October 20, 2022 • 57 mins
Fundamentalism is usually thought of as a problem religions have to deal with, but not all fundamentalists are religious. And no matter what their belief system, fundamentalism is inherently antisocial and a problem for everyone.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, February one, second, third, we're going to be
in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco again. That's right. We can't
wait to get back on stage. We've really missed in
live shows coming out and see us. Tickets are already
on sale and where can you get those at link
tree slash s y s K Live. That's l I
(00:22):
n K t R dot E slash s y s
K Live. I can't wait to see everybody. Welcome to
Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
(00:43):
Charles W. Chuck Bright and Jerry's here of course, which
makes this Stuff you Should Know from you can. I
lead off with a couple of just fun quick shoutouts
before we get to the not fun hm topic. You know, uh,
going to Boston tomorrow to see Pavement. Oh that's what
(01:04):
you're doing? Okay? Great? Uh. My old friend from high school,
Robert h. Chehade of Toughs University fame, we were texting
about Pavement and he said, this is back when tickets
went on sale. I'm going to both Atlanta shows, of course,
and he said, you want to come up here? I
was like, heck, yeah, so going to see the Boys tomorrow,
(01:25):
and UH also want to quickly shout out I just
got back recently from my uh tenth, eleventh, and twelve
Bonnie Prince Billy shows for the last couple of years,
and I just want to shout out the great people
in towns of Santa Cruz, California, Pasa Roblis, California, and
(01:45):
Big Sir. Oh yeah, I just had a great time
out there. It's my part of the country. I love
northern California. To my vibe, had great breakfast burrito's, great food.
They do him right, man. He can't get a real
decent breakfast burrito in Atlanta, and I don't know why
(02:06):
that's gonna be my retirement job. Oh that's great, I'll come.
I'll come patronize your breakfast period. I don't know what
is so hard about a California saw breakfast burrito, but
Atlanta does not seem capable. It's probably too healthy. It's
not healthy. Okay, Well then I don't know. I'm all
out of ideas. Chuck's so frustrating anyway, great towns, great shows.
(02:30):
Another great run with the great will Oldham. This time solo,
first time I've ever seen him literally by himself. He
has a variety of arrangements, ranging from full band a
couple of people to six or eight bluegrass style. And
this was this was just him, which was a treat
unplugged for once plugged but acoustic. Yeah, okay, did you
(02:55):
I was wondering if you've gotten yourself a vand of
hollo him around and yet no, no, I'm flying in
these places. Yeah, that seems sensible, because then I ran
it'd be tough to get back in time to work.
You know, I wish you could fly in a place
and rent a little hippie van to follow someone around
for a few days. That sounds like your retirement job
instead of some dumb mid sized suv. Yeah, you could
(03:18):
be like, run a VW wagon, get a free breakfast burrito.
There you go. That's that's it. I might invest in
that one. All right. Now, let's talk about fundamentalism. Yeah,
let's talk about fundamentalism. Um, this is uh, this is
one of those kind of I guess episodes that ties
(03:38):
into a bunch of other stuff, and it's the kind
of thing that you don't really think about, and then
when you do think about you wish you weren't thinking about.
But it's kind of important, I think for everybody to
be aware of because with fundamentalism, a lot of people,
especially non religious people, just presume that fundamentalism is a
religious thing only necessarily deaf only does affect religions most easily,
(04:02):
as we'll see, But basically anything that people really hold
dear um can actually produce fundamentalism. And when you kind
of strip it of its religious connotations, um it it
becomes clear like, oh yeah, there's a lot of fundamentalism
going on around. It's especially in two UM and it's
(04:24):
it has given me just researching this, it's given me
like a deeper impulse to be like, hold the center,
Hold the center. We can make it through this. We
just have to. We just have to get to the
other side and make sure that the center remains intact.
You know. Yeah, I think, I mean, you put this together.
You did a great job, by the way, on a
on a tough topic. But um, I think the sociologists
(04:48):
that you found that said, uh, this really had it
is um. Fundamentalism is an ideology rather than a theology,
so it can be religious in nature, but it doesn't
have to be all that to say that sort of
a long winded c o A that this is not
a hit piece on religion at all, but it is.
(05:08):
You know, I think it is going to end up
being a bit of a condemnation on fundamentalism, because it's
not a great way to be to say, hey, the
way we think of things is the only right way.
Everybody else is wrong, and I don't want anything to
do with you. Well, not only that you need to
change your viewpoints to find that follow mine, because mine's
(05:29):
the only right way to think. That's a terrible way
to be terrible and and truly, when you start to
research fundamentalism, you you do start to see it everywhere.
Maybe not stuff that checks every single box, but when
you understand the basics of it, it's it becomes clear
we're surrounded by it right now. Um, And that's actually
kind of a new thing. Um. One of the things
(05:51):
about fundamentalism is when when you kind of listen to
what they're saying, they imagine that they're they're taking society
back to this you know, golden age or golden arrow
and things, you know, we're more sensible and more predictable
and reliable and things just made sense more. But UM
fundamentalism is actually a pretty modern thing. Um. It only
(06:14):
arose starting in about eighteen seventy. Uh, and it was
originally UM this kind of uh assault or response to
progressive ism in religion. Yeah, that's a good way to
say it. I think the first wave he said, ran
from about eighteen seventy to nineteen nine. I'm sorry, and
(06:38):
uh and we'll you know, we'll see in a minute
here kind of how and why it ended. The first
run at least, or at least brought it underground. But
it started or it took its name at least from
a series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals colon Uh, Testimony
of the Truth. And that kind of says it all
right there, They're like someone saying, this is the truth.
(07:02):
This is not our opinion on maybe how things should be.
Is this is the one way that things clearly should be,
because it's the only way, because it's the one truth. Yeah.
And around that time, in the late nineteenth century, UM
religion in America was starting to become more progressive because
society was modernizing and to kind of adapt and change
(07:23):
and alter itself to this modernizing society. UM, just the
understanding of what religion meant was under transition, and fundamentalists said, no, no, no,
religion is religion. It doesn't matter what society does. This
is the truth, This is the this is the way
that it's supposed to be, and we need to stop
(07:44):
progressing away from it and being accommodating to to modern society.
We need to make modern society go back to the
old ways, you know, the ways were we're in charge. Yeah,
and there was a big um sort of one of
the first big face punches to fundamentalism came about in
eighteen fifty nine. Uh well, I kind of helped give
(08:05):
rise to the original fundamentalism. But the publication of On
the Origin of the Species from Darwin, which basically you know,
everyone knows what that did. That introduced evolution and natural
selection and really undermine sort of in writing for the
first time, it challenged creationism as why we're here and
(08:25):
how we got here, and it was it's sort of
as you'll see that you know, at times when um,
a fundamentalist might think, or a religion might think that
they're being threatened by new ideas, that's sort of when
the lockdown goes on and they really sort of rise
to the occasion, and that sort of helped birth the
(08:46):
big first rise of fundamentalism. Yeah, fundamentalism UM took its
first swipe at modern modernity. Yeah sure, UM with the
Scopes Monkey trial in UM. It was uh Tennessee versus Scopes,
where Tennessee had charged public UM school teacher John Scopes
(09:07):
of teaching evolution in the classroom, which was against the law.
They charged the science teacher with teaching science exactly, That's
exactly right, UM, And a guy, a very powerful and
um prestigious and smart attorney named Clarence Darrow came to
the aid of John Scopes, UM, and the Scopes Monkey
trial actually ended up putting not John Scopes on trial,
(09:30):
but fundamentalism on trial. And Clarence Darrow was not a
fan of fundamentalism, and he basically used this trial as
an excuse to just just show how ridiculous and backwards
these fundamentalists beliefs were. That's right, and it worked. Uh
he in a sense, he lost the trial. I believe
in that until nineteen sixty seven that ban on teaching
(09:54):
evolution remained in effect, uh seven from UM. But you know,
he lost a battle. He won the war and that
the coverage of the Scopes monkey trial really like kind
of blew the whole thing up and dealt a big
blow to what fundamentalism was in the US and how
(10:14):
much sort of influence they might have moving forward. And
kind of what it did post Scopes was it kind
of moved it back underground for several decades. Yeah. I
kind of think of the Scopes Monkey Trial and the
result of it is like, um, when Homer gets embarrassed
on The Simpsons and the whole town just points and
laughs at him. In that instance, Homer is fundamentalism in
(10:37):
the nine twenties in America, right. Like, society did not
think much of it afterwards, which is surprising because it
had been kind of a respected school of thought UM
for a little while, and I guess it just kind
of it just went too far towards the mainstream and
as it went underground. It's not like it just went away, UM.
It actually built up a kind of like shadow institution
(11:03):
to rival the secular society like schools, UM TV stations, UH, colleges, seminaries,
mission groups, and then also started to really kind of
recruit new followers and members of these fundamentalist ideas UM
through churches, through church outreach as well. Um, and over
(11:25):
the years they just kind of built more and more
strength and more and more strength than in the late seventies.
Was just like a tidal wave of fundamentalism swept across
the world and really caught sociology off guard. Yeah, and
like you said, around the world, it wasn't just we're
not just saying like you United States Christians did this.
(11:45):
It was it popped up in some very surprising places sometimes.
But again, it kind of all happened at once. But
there was a big distinction here with the second wave,
and that the first wave was really too um to
to kind of strike back against progressive religious movement and
kind of keep religion as it was and not to
(12:07):
modernize religion in any way. This go around, it said, uh,
society as a whole, I don't want anything to do
with this modernization and this progressivism that's going on, and
forget religion, Like, we want to get involved in government
and we'll and we're gonna do it in a big way.
And that's when the Christian right was born and groups
(12:29):
like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition put big
money into politics and help you know, sort of the
beginning of getting politicians elected with a with a pretty
severe religious bent. Yeah. And in some cases they were
directly trying to elect fundamentalists like Pat Robertson actually ran
(12:50):
for president campaign UM and uh did not win, but
he is about as fundamentalists as you can get and
see like a mainstream television station with the seven hundred club,
but also like backing UM politicians with such gusto that
the politicians they got elected basically owed them. Uh. And
(13:14):
in that way, fundamentalism like really kind of crept into
um American politics. And since that time you start to
see things like basically a challenge to the concept of
something like a separation of church and state that is
completely at odds with American Christian fundamentalism. Uh. And so
there's been as as fundamentalism has gotten more and more
(13:35):
into American politics, there the line between church and state,
um has been blurred more and more. And that's just
one example of it. Yeah. And like you mentioned, it
happened all around the world in the late seventies. In
ninety nine, to be specific, Uh, militant Schiites followed Uh
it's all Komany and took Iran away from the Shaw
(13:57):
and installed uh Komani as the leader. And you know,
I remember this when I was a kid. If you
and I mentioned this on the show before. If you
go back and just google Iran pre revolution, you will
see a very swinging sixties and seventies groovy country. Uh.
