Secular Fundamentalists

Religious Fundamentalism is the cause of most of the harm done in the world, right? It's what many people think. But surprisingly, the evidence doesn't justify the position. In fact, the havoc wreaked by what I like to call Secular Fundamentalists in the last century alone is far more devastating in the cost to human life than anything done in the name of religion.

Fundamentalism can be defined in numerous ways, but I think the most basic common trait is this: believing something in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary.

Defined this way, suddenly a lot more people are guilty of Fundamentalism than just the religious. You don't have to believe in God to hold, with religious fervor, a dangerous and destructive belief. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pot, Mao, Il, and political cults of their stripe are proof of this fact.

Now consider some interesting comparisons. While it is impossible to give truly accurate figures for any of the following, there are rough estimates generally accepted by most authorities. During the 300 year period of the Crusades, approximately 1 million direct deaths resulted. The Spanish Inquisition led to approximately 32,000 direct executions.

Yet in the 20th Century alone, direct deaths as a result of cults of personality and institutionalized Atheism under communist and fascist regimes are estimated at around 100 million lives! The sheer ruthlessness of the godless state far outpaces, in both speed and cruelty, anything that religion has doled out. From the Killing Fields of Vietnam, to the Gulag Archipelago of Lenin and Stalin, to the Third Reich, the body count of Secular Fundamentalism has no second.

An important observation that shouldn't be ignored is that religious pogroms like the Crusades and the Inquisition are aberrations of the faith they espouse. They are actually politically motivated rather than religious, and popes along with kings (both acting politically) play upon the ignorance of the masses who have been denied information and individual thought, in order to motivate them to a political end. Any culture that denies its people the right to obey the dictates of their conscience, and who denies them the information necessary to make a fully informed choice, is a breeding ground for fundamentalist indoctrination of all kinds.

Ethnic hatred also masquerades under the guise of religion. The deadly conflicts between Shia and Sunni Muslims are more ethnic than religious, as well as are the wars between Israel and Palestine.

The real question comes when we begin to ask what force for good has secular Atheism done for those under its political control. The answer is: very little. What do you expect when your rights are conferred upon you by the state rather than your Creator? The fact is that religion has been far more of a source for good in the world than for evil, and certainly far less a source of evil than institutionalized secular atheism has been for good.

So, I put the question to you: what kind of fundamentalist are you? What do you believe with such certainty that you can't stand to be challenged by a contrary opinion or fact? What are you willing to believe so passionately that you are willing to despise another person over? A political figure? Global climate change? Bottle-to-bottle recycling?

Whatever it is, we may all be surprised to find a little too much of the fundamentalist in ourselves than we really care to admit. Think about it.