh listens to prayers, why not? No skin off my nose.
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2 comments:
I don't remember who exactly pointed it out, but the term fundamentalist was self-invented and self-assigned by certain religious groups/sects that wanted to remind adherents and non-adherents alike of the value of a fundamentalist belief style/system and the differences between themselves and all others of the same/similar core beliefs.
If there were such a thing as a "fundamentalist atheist" and it were akin to its normally understood "religious counterpart," there would be a faction of atheists that were "purests" when it came to interpretations of "atheist doctrine." I think it is self-evident that just a tolerance/intolerance "level" as regards the existence of God is not indicative of "fundamentalism."
A fundie atheist, not a fundamentalist atheist, is a fundie that like any other fundie does not listen to or respond to an argument, but doggedly and dogmatically spouts their particular line about god belief in response to any challenge.
The best line is "show me scientific evidence of God and I will believe." Any evidence presented will be met with "anecdotal, not scientific."
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