That is not like the Iran we know today. And
(14:18):
that was partially not partially, that was completely due to
the Shiite uprising and revolution that happened because of fundamental
religious fundamentalism in their case. Yeah, it's exactly like if
followers of Jerry Folwell um created an armed insurgency and
overthrew the American government and installed Jerry Falwell as the
(14:39):
supreme leader of America. It's the exact same thing. That's
what happened in Iran. And it's really sad to see,
but I mean that's what happened, and it was part
of this wave of of fundamentalism. Um. There was also
Israel started to get more fundamentalist starting in nineteen seventy four.
There's still um a lot of challenges by fundamentalism within
(15:00):
Israeli politics today. UM. India has a nationalist party, a
Hindu nationalist party, I should say, the b j P Um,
they're fundamentalists, Hindu fundamentalists. Um, they've actually held power like
the presidency multiple times since nineteen eighty UM. And then
today there's still waves of fundamentalism going on in Africa.
(15:21):
Has become a laboratory for Christian fundamentalists who basically travel
to Africa as activists and um get new laws, fundamentalist
laws passed in countries like Uganda, whereas of two thousand
and fourteen, you can be sentenced to life in prison
just for being gay. That is thanks to American fundamentalists
(15:43):
who traveled to Uganda, got in with the government and
changed laws like that, or got laws like that created
or enforced. Yeah, and it's it's crazy when you look
at the all this happening at once, Like you said,
you know, it's seventy nine in Iran, seventy four in Israel,
then I teen seventies in the United States. Uh, it
was just a it's weird how things happened like that.
(16:06):
I wonder if there's a podcast topic in there about
like un nonplanned coalescence of you know, anything, just a zeitgeist. Yeah,
I guess that that's sort of the word I'm looking for.
I wonder too, because it's not like the shi i
Um militants in Iran. We're undergoing the same experience as
(16:29):
the Moral Majority in the US. But the timing is insane.
I mean we're talking like within a year of each other.
There's the Iranian Revolution and the Moral Majority springs up
and gets Ronald Reagan elected like that. That's and then
in in India in nineteen eighty that the Hindu Nationalist
Um Party gets founded. Like all of it happened at
(16:50):
the same time, and it had to be had to
intertwine in some way. But I just don't see like
um you know, um pat Robertson in the comine like
coordinating any So, how did it happens? I don't know.
It's a pushback against something else that was happening, But
(17:10):
I don't know. I think I find that stuff fascinating,
how societies move as a whole. All right, how about
a break? Yes, I think we're doing good so far, man,
And we'll talk a little bit more about the F
word right after this. Okay. So there's some things that
(17:44):
that people some misconceptions um see you jinkstas chuck um
that people have about fundamental See that's why I said
the F word. I wasn't trying to be cheeky. I'm
having a hard time saying the word. So. Um, there's
some miscons sceptions about fundamentalism that most people, especially secular
people have, And like we said at the outset that
(18:06):
a lot of people think it's it's an infection of
religion and that it's a religion problem and if you
aren't a member of a church or a religious group,
it's not your problem, and that's absolutely untrue, and that
that viewpoint of the whole thing is actually a big
problem for society as a whole. Yeah. Uh. And we
(18:26):
mentioned earlier a little bit that like often you'll see
fundamentalism creep up when they feel like something is being
threatened that they hold dear, and that's when they really
locked down and get active. And you can look at
things like, you know, people are fundamentalists about the Second Amendment,
people are fundamentalists about the First Amendment. Uh. And it's
usually more so at times where they feel like those
(18:49):
amendments are threatened. During the Cold War, people were, um,
you know, the threat of communism really made people a
lot of people fundamentalists about uh, the free market, let's say,
and uh, what else. There's a lot of other great examples. Um. Ironically,
people like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins who are basically
(19:10):
militantly anti religious. Um, they are accused by some of
being fundamentalists, and they're thinking in part because they're intolerant, which,
as we'll see is a really important part. Um. And
that intolerance also gets um liberal college campuses accused of
becoming more and more fundamentalist in their thinking, where non
(19:32):
liberal professors can actually find their their jobs in jeopardy
and actually do get canned because of something they said
that wasn't sufficiently liberal enough. Right, So this is kind
of what I was talking about earlier, where it's not
like Bill March checks every single box of you know, fundamentalism,
(19:52):
but if you if you understand fundamental fundamentalism, he actually
comes there's a lot of there's enough boxes that it
makes question, Okay, is this actually fundamentalist thinking? Um, same
with constitutional originalists, Like it does not have to be religion,
and once you stop looking at fundamentalism as a really
strictly religious thing, it really does open one's eyes to
(20:15):
just the world in general. Yeah, I totally agree. Um,
you mentioned something really important a second ago in that,
which was intolerance, which is a real hallmark of fundamentalism. U.
And a really great example that you gave in your
research here is the Amish. You can't get any more
sort of tighten it and strict religious than the Amish.
(20:38):
But the Amish, you know, who knows what they say
about us. They may judge us, but what they don't
do is leave their community and knock on our door
and try and convert you to being Amish and say
the Amish way of thinking is the only right way
and everyone else should be like this. Yeah, they're not
running like Amish people in the local primaries to take
over the school board because they want to impose is
(21:00):
Amish beliefs on the rest of the community. They don't
do that. They're not fundamentalist. And that's a really important
distinction and intolerance. It's basically, uh, there there is no compromise.
There is one true viewpoint that is correct, and anything
that differs from that is the enemy of that. Yeah,
I mean, and intolerance is such an important part of
(21:22):
fundamentalism that you can almost use it as a litmus
test to say, Okay, is this thinking fundamentalist or not,
because if if there's no intolerance. You just you got
the Amish people who really really believe in in what
they believe in, but they're not trying to impose their
beliefs on anybody else, and they're fine with you believing
whatever you believe. That's that's your problem. You're going to hell.
Although I don't think the Amish hopefully think like that.
(21:45):
But whatever, UM and that intolerance makes it like incompatible
with society because in modern society, UM tolerance is extraordinarily important.
And not only is an important, it's it's it's considered
to be something that just kind of bubbles up to
(22:06):
the top because it ends up holding society together. When
you have so many different disparate people of different religions,
of different creeds, of different nationalities, of um, different sexual orientation,
of different genders, all living together in one country and
they can coexist peacefully. Tolerance is just going to develop
(22:29):
over time. And if you have intolerance, active intolerance, that's
an infection on that society. And that's why fundamentalism is
so dangerous to society. So yeah, I mean that's a
really good point. And in a in a modern society, Uh,
we've talked before about the marketplace of ideas, which is
the idea that um. People just throw out a lot
(22:51):
of different ideas, and the ones that work the best
are the ones that are going to rise to the top,
and those are probably going to be the ones that
are the most widely accommodating to the most people. And
if you are a fundamentalist, you're not a big fan
of the marketplace of ideas. You're not a big fan
of what's the most widely accommodating. Because as society has
(23:13):
progressed over the years, it has gotten more well progressive,
and it's gotten more modern, and things have moved forward,
and fundamentalism is inherently kind of anti that in general.
And they're like that that can spring up in the workplace.
It's like I don't want to work. I don't want
to have a cubicle next to this kind of person
(23:34):
quote unquote UM. And it's not like I'll go quit
my job. It's like, uh no, why don't we Why
don't they leave? Why don't you fire them right for
being gay? Because they're the ones that are the problem.
I'm the one that subscribes to the truth. And it
doesn't even matter if you're speaking out or not speaking
(23:55):
out against fundamentalist beliefs. If you just subscribe to a
different way of thinking, you are challenging the truth, and
that cannot be tolerated. Opposing viewpoints cannot be tolerated by fundamentalism.
They have to be stamped out, they have to be ostracized,
they have to have violence against them in some cases. Um.
And so it would make more sense to that that
(24:17):
fundamentalist worker that their gay coworkers should be fired, not them. Um.
And that's that's again, that's a huge contradiction to society,
modern society in particular. Yeah, And I mean, you made
a really good point when you sort of talked about
the hippie movement. Um. Fundamentalism does challenge modernism kind of
(24:39):
full stop for control of what's going on. And the
hippies they had a counterculture. They didn't like what was
going on in modern society. They challenged it as well,
but there was a big difference in that they rejected
modern society and just sort of turn their backs on
it and want to create a new way for themselves,
like their own utophe, which obviously was never gonna happen.
(25:02):
God bless of hippies. But that's what they tried to do.
At least what they didn't do was try and say
everybody should be hippies. We want to take control of
the government and until everyone that they should lead a
hippie lifestyle through through like laws and violence, right right. Yeah. So, Um,
what's interesting, Chuck, is what the hippies were espousing as
(25:23):
a counter culture was what fundamentalism was doing starting in
to basically nineteen eighty in the US. They as a counterculture,
they went off and established their own counter culture that
they had again their own schools, their own media. Um,
it wasn't until they became politically active that they became
(25:44):
that second wave where they they they actively were trying
to take over the society in order to steer it
away from modernity and toward Christianity. And again they keep saying,
we want to steer it back into Christianity. That's something
that's um, that's super up for debate as well, is
just how christian was America before and our our fundamentalist
(26:06):
steering us backward or is this a whole new modern
direction that we've never been in before? And scholars say
definitely the ladder of those two yeah, for sure. And
we'll talk a little bit about that later. But Um,
some of the traits of fundamentalist groups uh. And again
this is this can be any kind of fundamental fundamentalism
all around the world. But one we've already kind of
(26:28):
talked about is they're reactive to crises. Uh. And that's
when you know, I sort of mentioned when they feel
like they're being specifically threatened by maybe a law or
anything really or a movement or a group another group. Um,
then they try to sort of overcome that with uh,
with power and of course now with politics. Um. McCarthyism
(26:49):
is a really good example there. Um of I mean,
the Cold War created a lot of fun different kinds
of fundamentalism. Uh. McCarthyism certainly was one of them. Yeah.
And so like a fundamentalist might rise on its own
just in times of uncertainty, but when things are really
uncertain for a lot more people, that's when they start
to attract more and more followers. Right. There's also a
(27:11):
big component of fundamentalism that is, um, a reliance on
simplistic solutions. Right. So like, yeah, the world is huge
and complex and scary, but all you have to do
is listen to the literal word of God or follow
the original wording of the Constitution, and all of your
your answer, all of your questions will be answered. You
(27:32):
don't even have to think about anything. Just follow the
word um. And that's another hallmark of fundamentalism is you
are basically blind obedience to some leadership and or set
of doctrines. And um. That's one of the reasons that
it makes it so attractive. Like you don't have to
think about the world. You don't have to wonder about
(27:55):
the world and why it's so scary and why it
doesn't make sense. Things are the way they are are
because that's how they are, That's how they're supposed to be.
