Top Line (bottom line first): 3 things to know about religious fundamentalists - how they tick and how the Universe conspires against them.
This blog was conceived after a tweet-versation between me and a secular humanist Arab who I thought was a woman (darn avatars) but now I think is a man but that is not important. What brought us together was our shared frustration with fundamentilsts and fundamentalism, and our compassion for people who suffer from fundamentalism, which is mostly non-fundamentalists.
The 140 character constraint of tweets forced me to distill my points into point-lets... which are now further refined to the top 3 things everyone should know about fundamentalists:
1. Fundamentalists see everything in black/white - they don't do well with shades of gray.
2. Fundamentalists are uncomfortable in chaos and uncertainty, so look to ever-more-rigid structures to reduce their inner anxiety, which leads to...
3. Control!! Fundamentalists seek to control as much of life as they can - even going into controlling the afterlife ("Don't do that or you will burn in hell!). But each new anxiety brings another call for control, so they institute more and more restrictions as they battle their inner fears.
Unfortunately for them (and non-fundamentalists who have to deal with them), the Universe does not cooperate:
1. Life is rarely, if ever, black and white. Though opposites exist to define the black/white, we live in the tension between them. And even when we find each other at the same point, that point can be perceived in a multitude of ways depending on the perceiver.
2. Chaos happens. By trying to protect ourselves against our fears by building higher moral walls and more restrictive behavioral edicts, we pay a heavy price - every brick of fear that goes into those fortifications is extracted from the love that lives in our free spirits.
3. Life will not be controlled - and the afterlife is a mystery (anything heard to the contrary is just rumor). "Let go and let God" is not just another way of saying "whatever" - it's a spiritual principle. It reminds us that those who really trust God don't need to try to do so much of God's work on earth controlling and corralling God's people and (more and more lately) tsk-tsking them literally to death! Ironically, those who seem most certain in God's existence and power are least trusting that God can do God's job (maybe they are scared he won't do it right).
In summary: Fundamentalists, in taking the fluidity and spirituality out of religion and making it all dry and gritty Rules and Regulations, create a kind of Hell-lite right here on Earth. They think they created an oasis that refreshes and rejuvenates and is full of life and growth - but it's a mirage. What is actually there is a desolate rocky place of scorekeeping, spying, shame, paranoia and the slow parched death of the human spirit.
