Why is Fundamental religion in any form associated with so much negativity
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[edit] Introductory Note
Usually, this refers to religions that have a well defined scriptural base of some kind, and the teaching is that this scriptural material is without error. It is also accepted that the material does not contain much if any material that is figurative, symbolic or literary, and therefore open to various interpretations. The material is literally true, and must be the literal guide for living for all of the people who practice that religion. As a result of this kind of understanding of their materials, fundamentalists come to the inevitable conclusion that theirs is the one and only legitimate pathway to God and to salvation. Anyone outside of their path is doomed in the next life, and may be doomed in this one as well, depending on the fervor of the different fundamentalist groups.
[edit] Reason
Fundamental religion allows people to have an easy answer to every question. Instead of repeatable testable ideas, one merely need to insert god into every hole where knowledge is lacking. This is not all together a bad thing. Our world is terrifically complicated and many times people need something to hang onto. Fundamental religion fills this void with seeming certainty. However, This brings with it the zeal of castigating everything that is against an ideology as evil (i.e. liberal media). In its extreme practice, fundamental religion produces things like the 9/11 attacks. Therefore, it is very easy for fundamental religion to get a bad wrap because it many times deserves one.People tend to view Fundamentalists negatively because no one likes to be told they are wrong. If a Fundamentalist (of any religion) tells me I am going to hell because I do not share their exact beliefs, that's pretty upsetting. When so many religions are supposed to be based on love and forgiveness of others, the strict belief system of a Fundamentalist can make them appear hypocritical, which is not exactly a desired trait.
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- type of militantly conservative religious movement characterized by the advocacy of strict conformity to sacred texts. Once used exclusively to refer to American Protestants who insisted on the inerrancy of the Bible, the term fundamentalism was applied more broadly beginning in the late 20th century to a wide variety of religious movements. Indeed, in the broad sense of the term, many of the major religions of the world may be said to have fundamentalist movements. For a discussion of fundamentalism in American Protestantism, see fundamentalism, Christian.
- In many ways religious fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, characterized by a sense of embattled alienation in the midst of the surrounding culture, even where the culture may be nominally influenced by the adherents' religion. Or, the term can refer specifically to a way of approaching one's religious scripture; i.e. in fundamentalism one holds that one's religious texts are infallible and historically accurate, despite contradiction of these claims by modern scholarship.
- Groups described as fundamentalist or which describe themselves in these terms, often strongly object to this terminology, because of negative connotations which have become associated with the label; or, because it implies a similarity between themselves and other groups, which they find objectionable.