Like men are more important than women because God made
us that way. Like that level of thinking, and like
you just put a period on the end. You don't
have to wonder any longer why a man is more
important than a woman in America these days. Um, that's
(28:17):
just that. And that's that's a really big attraction of
fundamentalism to people. It's like, um, remember King of the Hill. Yeah,
so Bill Doughtree his his buddy. I remember once he said, Um,
he missed being in the army because they took the
guesswork out of living and like fundamentalism does that for
(28:37):
its followers, like they tell what the answers are and
you don't have to think about it yourself. Yeah, that's good.
I have a friend who I won't name, who his
big gripe is when he talks to his you know,
he's sort of the black sheep of his family and
that they don't align politically. But he says when he
tries to challenge them with actual facts and things, he said,
(28:58):
they always say the same thing, sing They just sort
of turned their head and go, I don't know about that.
And that's sort of the I mean, the perfect distillation
of simplistic thinking is when met with literal facts and data,
just you know, I don't know about that. Like basically,
what they're saying is I don't want to that threatens me.
I don't want to talk about that, right, And I'm
(29:19):
not curious about getting to the bottom of this. I'm
not curious about your viewpoint. I'm not curious about my
own viewpoint. I don't want it to be challenged. Let's
stop talking. What is that a thought terminating something somebody
wrote in and told us once about, yeah, like statement
or something yeah, or like um, let's agree to disagree,
which I still think is valid. But yeah, I get it.
(29:43):
I think maybe that's a last resort sort of thing,
so you don't like start punching each other exactly that
it goes hand in hand with digging your fingertips into
the arm of the chain. Exactly. Does someone smell burning sawdust? Oh, Josh,
is just across the bar. Uh. Another sort of fundamentalist
trait that um can happen is uh. It's not always,
(30:05):
but it's a lot of times it's anti science. But
at the same time, and we've talked about this a
little bit here and there, is it can go the
other way. There are some people that are dogmatically fundamentalists, uh,
believers in science to a degree that isn't may be helpful. Yeah,
that that basically, um uh goes away from the concept
(30:30):
of science that science is constantly looking for new answers
and everything, and dogmatic science people are like, no, this
is it and let's stop, let's stop thinking about it anymore.
And if you challenge it, I'm not tolerant of that,
and you're wrong, um that that is out there, but
that's a an aberration. I think for the most part,
it's it is an anti science kind of thing because
(30:51):
science is part of modernization of society, and so that
makes it an enemy. It's an enemy especially of Christianity
or other religions as far as fundamentalism goes, Yeah, for sure. Uh.
And then the last couple of things kind of go
hand in hand. Is a lot of time, Um, fundamentalists
can be conspiracy oriented. Uh, you know a lot of paranoia,
(31:13):
sort of dwelling about the and you know, it all
comes from it all stems from them feeling threatened about X,
Y or z. Uh. And then they usually rally around
some sort of charismatic leader, uh, whatever the group is whever,
whether it's the Komeni. Even though that didn't maybe didn't
translate to America as being a charismatic leader. Uh, he
(31:36):
certainly had his followers. Um, But it's usually a man.
They usually authoritarians and charismatic. Uh. They usually are bullies
in some way or the other. And a lot of
times fundamentalists look at these people and admire the like
kind of wish they were like them, Like they're doing
the things that we would do if we were in power. Yeah,
(31:57):
Like I like a guy who can get up there
and talk about beating up are critics because I wish
I could punch him in the face and he's talking
about it and it makes me feel so good. Yeah,
that kind of thing UM, and that conspiracy thing in particular,
I was reading about that there's a huge overlap that's
developed between Q and non beliefs and evangelical Christianity, and
(32:17):
they have a lot in common about like end times apocalypticism.
Just there's a lot of overlap. But but one of
the things that I think is starting to become apparent
is that people of faith, especially fundamentalists, because they are
maybe the most people of the most faithful of the
(32:38):
faithful UM, are possibly more susceptible to conspiracy theories because
literalist religion, whereas like your your religious text is is infallible,
there's no mistakes in it. It means everything literally, and
where science or physics contradicts it, sciences physics is wrong.
That level of of of UM belief and something like
(33:02):
Q and on that's just that out there require faith,
and if you're already faithful to something like that, you
apparently are more susceptible to things like conspiracy theories that
require you to ignore facts and just take things on faith,
and that that has kind of infected evangelicalism. Uh, something
like I think I saw on a five thirty eight
(33:23):
um blog that like a quarter of evangelicals in America
believe in Q and On too, which is that's a
tremendous amount of people. I think a third of people
in America are evangelical, So a quarter of that third
subscribe to Q and onbeliefs belief. Well, yeah, and here's
something I don't think we maybe have hammered home enough
(33:45):
is that there is a large portion of of American
religious people who are not fundamentalists and who did since
the beginnings of modernization try and roll with it and say, well,
you know what, maybe the Bible isn't to be taken
so literally. Maybe these are allegories and metaphors. Maybe Noah
(34:07):
didn't literally take two of every living thing, and maybe
this red sea didn't literally part. Maybe these are all
stories that we should draw inspiration or or our our
way of looking at the world from and and believe
in science. And they're combatible, uh not compatible compatible, Uh
there are That is a very huge part of religion.
(34:29):
So we're not painting religion with this single brush here. Uh,
we're just talking about one one part of it, not
at all. And some of the most vocal and outspoken
opponents and scholars of fundamentalism are religious groups. Because you've
got progressives and moderates in any given religion, and they've
got fundamentalists who are trying to take over take control
(34:52):
of their religious group. Uh, and that's a problem for them.
And it was evangelicals, moderate and liberal evangelicals who started
telling the rest of the world like, hey, q and
On is making serious headways into our religious group, and
it's a big problem and we need to figure out
what's going on here. They were the ones who told
everybody else basically. Yeah, And those fundamentalists, the progressive non
(35:18):
literalists are in a way their enemy as well of
the fundamentalists, you know, like within their own religion, The
progressive non literalists of like you know, the people say like,
well maybe we should take the Bible is just a
metaphor their their enemies of the fundamentalists. Yeah. Absolutely, And
again that's where it started back in the eighteen seventies
(35:39):
and the original split right, Yeah, exactly. It was a
struggle within the Baptists and the Presbyterians for control over
the Baptists and the Presbyterians. These fundamentalists came up and said,
stop accommodating modern society. You're straying away from the Word.
And their beliefs got harder and harder and more and
(36:00):
more and more literal, and they were a huge problem
for the Baptist send the Presbyterians for a while. Yeah
for sure. All right, let's take our final break and
we'll talk about what history thinks about fundamentalism right after this,
(36:31):
So Chok, we talked about how fundamentalist groups say, they
claim that they're taking society back to like this Golden
Ages era where things were the way that the fundamentalists
wanted them before, right, And that doesn't seem to be true.
But again, fundamentalists seemed to be a modern phenomenon, taking
us in directions that we've never been in before, where
the fundamentalists are the ones in charge, right. Um. And
(36:54):
one of the ways that they do that is by
selectively citing stuff in religious texts or in historical documents
that support their ideas and um the christian Um. American
Christian fundamentalists love to do that with UM, like historical
(37:14):
documents from the founding of the United States and even
back when the United States was just some colonies as
British colonies. Yeah, because a lot of those documents say
the word God and mentioned God, whether it's the Charter,
the original charter for Virginia in the early sixteen hundreds,
to George Washington saying that the drafting of the Constitution
(37:37):
was an event that was in the hand of God.
Um fundamentalists say, hey, George Washington is George Washington. He
also mentioned God. And it's also he also says that
you shouldn't compromise because the Constitution was written in the
in the hand of God, and so that kind of
(37:58):
takes all the boxes as far as drawn a line
in the sand. But again, all this stuff is sort
of out of context. And when you go back and
you look at what the original Charter of Virginia meant
and why it was written, or what George Washington meant
and what ultimately made it into the Constitution, which was
not the word God, you really got to look at
that in context, like what was what was the deal
(38:20):
with a Virginia Charter. So the Virginia Charter said that
one of the colonists goals was to propagate the Christian
religion to the indigenous people that they met there, although
they didn't call them indigenous people. Um And if you
look at the Virginia Charter from six o six, it
was written by people who were British, who were corporate
shareholders who lived in London, who were ruled by the crown,
(38:42):
and their aim was not to form a new nation,
and just Christianizing the indigenous people they met there just
added legitimacy to this commercial pursuit that they were undertaking.
It's it's pretty flimsy as far as like a proof
that America was founded as a Christian nation that in
the menalists need to take back. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
(39:04):
good point. And like I said, the word God didn't
make it into the Constitution. The word science did. In
Section eight Article one, UH promote the progress of science
and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors
and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
Um And you know, America may have been founded on
(39:25):
Christian principles, but this is important. Very early on, you know,
I think what was it like a hundred and fifty
years after the Puritan colony of Plymouth was was founded.
The Christian experiment in government in America was over, and
they said, no, we're going to found the federal government.
And Thomas Jefferson said, we're going to separate church and
state because we're going down a bad road. Yeah. Even
(39:47):
if you know, George Washington meant what he said about
being in the hand of God, and he was a
Christian and a lot of the other founding fathers were Christians,
and um, they had Christian beliefs. But when it came
time to found the United States of a America, it's
not like they hadn't considered like there, they hadn't even
crossed their mind to to found a Christian nation. There
have been Christian governments in North America already, and they said, no,
(40:11):
we're going to abandon that and go a different direction.
So literally, America was purposefully not founded as a Christian nation.
It could have been, had every opportunity to be, and
it wasn't. And the point is, I mean, Chuck, we
could make an entire spinoff podcast just going tip for
tat on on contexts and liberalism with fundamentalism. But the
(40:33):
point is society's evolved, so it doesn't matter what was
going on four years ago. Like, yes, they did a
really good job writing in the constitution, founding some some
are creating some really great guiding documents. But society has
evolved since then. It's become much more diverse, much more
culturally rich, and we've just changed, most people say for
(40:57):
the better. And there's a lot wrong with it. It
was modern sty There's a lot right that if you
had the choice, you would not want to go back
to sixteen o six and live um compared to today. Yeah,
and modernism is really basically what sociologists think is why
fundamentalism still exists as as a response to modernization. And
(41:20):
you know, modernization has it's ups and its downs over
the years. It's has been perfect. Pre modernization, though there
was people were a lot more the same, uh they
you know, we've talked about this before. You know, pre
urban uh sort of factory work settings, people lived on farms,
they lived on on the land and worked the land,
(41:40):
and they lived in the fields, and they were a
lot more alike and there were a lot more like
sort of the same group of people. And industrialization came
along and it fragmented society and entirely different people started
to become people like, it changed the way people were.
