The psycholoy of fundamentalists

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The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#1  Postby Clive Durdle » Mar 21, 2014 6:51 pm

I have come across a male who is high up in an organisation that does meditative marshal arts and I am surprised at my emotional reactions! Thinking about it, he reminds me of hypocritical fundamentalists I have come across.

Has anyone asked if there are personality types of fundamentalists? I feel as if I am meeting an extremely well hidden very dangerous madness. Other people have similar feelings, someone commented he doesn't smile
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Re: The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#2  Postby Agrippina » Mar 21, 2014 7:08 pm

I'm about to disappear with my book for the night, so I'm marking this to come back to tomorrow.

This has always fascinated me because I was brought up in a fairly religious environment, and of course living through an era of religious nationalism for most of my life, I should be as hung up on religion as most other people my age are, and yet I'm not. So I wonder why it didn't "take" with me.

I'm sure there's some sort of psychological reason for deep religious belief. In my experience, it also appears to be tied to hang ups about all sorts of other things, like disapproving of swearing for one thing. There has to be a reason for it. :thumbup:
A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation. - Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE - 43 BCE)
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Re: The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#3  Postby DrWho » Mar 21, 2014 7:13 pm

Clive Durdle wrote:I have come across a male who is high up in an organisation that does meditative marshal arts and I am surprised at my emotional reactions! Thinking about it, he reminds me of hypocritical fundamentalists I have come across.

Has anyone asked if there are personality types of fundamentalists? I feel as if I am meeting an extremely well hidden very dangerous madness. Other people have similar feelings, someone commented he doesn't smile


Some people love the authoritative feeling of having absolute answers.
The skeptical writers are a set whose business it is to prick holes in the fabric of knowledge wherever it is weak and faulty; and when these places are properly repaired, the whole building becomes more firm and solid than it was before. - Thomas Reid
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Re: The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#4  Postby Arnold Layne » Mar 21, 2014 7:33 pm

Agrippina wrote:I'm about to disappear with my book for the night, so I'm marking this to come back to tomorrow.

This has always fascinated me because I was brought up in a fairly religious environment, and of course living through an era of religious nationalism for most of my life, I should be as hung up on religion as most other people my age are, and yet I'm not. So I wonder why it didn't "take" with me.

I'm sure there's some sort of psychological reason for deep religious belief. In my experience, it also appears to be tied to hang ups about all sorts of other things, like disapproving of swearing for one thing. There has to be a reason for it. :thumbup:

Same with me, Aggie. All my family are religious except me.
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Re: The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#5  Postby Clive Durdle » Mar 21, 2014 7:34 pm


Some people love the authoritative feeling of having absolute answers.


Too simplistic! Don't most people get a realistic live and let live attitude? Why don't some? Refrigerator mothers? Child abuse?
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Re: The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#6  Postby kennyc » Mar 21, 2014 8:46 pm

Part of it is appeal to, respect for and consent to authority I believe which plays into any 'organization' from marital arts, to religion, to military...it is also the power, the unquestioning ... and tied in with our need to fit in the social order...to be a part of that social order...

something I ran across doing a search:
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/20/1/63/

Look to be some interesting things here: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=The ... CCgQgQMwAA
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Re: The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#7  Postby Arnold Layne » Mar 21, 2014 9:10 pm

It depends what you mean regarding fundamentalists.

For example, would you consider someone who believes everything in The Bible, including the Creation and Adam and Eve and all that, a fundamentalist? In that case, you'd have to include my 91 year old mother who was indoctrinated into Catholicism throughout her childhood and who cannot and does not want to believe anything different. I consider her unfortunate to have been born into such a situation, but she's as normal as anyone....apart from that.
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Re: The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#8  Postby THWOTH » Mar 21, 2014 10:10 pm

infidels.org wrote: Based upon the author's twenty years of classroom and clinical study, Slaves of Faith explores and explains the emotionally laden dynamic at work in the fundamentalist mind. As Dr. Mercer posits, the fundamentalist is fundamentally driven by anxiety layered over a fragile sense of self-identity constructed upon a system of beliefs that is both logically inconsistent and highly suspect in light of modern science. As a result, the fundamentalist completely rejects modernity while battling mightily in the arena of national politics and culture to bring about a world that aligns more closely with the fundamentalist worldview...

Description: 'Slaves to Faith' by Calvin Mercer.
http://infidels.org/kiosk/book/slaves-t ... -1029.html
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Re: The psycholoy of fundamentalists

#9  Postby Agrippina » Mar 22, 2014 5:54 am

Arnold Layne wrote:It depends what you mean regarding fundamentalists.

For example, would you consider someone who believes everything in The Bible, including the Creation and Adam and Eve and all that, a fundamentalist? In that case, you'd have to include my 91 year old mother who was indoctrinated into Catholicism throughout her childhood and who cannot and does not want to believe anything different. I consider her unfortunate to have been born into such a situation, but she's as normal as anyone....apart from that.


I think there's a generation and cultural difference with your mother. My mum was 88 when she died, and despite her worsening blindness, she managed to read her Bible every single day, right up to her death. She gave up attending church when she finally accepted that they were merely taking money for nothing worthwhile, but she continued to believe in God and her Bible.

My interest is in modern people, those who've had the benefit of being exposed to the information that's available on television and especially on social media where they interact with people who can show that not believing isn't 'evil' and that what they learn from their religion is just wrong.

I wonder why it didn't take with me. I know that I'm a little more intelligent than the average person (whatever that is), but if I could reason at age 5 or 6 that the Adam and Eve story is silly and improbable, how come most other kids don't? That's only the beginning of it.
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