"Fundies."
I first heard that term when I was in college. My roommate was telling me about a student government trip he'd just returned from. He and his companions were leaving the meeting when they were accosted by several of them.
"We barely escaped the fundies," he said.
"The what?" I asked.
You see, although I was an atheist at that time, my dealings with religion were very few. It was easy to ignore the "preachers" on the college campus and street corners. I deliberately lived in a media vacuum, too, so I had no idea what kind of things the Religious Right was up to. I was pretty apathetic about it. (Yes, this seems pretty weird to me now, considering that freethought activism is integral to my present life.)
Then, as now, I never really cared what other people believed, and only became indignant whenever those people tried to push their beliefs on me. Of course, living in my own little bubble, I never saw that this was going on. Once I began paying attention to the world outside, I became very familiar with fundies.
Over the ensuing years, I've debated with them, informally, in person and online. I've read their writings and listened to their media broadcasts. I've laughed at them and sworn at them (in private, of course).
But I've never understood them.
I have never been able to fathom why these people cling to their literal views of the bible, when so many of them can easily be shown to be false, or contradictory of other passages in the same book.
Oh, I've tried to figure it out, but it isn't an easy question to answer, and what thoughts I do have about it are rather unsettling. The only thing I can come up with that makes any kind of sense at all is that fundamentalism stems from a psychological need in these people.
It is comforting to believe the bible is the literal word of God, to "know" that God or Jesus (or Mary, or Allah, or whatever) takes a direct, personal interest in the fundamentalists' daily lives. They want… no, they need to place responsibility for their lives somewhere other than in their own control. And this need to have every word of the bible absolutely true is very powerful. They need to feel "special," to feel that they are being personally guarded from life's nastiness.
To throw any shadow of doubt onto this idea is highly distressful to them. They can't seem to handle the idea that we are the responsible parties, that nothing supernatural is out there to protect us.
So why can't these people be like "normal" theists? Why can't they believe these things without having every word of the bible be literally true? I think it is because they are afraid that if any part of the bible is untrue, even if it is simply allegory, it will render them incapable of discerning truth from fiction.
I think that, of all theists, those with the weakest faith are the fundamentalists. Yes, their belief can be unassailable, but largely it is because of the blinders they wear. Once their narrow vision of truth is revealed as being incorrect in any way… once they accept that any bit of the bible cannot possibly be inerrant… it's like pulling out a brick at the bottom of the stack. The whole thing is in danger of toppling.
And that's something that simply cannot be. It seems to be an "all or nothing" situation for them. Either the entire bible is literally true, or… Or what? They cannot even accept another possibility.
And so, fundies go through life with these blinders on. They can't expand the narrow view to include honest reason and analysis, for to do so would be to see their emotional need for security challenged at every turn.
And that's something they can't handle.