It didn't just change how they went to work in
where they live. All that inherently changed what people could
(42:04):
be like. And uh, social values changed and that's a
part of modernization. And you know, for better or for worse,
we it is is fragmented us and there's been a
lot of negative aspects to it, but it's also come
along with protection of civil rights and racial and gender
equality and uh, you know the World Wide Web, which
(42:26):
is you know, we can all agree with the best
thing ever, right, it's flawless, no downside. But but yeah,
I mean it would be ridiculous to say that modern
society is just you know, perfect or even generally better
in every single way. Now, there's plenty of stuff that's
wrong with it, like um, the emphasis on industry and
profits and and um can can be really isolating and
(42:48):
make people feel like there's they're they're just basically a
cog in a machine. That's a big problem. But yes,
there are there are plenty of solutions and plenty of
things that have gotten better too. And one of the
things about modern society is that we have brought more
and more different people together who have more and more
different ideas and experiences, and it's become clear that no
(43:09):
one group is right or has all the answers, or
is the guardians of the truth. It's just been shown
not to be correct. And um, these a pair of
sociologists kind of put it, uh, Michael O. Emerson and
David Hartman. They said, when when you have when you
bring together people of differing views and values, what rise
to the top has shared values are tolerance and acceptance,
(43:32):
and that these become the core values of highly modernized societies.
And that is great for most of us. But if
you're a fundamentalist, that is the opposite of great. That
is the opposite direction that you're supposed to be going.
Because not everybody's right. We're the only ones that are right.
All of you are wrong, and you're wrong in a
really terrible way that we have to change, so we
(43:54):
have to take over society. Yeah, I mean, you know,
one of the big threats to fundamentalist and why they've
think dug in more and more over the years is
it's science is coming along to demystify a lot of
the things since the dawn of time that we're you know,
took took tried to explain you know, the seasons and
(44:15):
rain and thunder and death, and you know, in various ways,
and people since then have been trying to explain that stuff.
Then science progresses and comes along and says, oh, wait
a minute. You know, we can explain natural selection. Now
we can explain gravity, we can explain electro magnetism, and
you know, we know why the apple falls from the tree.
It doesn't have to be some magical thing or some
(44:37):
religious allegory. And so what that does is that pushes
religion out a little bit because fewer people needed it
to explain things, which can be a big part of religion,
and all of a sudden, religion wasn't like the overriding
fabric of society, but it was just a part of society.
(44:58):
And that that's a big threat a fundamentalist. Yeah, because
a lot of people just say, okay, well science makes
a lot of sense to me. I'm not gonna abandon
my religious beliefs. I still believe in God and Jesus
or Mohammed or buddha Um I like I'm going, like
you said earlier, I find those things compatible, not combatible.
(45:19):
But there's a group of people who are just find
this unbearable. Modern society is just unbearable. It doesn't make sense.
I don't know the people who live around me. Um,
I'm not valued like I used to be or like
my great great grandfather was. Um, my wife is working
out of the house. What's up with that kind of thing?
And um, Rather than their their beliefs loosening and progressing,
(45:44):
they actually become more inflexible, more rigid as as society
continues to progress and their beliefs are left behind because
they feel left behind, so they actually come to rail
against society and that these are the will who become fundamentalists.
So part of it is feeling left out, left behind
(46:05):
or um opposed by society in general. That's part of it.
But then also part of it is that attraction of um,
you know, somebody having all the answers in a really
frankly confusing period of history, which is what we're in
right now. Yeah, And you know when people get together
and isolate themselves from others and say we're the only
(46:27):
ones that are right, and hey, we need to get
involved in politics and get a candidate that things like
us out there, you kind of get where we are today,
which is like you said, it's a pretty Oh what's
the word scary is too easy? Uncertain? Yeah, I mean
it is uncertain. Like things are changing so fast right now,
(46:49):
it's totally understandable why fundamentalist movements would be swelling. It's
scary as as heck. Right now, I feel like the
world is way more nuts than it was maybe thirty
years ago. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. It seems
like it to me, and I think it's because of
this incredibly rapid social change. For me, society is generally
(47:13):
going in the direction that I agree with, so I'm
not threatened by it, even though I'm still just overwhelmed
by how fast things are changing, and then also by
how much tension there is from opposing sides to that change. Um,
it's a really unsettling and unsettled time, I think. So
I can totally understand why fundamentalism would be so attractive
(47:35):
to so many people right now. Um. But again, one
of the tenets of fundamentalism, Chuck, is if you can't
take over the ship, sink it. That's that's basically the
second way fundamentalism in a nutshell. So they can't be ignored.
Society can't just ignore it. We have to figure out
what to do about fundamentalist impulses. And there's some good ideas,
(47:57):
some not good ideas. Uh, and so that maybe worth
trying and not worth trying. But we're still kind of
in the very beginning stages of figuring out how to
reconcile modernized society with fundamentalist impulses. Got any ideas well?
I saw one pair of sociologists who wrote a book
(48:19):
suggested that everybody should just read more fiction. Okay, I
couldn't believe that that was they meant that literally, because
they um they say that if you read more fiction,
it can kind of transport you into other people's experiences
and points of view and will foster tolerance, which again,
intolerance is the hallmark of of fundamentalism. I'll throw one
(48:40):
out there. I just thought of off the dome, travel
someplace that you may not ordinarily travel, it's a big one.
Or travel someplace period. Yeah, if you can. I know
it's a financial burden for some and now everyone can
just like jet off to Paris to see how the
Parisians live. No, but it turns out you are allowed
to leave ohio, Oh no, I that's true. Another thing
(49:06):
that they say can help is to be more tolerant
yourself and to be friendly and to approach a fundamentalist
with friendship, because one kind of criticism you'll hear from
fundamentalists is sort of thrown it right back in the
face of a non fundamentalist and say, you're in just
as intolerant of my beliefs as I am of yours.
(49:28):
I think a counter to that would be to say, well,
know what we're intolerant of is your extreme intolerance, which
is a big distinction. Yeah, and that's like you're you're
intolerant of my racism. It's like that's not a great argument. Yeah,
but that's like one of those things that it's like, Okay, well, yeah,
you can't just be tolerant of everything, Like there is
a line, and like, you know, racism is a really
(49:51):
good example of that. It's a really great line that
society shouldn't just be tolerant of that. But you know,
how can you figure out how to apply tolerance to
the people who feel that way? Like, can can you
be tolerant on an individual level as as their neighbor
or their coworker or the fellow grocery store shopper, to
where you can display some form of tolerance with them
(50:14):
without supporting or or allowing their their you know, tolerance
for their beliefs, of their racist beliefs. You know, it's
it's I think the reason why we are not a
fundamentalist podcast, Chuck, is because we're not saying this is
the answer, this is this is what you do. There
aren't any answers right now, but there's a lot of
(50:34):
different ideas floating around that could work or might not.
I think of music can be united. I think sports
fandom can be a uniter. Uh. I mean, you'll never
see a more tolerant, harmonious place than like at a
Falcons game in the South and the Deep South, you know,
black and white people like urban versus some of the
(50:59):
most rural, red, nicky type folks. You could imagine like
arm in arm for the same cause and it's a
dumb football game. But like, there are small lessons to
be found. I think in those situations. Oh yeah, for sure.
I remember um reading a study years back that people
who were super racist who lived in towns where Um
(51:22):
like Hispanic I can never remember Latin Latin X people
had come to live. There was like a large population
of Latin X people to where they lived among them,
where they might still support like immigration policies um or
anti immigration policies, but they would be like, but not
my town. Like they had developed tolerance without even realizing it,
(51:44):
and their their overall beliefs hadn't caught up yet. So
maybe they were still voting one way, but as far
as that person that they knew down the street, they
were not about to let that person get deported. Not
my town kind of thing. And yeah, so I think
whether it's a Falcons game or a like a musical
rock concert um, bringing people of you know, disparate backgrounds
(52:06):
together does foster tolerance, I think too. And you know
it may not. I'm not saying that. Uh, these people
of the Falcons game walk out of there forging lifelong
friendships and they're like, you know what, why don't we
get together tomorrow for lunch? But you know, there are
there are small experiences that maybe can add up to
something at some point in life. I don't know. I'm like,
(52:29):
I feel desperate for people to get along better. Yeah,
for sure. And there are people out there who are saying, like,
what are you talking about? No, we should not even
be we should be isolating people with racist beliefs. Um. No,
it's not enough to just have somebody like have fun
at the Falcons game. Like, we're way beyond that point.
And I mean I get that argument too, Like I
don't necessarily subscribe to it, but I can get how
(52:51):
people are like, No, we're at like five alarmed stage.
We need to figure out huge radical responses of fundamentalism
right now because they're knocking at the door of our
the highest levels of government. And if they are an
infection on society, we've got huge problems because they are
growing and gaining strength. So I totally get both. Both
(53:13):
arguments are both ways. Yeah, one other thing I think, Yeah,
one more thing. Um, So, religion has a place in
modernized society. It helps people from feeling totally crazy. Um,
if you need a sense of community, go join a
religious group that's like a built in, ready made community
for you. Who's going to accept you into it? Moderate
(53:35):
and progressive, I should say, um groups. Um, But there's
the religion doesn't have to be the only institution in
society that addresses things like angst and unease and um,
you know a need for reassurance, Like what if society,
what if? What if? Science? What if? Um a culture
(53:58):
in general just kind of undertook the project of finding
meaning in this crazy modern world and like helping reassure people.
Like that's what people join fundamentalist movements for is reassurance. Ultimately,
that is the basis of joining a fundamentalist movement. They
want to feel reassured that everything is going to be okay.
(54:19):
And if you can find equally reassuring alternatives to fundamentalism,
I would guess that fundamentalism. I don't think it would
ever fully go away. There's always going to be fundamentalists,
but they would be so increasingly small an insular that
you could conceivably just generally let them do their own
thing and tolerate them. Maybe. So Okay, that's it, he said,
(54:44):
with a resigned sigh. Uh. Well, I'm just gonna ask
just to button it up. You've got anything else. I
got nothing else. I don't either, Chuck. If you want
to know more about fundamentalism, start researching it. There's a
lot out there that will probably open your eyes. And
since I said open your is, it's time for a
listener mail. Uh, this is about basectomies. And by the way,
(55:07):
we heard from a few dudes that are that already
have said, and this is day one of getting emails
in real time, that hey, vasectomies aren't quite as painless
as y'all made it out to be by the way,
I guess it can vary obviously from person to person,
but we've had quite a few guys that were like
it heard bad for a couple of days, and I
was very uncomfortable for a couple of weeks. Poor guys.
(55:28):
So I just wanted to say that, hey, guys, listen
to the basectomy episode. I have to say you're doing
a great service by disseminating this information. I'm a twenty
six year old who's been with my wife for almost
nine years. We've talked, oh well I got married young,
Good for you. We've talked about not wanting children for years,
but made the jump to getting mesectomy in July. For me,
(55:50):
it was relatively painless, but for the rest of that
day it did feel like someone had landed a low
below punch. Uh. The next day I had little pain
with use of ice packs. Uh, it was fine, and
by day three I was back to exercising. After a
couple of months, I feel psychologically and sexually liberated. Our
friends stated their concerns on how we would move on
(56:13):
if regret crept in. Since we made this decision about
not wanting children, um, having biological children is not a concern,
and if we ever regret it, because life is never definite,
we can look at adopting highly about all the answers,
he should start a fundamentalist group, got all answers. You
guys mentioned that should be called a asodomy because there
(56:33):
isn't anything removed. But with my procedure and for others
I've seen on YouTube, they remove about one centimeter of
the vase completely and send it to a tissue sampling,
so technically ectomy still works in this case. Thank you
for the years of knowledge and entertainment. YouTube. Put special
comfort in the podcast realm wishing you Unburdened ejaculations that
(56:58):
is from Ryan. Very nice, Ryan, thank you and for
everyone here in the United States. About one centimeter of
best differences point three nine three seven zero zero seven.
Well done. Uh. If you want to be like Ryan
and share your viewpoints and have us be like wow,
this guy really knows what he's talking about, you can
(57:21):
send us an email too, and guy of course, is
as always gender neutral, because we're in a modern society
and we love that fact. Anyway, you can send us
that email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
(57:43):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, February one, second, third, we're going to be
in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco again. That's right. We can't
wait to get back on stage. We've really missed in
live shows coming out and see us. Tickets are already
on sale and where can you get those at link
tree slash s y s K Live. That's l I
(00:22):
n K t R dot E slash s y s
K Live. I can't wait to see everybody. Welcome to
Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
(00:43):
Charles W. Chuck Bright and Jerry's here of course, which
makes this Stuff you Should Know from you can. I
lead off with a couple of just fun quick shoutouts
before we get to the not fun hm topic. You know, uh,
going to Boston tomorrow to see Pavement. Oh that's what
(01:04):
you're doing? Okay? Great? Uh. My old friend from high school,
Robert h. Chehade of Toughs University fame, we were texting
about Pavement and he said, this is back when tickets
went on sale. I'm going to both Atlanta shows, of course,
and he said, you want to come up here? I
was like, heck, yeah, so going to see the Boys tomorrow,
(01:25):
and UH also want to quickly shout out I just
got back recently from my uh tenth, eleventh, and twelve
Bonnie Prince Billy shows for the last couple of years,
and I just want to shout out the great people
in towns of Santa Cruz, California, Pasa Roblis, California, and
(01:45):
Big Sir. Oh yeah, I just had a great time
out there. It's my part of the country. I love
northern California. To my vibe, had great breakfast burrito's, great food.
They do him right, man. He can't get a real
decent breakfast burrito in Atlanta, and I don't know why
(02:06):
that's gonna be my retirement job. Oh that's great, I'll come.
I'll come patronize your breakfast period. I don't know what
is so hard about a California saw breakfast burrito, but
Atlanta does not seem capable. It's probably too healthy. It's
not healthy. Okay, Well then I don't know. I'm all
out of ideas. Chuck's so frustrating anyway, great towns, great shows.
(02:30):
Another great run with the great will Oldham. This time solo,
first time I've ever seen him literally by himself. He
has a variety of arrangements, ranging from full band a
couple of people to six or eight bluegrass style. And
this was this was just him, which was a treat
unplugged for once plugged but acoustic. Yeah, okay, did you
(02:55):
I was wondering if you've gotten yourself a vand of
hollo him around and yet no, no, I'm flying in
these places. Yeah, that seems sensible, because then I ran
it'd be tough to get back in time to work.
You know, I wish you could fly in a place
and rent a little hippie van to follow someone around
for a few days. That sounds like your retirement job
instead of some dumb mid sized suv. Yeah, you could
(03:18):
be like, run a VW wagon, get a free breakfast burrito.
There you go. That's that's it. I might invest in
that one. All right. Now, let's talk about fundamentalism. Yeah,
let's talk about fundamentalism. Um, this is uh, this is
one of those kind of I guess episodes that ties
(03:38):
into a bunch of other stuff, and it's the kind
of thing that you don't really think about, and then
when you do think about you wish you weren't thinking about.
But it's kind of important, I think for everybody to
be aware of because with fundamentalism, a lot of people,
especially non religious people, just presume that fundamentalism is a
religious thing only necessarily deaf only does affect religions most easily,
(04:02):
as we'll see, But basically anything that people really hold
dear um can actually produce fundamentalism. And when you kind
of strip it of its religious connotations, um it it
becomes clear like, oh yeah, there's a lot of fundamentalism
going on around. It's especially in two UM and it's
(04:24):
it has given me just researching this, it's given me
like a deeper impulse to be like, hold the center,
Hold the center. We can make it through this. We
just have to. We just have to get to the
other side and make sure that the center remains intact.
You know. Yeah, I think, I mean, you put this together.
You did a great job, by the way, on a
on a tough topic. But um, I think the sociologists
(04:48):
that you found that said, uh, this really had it
is um. Fundamentalism is an ideology rather than a theology,
so it can be religious in nature, but it doesn't
have to be all that to say that sort of
a long winded c o A that this is not
a hit piece on religion at all, but it is.
(05:08):
You know, I think it is going to end up
being a bit of a condemnation on fundamentalism, because it's
not a great way to be to say, hey, the
way we think of things is the only right way.
Everybody else is wrong, and I don't want anything to
do with you. Well, not only that you need to
change your viewpoints to find that follow mine, because mine's
(05:29):
the only right way to think. That's a terrible way
to be terrible and and truly, when you start to
research fundamentalism, you you do start to see it everywhere.
Maybe not stuff that checks every single box, but when
you understand the basics of it, it's it becomes clear
we're surrounded by it right now. Um, And that's actually
kind of a new thing. Um. One of the things
(05:51):
about fundamentalism is when when you kind of listen to
what they're saying, they imagine that they're they're taking society
back to this you know, golden age or golden arrow
and things, you know, we're more sensible and more predictable
and reliable and things just made sense more. But UM
fundamentalism is actually a pretty modern thing. Um. It only
(06:14):
arose starting in about eighteen seventy. Uh, and it was
originally UM this kind of uh assault or response to
progressive ism in religion. Yeah, that's a good way to
say it. I think the first wave he said, ran
from about eighteen seventy to nineteen nine. I'm sorry, and
(06:38):
uh and we'll you know, we'll see in a minute
here kind of how and why it ended. The first
run at least, or at least brought it underground. But
it started or it took its name at least from
a series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals colon Uh, Testimony
of the Truth. And that kind of says it all
right there, They're like someone saying, this is the truth.
(07:02):
This is not our opinion on maybe how things should be.
Is this is the one way that things clearly should be,
because it's the only way, because it's the one truth. Yeah.
And around that time, in the late nineteenth century, UM
religion in America was starting to become more progressive because
society was modernizing and to kind of adapt and change
(07:23):
and alter itself to this modernizing society. UM, just the
understanding of what religion meant was under transition, and fundamentalists said, no, no, no,
religion is religion. It doesn't matter what society does. This
is the truth, This is the this is the way
that it's supposed to be, and we need to stop
(07:44):
progressing away from it and being accommodating to to modern society.
We need to make modern society go back to the
old ways, you know, the ways were we're in charge. Yeah,
and there was a big um sort of one of
the first big face punches to fundamentalism came about in
eighteen fifty nine. Uh well, I kind of helped give
(08:05):
rise to the original fundamentalism. But the publication of On
the Origin of the Species from Darwin, which basically you know,
everyone knows what that did. That introduced evolution and natural
selection and really undermine sort of in writing for the
first time, it challenged creationism as why we're here and
(08:25):
how we got here, and it was it's sort of
as you'll see that you know, at times when um,
a fundamentalist might think, or a religion might think that
they're being threatened by new ideas, that's sort of when
the lockdown goes on and they really sort of rise
to the occasion, and that sort of helped birth the
(08:46):
big first rise of fundamentalism. Yeah, fundamentalism UM took its
first swipe at modern modernity. Yeah sure, UM with the
Scopes Monkey trial in UM. It was uh Tennessee versus Scopes,
where Tennessee had charged public UM school teacher John Scopes
(09:07):
of teaching evolution in the classroom, which was against the law.
They charged the science teacher with teaching science exactly, That's
exactly right, UM, And a guy, a very powerful and
um prestigious and smart attorney named Clarence Darrow came to
the aid of John Scopes, UM, and the Scopes Monkey
trial actually ended up putting not John Scopes on trial,
(09:30):
but fundamentalism on trial. And Clarence Darrow was not a
fan of fundamentalism, and he basically used this trial as
an excuse to just just show how ridiculous and backwards
these fundamentalists beliefs were. That's right, and it worked. Uh
he in a sense, he lost the trial. I believe
in that until nineteen sixty seven that ban on teaching
(09:54):
evolution remained in effect, uh seven from UM. But you know,
he lost a battle. He won the war and that
the coverage of the Scopes monkey trial really like kind
of blew the whole thing up and dealt a big
blow to what fundamentalism was in the US and how
(10:14):
much sort of influence they might have moving forward. And
kind of what it did post Scopes was it kind
of moved it back underground for several decades. Yeah. I
kind of think of the Scopes Monkey Trial and the
result of it is like, um, when Homer gets embarrassed
on The Simpsons and the whole town just points and
laughs at him. In that instance, Homer is fundamentalism in
(10:37):
the nine twenties in America, right. Like, society did not
think much of it afterwards, which is surprising because it
had been kind of a respected school of thought UM
for a little while, and I guess it just kind
of it just went too far towards the mainstream and
as it went underground. It's not like it just went away, UM.
It actually built up a kind of like shadow institution
(11:03):
to rival the secular society like schools, UM TV stations, UH, colleges, seminaries,
mission groups, and then also started to really kind of
recruit new followers and members of these fundamentalist ideas UM
through churches, through church outreach as well. Um, and over
(11:25):
the years they just kind of built more and more
strength and more and more strength than in the late seventies.
Was just like a tidal wave of fundamentalism swept across
the world and really caught sociology off guard. Yeah, and
like you said, around the world, it wasn't just we're
not just saying like you United States Christians did this.
(11:45):
It was it popped up in some very surprising places sometimes.
But again, it kind of all happened at once. But
there was a big distinction here with the second wave,
and that the first wave was really too um to
to kind of strike back against progressive religious movement and
kind of keep religion as it was and not to
(12:07):
modernize religion in any way. This go around, it said, uh,
society as a whole, I don't want anything to do
with this modernization and this progressivism that's going on, and
forget religion, Like, we want to get involved in government
and we'll and we're gonna do it in a big way.
And that's when the Christian right was born and groups
(12:29):
like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition put big
money into politics and help you know, sort of the
beginning of getting politicians elected with a with a pretty
severe religious bent. Yeah. And in some cases they were
directly trying to elect fundamentalists like Pat Robertson actually ran
(12:50):
for president campaign UM and uh did not win, but
he is about as fundamentalists as you can get and
see like a mainstream television station with the seven hundred club,
but also like backing UM politicians with such gusto that
the politicians they got elected basically owed them. Uh. And
(13:14):
in that way, fundamentalism like really kind of crept into
um American politics. And since that time you start to
see things like basically a challenge to the concept of
something like a separation of church and state that is
completely at odds with American Christian fundamentalism. Uh. And so
there's been as as fundamentalism has gotten more and more
(13:35):
into American politics, there the line between church and state,
um has been blurred more and more. And that's just
one example of it. Yeah. And like you mentioned, it
happened all around the world in the late seventies. In
ninety nine, to be specific, Uh, militant Schiites followed Uh
it's all Komany and took Iran away from the Shaw
(13:57):
and installed uh Komani as the leader. And you know,
I remember this when I was a kid. If you
and I mentioned this on the show before. If you
go back and just google Iran pre revolution, you will
see a very swinging sixties and seventies groovy country. Uh.
That is not like the Iran we know today. And
(14:18):
that was partially not partially, that was completely due to
the Shiite uprising and revolution that happened because of fundamental
religious fundamentalism in their case. Yeah, it's exactly like if
followers of Jerry Folwell um created an armed insurgency and
overthrew the American government and installed Jerry Falwell as the
(14:39):
supreme leader of America. It's the exact same thing. That's
what happened in Iran. And it's really sad to see,
but I mean that's what happened, and it was part
of this wave of of fundamentalism. Um. There was also
Israel started to get more fundamentalist starting in nineteen seventy four.
There's still um a lot of challenges by fundamentalism within
(15:00):
Israeli politics today. UM. India has a nationalist party, a
Hindu nationalist party, I should say, the b j P Um,
they're fundamentalists, Hindu fundamentalists. Um, they've actually held power like
the presidency multiple times since nineteen eighty UM. And then
today there's still waves of fundamentalism going on in Africa.
(15:21):
Has become a laboratory for Christian fundamentalists who basically travel
to Africa as activists and um get new laws, fundamentalist
laws passed in countries like Uganda, whereas of two thousand
and fourteen, you can be sentenced to life in prison
just for being gay. That is thanks to American fundamentalists
(15:43):
who traveled to Uganda, got in with the government and
changed laws like that, or got laws like that created
or enforced. Yeah, and it's it's crazy when you look
at the all this happening at once, Like you said,
you know, it's seventy nine in Iran, seventy four in Israel,
then I teen seventies in the United States. Uh, it
was just a it's weird how things happened like that.
(16:06):
I wonder if there's a podcast topic in there about
like un nonplanned coalescence of you know, anything, just a zeitgeist. Yeah,
I guess that that's sort of the word I'm looking for.
I wonder too, because it's not like the shi i
Um militants in Iran. We're undergoing the same experience as
(16:29):
the Moral Majority in the US. But the timing is insane.
I mean we're talking like within a year of each other.
There's the Iranian Revolution and the Moral Majority springs up
and gets Ronald Reagan elected like that. That's and then
in in India in nineteen eighty that the Hindu Nationalist
Um Party gets founded. Like all of it happened at
(16:50):
the same time, and it had to be had to
intertwine in some way. But I just don't see like
um you know, um pat Robertson in the comine like
coordinating any So, how did it happens? I don't know.
It's a pushback against something else that was happening, But
(17:10):
I don't know. I think I find that stuff fascinating,
how societies move as a whole. All right, how about
a break? Yes, I think we're doing good so far, man,
And we'll talk a little bit more about the F
word right after this. Okay. So there's some things that
(17:44):
that people some misconceptions um see you jinkstas chuck um
that people have about fundamental See that's why I said
the F word. I wasn't trying to be cheeky. I'm
having a hard time saying the word. So. Um, there's
some miscons sceptions about fundamentalism that most people, especially secular
people have, And like we said at the outset that
(18:06):
a lot of people think it's it's an infection of
religion and that it's a religion problem and if you
aren't a member of a church or a religious group,
it's not your problem, and that's absolutely untrue, and that
that viewpoint of the whole thing is actually a big
problem for society as a whole. Yeah. Uh. And we
(18:26):
mentioned earlier a little bit that like often you'll see
fundamentalism creep up when they feel like something is being
threatened that they hold dear, and that's when they really
locked down and get active. And you can look at
things like, you know, people are fundamentalists about the Second Amendment,
people are fundamentalists about the First Amendment. Uh. And it's
usually more so at times where they feel like those
(18:49):
amendments are threatened. During the Cold War, people were, um,
you know, the threat of communism really made people a
lot of people fundamentalists about uh, the free market, let's say,
and uh, what else. There's a lot of other great examples. Um. Ironically,
people like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins who are basically
(19:10):
militantly anti religious. Um, they are accused by some of
being fundamentalists, and they're thinking in part because they're intolerant, which,
as we'll see is a really important part. Um. And
that intolerance also gets um liberal college campuses accused of
becoming more and more fundamentalist in their thinking, where non
(19:32):
liberal professors can actually find their their jobs in jeopardy
and actually do get canned because of something they said
that wasn't sufficiently liberal enough. Right, So this is kind
of what I was talking about earlier, where it's not
like Bill March checks every single box of you know, fundamentalism,
(19:52):
but if you if you understand fundamental fundamentalism, he actually
comes there's a lot of there's enough boxes that it
makes question, Okay, is this actually fundamentalist thinking? Um, same
with constitutional originalists, Like it does not have to be religion,
and once you stop looking at fundamentalism as a really
strictly religious thing, it really does open one's eyes to
(20:15):
just the world in general. Yeah, I totally agree. Um,
you mentioned something really important a second ago in that,
which was intolerance, which is a real hallmark of fundamentalism. U.
And a really great example that you gave in your
research here is the Amish. You can't get any more
sort of tighten it and strict religious than the Amish.
(20:38):
But the Amish, you know, who knows what they say
about us. They may judge us, but what they don't
do is leave their community and knock on our door
and try and convert you to being Amish and say
the Amish way of thinking is the only right way
and everyone else should be like this. Yeah, they're not
running like Amish people in the local primaries to take
over the school board because they want to impose is
(21:00):
Amish beliefs on the rest of the community. They don't
do that. They're not fundamentalist. And that's a really important
distinction and intolerance. It's basically, uh, there there is no compromise.
There is one true viewpoint that is correct, and anything
that differs from that is the enemy of that. Yeah,
I mean, and intolerance is such an important part of
(21:22):
fundamentalism that you can almost use it as a litmus
test to say, Okay, is this thinking fundamentalist or not,
because if if there's no intolerance. You just you got
the Amish people who really really believe in in what
they believe in, but they're not trying to impose their
beliefs on anybody else, and they're fine with you believing
whatever you believe. That's that's your problem. You're going to hell.
Although I don't think the Amish hopefully think like that.
(21:45):
But whatever, UM and that intolerance makes it like incompatible
with society because in modern society, UM tolerance is extraordinarily important.
And not only is an important, it's it's it's considered
to be something that just kind of bubbles up to
(22:06):
the top because it ends up holding society together. When
you have so many different disparate people of different religions,
of different creeds, of different nationalities, of um, different sexual orientation,
of different genders, all living together in one country and
they can coexist peacefully. Tolerance is just going to develop
(22:29):
over time. And if you have intolerance, active intolerance, that's
an infection on that society. And that's why fundamentalism is
so dangerous to society. So yeah, I mean that's a
really good point. And in a in a modern society, Uh,
we've talked before about the marketplace of ideas, which is
the idea that um. People just throw out a lot
(22:51):
of different ideas, and the ones that work the best
are the ones that are going to rise to the top,
and those are probably going to be the ones that
are the most widely accommodating to the most people. And
if you are a fundamentalist, you're not a big fan
of the marketplace of ideas. You're not a big fan
of what's the most widely accommodating. Because as society has
(23:13):
progressed over the years, it has gotten more well progressive,
and it's gotten more modern, and things have moved forward,
and fundamentalism is inherently kind of anti that in general.
And they're like that that can spring up in the workplace.
It's like I don't want to work. I don't want
to have a cubicle next to this kind of person
(23:34):
quote unquote UM. And it's not like I'll go quit
my job. It's like, uh no, why don't we Why
don't they leave? Why don't you fire them right for
being gay? Because they're the ones that are the problem.
I'm the one that subscribes to the truth. And it
doesn't even matter if you're speaking out or not speaking
(23:55):
out against fundamentalist beliefs. If you just subscribe to a
different way of thinking, you are challenging the truth, and
that cannot be tolerated. Opposing viewpoints cannot be tolerated by fundamentalism.
They have to be stamped out, they have to be ostracized,
they have to have violence against them in some cases. Um.
And so it would make more sense to that that
(24:17):
fundamentalist worker that their gay coworkers should be fired, not them. Um.
And that's that's again, that's a huge contradiction to society,
modern society in particular. Yeah, And I mean, you made
a really good point when you sort of talked about
the hippie movement. Um. Fundamentalism does challenge modernism kind of
(24:39):
full stop for control of what's going on. And the
hippies they had a counterculture. They didn't like what was
going on in modern society. They challenged it as well,
but there was a big difference in that they rejected
modern society and just sort of turn their backs on
it and want to create a new way for themselves,
like their own utophe, which obviously was never gonna happen.
(25:02):
God bless of hippies. But that's what they tried to do.
At least what they didn't do was try and say
everybody should be hippies. We want to take control of
the government and until everyone that they should lead a
hippie lifestyle through through like laws and violence, right right. Yeah. So, Um,
what's interesting, Chuck, is what the hippies were espousing as
(25:23):
a counter culture was what fundamentalism was doing starting in
to basically nineteen eighty in the US. They as a counterculture,
they went off and established their own counter culture that
they had again their own schools, their own media. Um,
it wasn't until they became politically active that they became
(25:44):
that second wave where they they they actively were trying
to take over the society in order to steer it
away from modernity and toward Christianity. And again they keep saying,
we want to steer it back into Christianity. That's something
that's um, that's super up for debate as well, is
just how christian was America before and our our fundamentalist
(26:06):
steering us backward or is this a whole new modern
direction that we've never been in before? And scholars say
definitely the ladder of those two yeah, for sure. And
we'll talk a little bit about that later. But Um,
some of the traits of fundamentalist groups uh. And again
this is this can be any kind of fundamental fundamentalism
all around the world. But one we've already kind of
(26:28):
talked about is they're reactive to crises. Uh. And that's
when you know, I sort of mentioned when they feel
like they're being specifically threatened by maybe a law or
anything really or a movement or a group another group. Um,
then they try to sort of overcome that with uh,
with power and of course now with politics. Um. McCarthyism
(26:49):
is a really good example there. Um of I mean,
the Cold War created a lot of fun different kinds
of fundamentalism. Uh. McCarthyism certainly was one of them. Yeah.
And so like a fundamentalist might rise on its own
just in times of uncertainty, but when things are really
uncertain for a lot more people, that's when they start
to attract more and more followers. Right. There's also a
(27:11):
big component of fundamentalism that is, um, a reliance on
simplistic solutions. Right. So like, yeah, the world is huge
and complex and scary, but all you have to do
is listen to the literal word of God or follow
the original wording of the Constitution, and all of your
your answer, all of your questions will be answered. You
(27:32):
don't even have to think about anything. Just follow the
word um. And that's another hallmark of fundamentalism is you
are basically blind obedience to some leadership and or set
of doctrines. And um. That's one of the reasons that
it makes it so attractive. Like you don't have to
think about the world. You don't have to wonder about
(27:55):
the world and why it's so scary and why it
doesn't make sense. Things are the way they are are
because that's how they are, That's how they're supposed to be.
Like men are more important than women because God made
us that way. Like that level of thinking, and like
you just put a period on the end. You don't
have to wonder any longer why a man is more
important than a woman in America these days. Um, that's
(28:17):
just that. And that's that's a really big attraction of
fundamentalism to people. It's like, um, remember King of the Hill. Yeah,
so Bill Doughtree his his buddy. I remember once he said, Um,
he missed being in the army because they took the
guesswork out of living and like fundamentalism does that for
(28:37):
its followers, like they tell what the answers are and
you don't have to think about it yourself. Yeah, that's good.
I have a friend who I won't name, who his
big gripe is when he talks to his you know,
he's sort of the black sheep of his family and
that they don't align politically. But he says when he
tries to challenge them with actual facts and things, he said,
(28:58):
they always say the same thing, sing They just sort
of turned their head and go, I don't know about that.
And that's sort of the I mean, the perfect distillation
of simplistic thinking is when met with literal facts and data,
just you know, I don't know about that. Like basically,
what they're saying is I don't want to that threatens me.
I don't want to talk about that, right, And I'm
(29:19):
not curious about getting to the bottom of this. I'm
not curious about your viewpoint. I'm not curious about my
own viewpoint. I don't want it to be challenged. Let's
stop talking. What is that a thought terminating something somebody
wrote in and told us once about, yeah, like statement
or something yeah, or like um, let's agree to disagree,
which I still think is valid. But yeah, I get it.
(29:43):
I think maybe that's a last resort sort of thing,
so you don't like start punching each other exactly that
it goes hand in hand with digging your fingertips into
the arm of the chain. Exactly. Does someone smell burning sawdust? Oh, Josh,
is just across the bar. Uh. Another sort of fundamentalist
trait that um can happen is uh. It's not always,
(30:05):
but it's a lot of times it's anti science. But
at the same time, and we've talked about this a
little bit here and there, is it can go the
other way. There are some people that are dogmatically fundamentalists, uh,
believers in science to a degree that isn't may be helpful. Yeah,
that that basically, um uh goes away from the concept
(30:30):
of science that science is constantly looking for new answers
and everything, and dogmatic science people are like, no, this
is it and let's stop, let's stop thinking about it anymore.
And if you challenge it, I'm not tolerant of that,
and you're wrong, um that that is out there, but
that's a an aberration. I think for the most part,
it's it is an anti science kind of thing because
(30:51):
science is part of modernization of society, and so that
makes it an enemy. It's an enemy especially of Christianity
or other religions as far as fundamentalism goes, Yeah, for sure. Uh.
And then the last couple of things kind of go
hand in hand. Is a lot of time, Um, fundamentalists
can be conspiracy oriented. Uh, you know a lot of paranoia,
(31:13):
sort of dwelling about the and you know, it all
comes from it all stems from them feeling threatened about X,
Y or z. Uh. And then they usually rally around
some sort of charismatic leader, uh, whatever the group is whever,
whether it's the Komeni. Even though that didn't maybe didn't
translate to America as being a charismatic leader. Uh, he
(31:36):
certainly had his followers. Um, But it's usually a man.
They usually authoritarians and charismatic. Uh. They usually are bullies
in some way or the other. And a lot of
times fundamentalists look at these people and admire the like
kind of wish they were like them, Like they're doing
the things that we would do if we were in power. Yeah,
(31:57):
Like I like a guy who can get up there
and talk about beating up are critics because I wish
I could punch him in the face and he's talking
about it and it makes me feel so good. Yeah,
that kind of thing UM, and that conspiracy thing in particular,
I was reading about that there's a huge overlap that's
developed between Q and non beliefs and evangelical Christianity, and
(32:17):
they have a lot in common about like end times apocalypticism.
Just there's a lot of overlap. But but one of
the things that I think is starting to become apparent
is that people of faith, especially fundamentalists, because they are
maybe the most people of the most faithful of the
(32:38):
faithful UM, are possibly more susceptible to conspiracy theories because
literalist religion, whereas like your your religious text is is infallible,
there's no mistakes in it. It means everything literally, and
where science or physics contradicts it, sciences physics is wrong.
That level of of of UM belief and something like
(33:02):
Q and on that's just that out there require faith,
and if you're already faithful to something like that, you
apparently are more susceptible to things like conspiracy theories that
require you to ignore facts and just take things on faith,
and that that has kind of infected evangelicalism. Uh, something
like I think I saw on a five thirty eight
(33:23):
um blog that like a quarter of evangelicals in America
believe in Q and On too, which is that's a
tremendous amount of people. I think a third of people
in America are evangelical, So a quarter of that third
subscribe to Q and onbeliefs belief. Well, yeah, and here's
something I don't think we maybe have hammered home enough
(33:45):
is that there is a large portion of of American
religious people who are not fundamentalists and who did since
the beginnings of modernization try and roll with it and say, well,
you know what, maybe the Bible isn't to be taken
so literally. Maybe these are allegories and metaphors. Maybe Noah
(34:07):
didn't literally take two of every living thing, and maybe
this red sea didn't literally part. Maybe these are all
stories that we should draw inspiration or or our our
way of looking at the world from and and believe
in science. And they're combatible, uh not compatible compatible, Uh
there are That is a very huge part of religion.
(34:29):
So we're not painting religion with this single brush here. Uh,
we're just talking about one one part of it, not
at all. And some of the most vocal and outspoken
opponents and scholars of fundamentalism are religious groups. Because you've
got progressives and moderates in any given religion, and they've
got fundamentalists who are trying to take over take control
(34:52):
of their religious group. Uh, and that's a problem for them.
And it was evangelicals, moderate and liberal evangelicals who started
telling the rest of the world like, hey, q and
On is making serious headways into our religious group, and
it's a big problem and we need to figure out
what's going on here. They were the ones who told
everybody else basically. Yeah, And those fundamentalists, the progressive non
(35:18):
literalists are in a way their enemy as well of
the fundamentalists, you know, like within their own religion, The
progressive non literalists of like you know, the people say like,
well maybe we should take the Bible is just a
metaphor their their enemies of the fundamentalists. Yeah. Absolutely, And
again that's where it started back in the eighteen seventies
(35:39):
and the original split right, Yeah, exactly. It was a
struggle within the Baptists and the Presbyterians for control over
the Baptists and the Presbyterians. These fundamentalists came up and said,
stop accommodating modern society. You're straying away from the Word.
And their beliefs got harder and harder and more and
(36:00):
more and more literal, and they were a huge problem
for the Baptist send the Presbyterians for a while. Yeah
for sure. All right, let's take our final break and
we'll talk about what history thinks about fundamentalism right after this,
(36:31):
So Chok, we talked about how fundamentalist groups say, they
claim that they're taking society back to like this Golden
Ages era where things were the way that the fundamentalists
wanted them before, right, And that doesn't seem to be true.
But again, fundamentalists seemed to be a modern phenomenon, taking
us in directions that we've never been in before, where
the fundamentalists are the ones in charge, right. Um. And
(36:54):
one of the ways that they do that is by
selectively citing stuff in religious texts or in historical documents
that support their ideas and um the christian Um. American
Christian fundamentalists love to do that with UM, like historical
(37:14):
documents from the founding of the United States and even
back when the United States was just some colonies as
British colonies. Yeah, because a lot of those documents say
the word God and mentioned God, whether it's the Charter,
the original charter for Virginia in the early sixteen hundreds,
to George Washington saying that the drafting of the Constitution
(37:37):
was an event that was in the hand of God.
Um fundamentalists say, hey, George Washington is George Washington. He
also mentioned God. And it's also he also says that
you shouldn't compromise because the Constitution was written in the
in the hand of God, and so that kind of
(37:58):
takes all the boxes as far as drawn a line
in the sand. But again, all this stuff is sort
of out of context. And when you go back and
you look at what the original Charter of Virginia meant
and why it was written, or what George Washington meant
and what ultimately made it into the Constitution, which was
not the word God, you really got to look at
that in context, like what was what was the deal
(38:20):
with a Virginia Charter. So the Virginia Charter said that
one of the colonists goals was to propagate the Christian
religion to the indigenous people that they met there, although
they didn't call them indigenous people. Um And if you
look at the Virginia Charter from six o six, it
was written by people who were British, who were corporate
shareholders who lived in London, who were ruled by the crown,
(38:42):
and their aim was not to form a new nation,
and just Christianizing the indigenous people they met there just
added legitimacy to this commercial pursuit that they were undertaking.
It's it's pretty flimsy as far as like a proof
that America was founded as a Christian nation that in
the menalists need to take back. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
(39:04):
good point. And like I said, the word God didn't
make it into the Constitution. The word science did. In
Section eight Article one, UH promote the progress of science
and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors
and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
Um And you know, America may have been founded on
(39:25):
Christian principles, but this is important. Very early on, you know,
I think what was it like a hundred and fifty
years after the Puritan colony of Plymouth was was founded.
The Christian experiment in government in America was over, and
they said, no, we're going to found the federal government.
And Thomas Jefferson said, we're going to separate church and
state because we're going down a bad road. Yeah. Even
(39:47):
if you know, George Washington meant what he said about
being in the hand of God, and he was a
Christian and a lot of the other founding fathers were Christians,
and um, they had Christian beliefs. But when it came
time to found the United States of a America, it's
not like they hadn't considered like there, they hadn't even
crossed their mind to to found a Christian nation. There
have been Christian governments in North America already, and they said, no,
(40:11):
we're going to abandon that and go a different direction.
So literally, America was purposefully not founded as a Christian nation.
It could have been, had every opportunity to be, and
it wasn't. And the point is, I mean, Chuck, we
could make an entire spinoff podcast just going tip for
tat on on contexts and liberalism with fundamentalism. But the
(40:33):
point is society's evolved, so it doesn't matter what was
going on four years ago. Like, yes, they did a
really good job writing in the constitution, founding some some
are creating some really great guiding documents. But society has
evolved since then. It's become much more diverse, much more
culturally rich, and we've just changed, most people say for
(40:57):
the better. And there's a lot wrong with it. It
was modern sty There's a lot right that if you
had the choice, you would not want to go back
to sixteen o six and live um compared to today. Yeah,
and modernism is really basically what sociologists think is why
fundamentalism still exists as as a response to modernization. And
(41:20):
you know, modernization has it's ups and its downs over
the years. It's has been perfect. Pre modernization, though there
was people were a lot more the same, uh they
you know, we've talked about this before. You know, pre
urban uh sort of factory work settings, people lived on farms,
they lived on on the land and worked the land,
(41:40):
and they lived in the fields, and they were a
lot more alike and there were a lot more like
sort of the same group of people. And industrialization came
along and it fragmented society and entirely different people started
to become people like, it changed the way people were.
It didn't just change how they went to work in
where they live. All that inherently changed what people could
(42:04):
be like. And uh, social values changed and that's a
part of modernization. And you know, for better or for worse,
we it is is fragmented us and there's been a
lot of negative aspects to it, but it's also come
along with protection of civil rights and racial and gender
equality and uh, you know the World Wide Web, which
(42:26):
is you know, we can all agree with the best
thing ever, right, it's flawless, no downside. But but yeah,
I mean it would be ridiculous to say that modern
society is just you know, perfect or even generally better
in every single way. Now, there's plenty of stuff that's
wrong with it, like um, the emphasis on industry and
profits and and um can can be really isolating and
(42:48):
make people feel like there's they're they're just basically a
cog in a machine. That's a big problem. But yes,
there are there are plenty of solutions and plenty of
things that have gotten better too. And one of the
things about modern society is that we have brought more
and more different people together who have more and more
different ideas and experiences, and it's become clear that no
(43:09):
one group is right or has all the answers, or
is the guardians of the truth. It's just been shown
not to be correct. And um, these a pair of
sociologists kind of put it, uh, Michael O. Emerson and
David Hartman. They said, when when you have when you
bring together people of differing views and values, what rise
to the top has shared values are tolerance and acceptance,
(43:32):
and that these become the core values of highly modernized societies.
And that is great for most of us. But if
you're a fundamentalist, that is the opposite of great. That
is the opposite direction that you're supposed to be going.
Because not everybody's right. We're the only ones that are right.
All of you are wrong, and you're wrong in a
really terrible way that we have to change, so we
(43:54):
have to take over society. Yeah, I mean, you know,
one of the big threats to fundamentalist and why they've
think dug in more and more over the years is
it's science is coming along to demystify a lot of
the things since the dawn of time that we're you know,
took took tried to explain you know, the seasons and
(44:15):
rain and thunder and death, and you know, in various ways,
and people since then have been trying to explain that stuff.
Then science progresses and comes along and says, oh, wait
a minute. You know, we can explain natural selection. Now
we can explain gravity, we can explain electro magnetism, and
you know, we know why the apple falls from the tree.
It doesn't have to be some magical thing or some
(44:37):
religious allegory. And so what that does is that pushes
religion out a little bit because fewer people needed it
to explain things, which can be a big part of religion,
and all of a sudden, religion wasn't like the overriding
fabric of society, but it was just a part of society.
(44:58):
And that that's a big threat a fundamentalist. Yeah, because
a lot of people just say, okay, well science makes
a lot of sense to me. I'm not gonna abandon
my religious beliefs. I still believe in God and Jesus
or Mohammed or buddha Um I like I'm going, like
you said earlier, I find those things compatible, not combatible.
(45:19):
But there's a group of people who are just find
this unbearable. Modern society is just unbearable. It doesn't make sense.
I don't know the people who live around me. Um,
I'm not valued like I used to be or like
my great great grandfather was. Um, my wife is working
out of the house. What's up with that kind of thing?
And um, Rather than their their beliefs loosening and progressing,
(45:44):
they actually become more inflexible, more rigid as as society
continues to progress and their beliefs are left behind because
they feel left behind, so they actually come to rail
against society and that these are the will who become fundamentalists.
So part of it is feeling left out, left behind
(46:05):
or um opposed by society in general. That's part of it.
But then also part of it is that attraction of um,
you know, somebody having all the answers in a really
frankly confusing period of history, which is what we're in
right now. Yeah, And you know when people get together
and isolate themselves from others and say we're the only
(46:27):
ones that are right, and hey, we need to get
involved in politics and get a candidate that things like
us out there, you kind of get where we are today,
which is like you said, it's a pretty Oh what's
the word scary is too easy? Uncertain? Yeah, I mean
it is uncertain. Like things are changing so fast right now,
(46:49):
it's totally understandable why fundamentalist movements would be swelling. It's
scary as as heck. Right now, I feel like the
world is way more nuts than it was maybe thirty
years ago. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. It seems
like it to me, and I think it's because of
this incredibly rapid social change. For me, society is generally
(47:13):
going in the direction that I agree with, so I'm
not threatened by it, even though I'm still just overwhelmed
by how fast things are changing, and then also by
how much tension there is from opposing sides to that change. Um,
it's a really unsettling and unsettled time, I think. So
I can totally understand why fundamentalism would be so attractive
(47:35):
to so many people right now. Um. But again, one
of the tenets of fundamentalism, Chuck, is if you can't
take over the ship, sink it. That's that's basically the
second way fundamentalism in a nutshell. So they can't be ignored.
Society can't just ignore it. We have to figure out
what to do about fundamentalist impulses. And there's some good ideas,
(47:57):
some not good ideas. Uh, and so that maybe worth
trying and not worth trying. But we're still kind of
in the very beginning stages of figuring out how to
reconcile modernized society with fundamentalist impulses. Got any ideas well?
I saw one pair of sociologists who wrote a book
(48:19):
suggested that everybody should just read more fiction. Okay, I
couldn't believe that that was they meant that literally, because
they um they say that if you read more fiction,
it can kind of transport you into other people's experiences
and points of view and will foster tolerance, which again,
intolerance is the hallmark of of fundamentalism. I'll throw one
(48:40):
out there. I just thought of off the dome, travel
someplace that you may not ordinarily travel, it's a big one.
Or travel someplace period. Yeah, if you can. I know
it's a financial burden for some and now everyone can
just like jet off to Paris to see how the
Parisians live. No, but it turns out you are allowed
to leave ohio, Oh no, I that's true. Another thing
(49:06):
that they say can help is to be more tolerant
yourself and to be friendly and to approach a fundamentalist
with friendship, because one kind of criticism you'll hear from
fundamentalists is sort of thrown it right back in the
face of a non fundamentalist and say, you're in just
as intolerant of my beliefs as I am of yours.
(49:28):
I think a counter to that would be to say, well,
know what we're intolerant of is your extreme intolerance, which
is a big distinction. Yeah, and that's like you're you're
intolerant of my racism. It's like that's not a great argument. Yeah,
but that's like one of those things that it's like, Okay, well, yeah,
you can't just be tolerant of everything, Like there is
a line, and like, you know, racism is a really
(49:51):
good example of that. It's a really great line that
society shouldn't just be tolerant of that. But you know,
how can you figure out how to apply tolerance to
the people who feel that way? Like, can can you
be tolerant on an individual level as as their neighbor
or their coworker or the fellow grocery store shopper, to
where you can display some form of tolerance with them
(50:14):
without supporting or or allowing their their you know, tolerance
for their beliefs, of their racist beliefs. You know, it's
it's I think the reason why we are not a
fundamentalist podcast, Chuck, is because we're not saying this is
the answer, this is this is what you do. There
aren't any answers right now, but there's a lot of
(50:34):
different ideas floating around that could work or might not.
I think of music can be united. I think sports
fandom can be a uniter. Uh. I mean, you'll never
see a more tolerant, harmonious place than like at a
Falcons game in the South and the Deep South, you know,
black and white people like urban versus some of the
(50:59):
most rural, red, nicky type folks. You could imagine like
arm in arm for the same cause and it's a
dumb football game. But like, there are small lessons to
be found. I think in those situations. Oh yeah, for sure.
I remember um reading a study years back that people
who were super racist who lived in towns where Um
(51:22):
like Hispanic I can never remember Latin Latin X people
had come to live. There was like a large population
of Latin X people to where they lived among them,
where they might still support like immigration policies um or
anti immigration policies, but they would be like, but not
my town. Like they had developed tolerance without even realizing it,
(51:44):
and their their overall beliefs hadn't caught up yet. So
maybe they were still voting one way, but as far
as that person that they knew down the street, they
were not about to let that person get deported. Not
my town kind of thing. And yeah, so I think
whether it's a Falcons game or a like a musical
rock concert um, bringing people of you know, disparate backgrounds
(52:06):
together does foster tolerance, I think too. And you know
it may not. I'm not saying that. Uh, these people
of the Falcons game walk out of there forging lifelong
friendships and they're like, you know what, why don't we
get together tomorrow for lunch? But you know, there are
there are small experiences that maybe can add up to
something at some point in life. I don't know. I'm like,
(52:29):
I feel desperate for people to get along better. Yeah,
for sure. And there are people out there who are saying, like,
what are you talking about? No, we should not even
be we should be isolating people with racist beliefs. Um. No,
it's not enough to just have somebody like have fun
at the Falcons game. Like, we're way beyond that point.
And I mean I get that argument too, Like I
don't necessarily subscribe to it, but I can get how
(52:51):
people are like, No, we're at like five alarmed stage.
We need to figure out huge radical responses of fundamentalism
right now because they're knocking at the door of our
the highest levels of government. And if they are an
infection on society, we've got huge problems because they are
growing and gaining strength. So I totally get both. Both
(53:13):
arguments are both ways. Yeah, one other thing I think, Yeah,
one more thing. Um, So, religion has a place in
modernized society. It helps people from feeling totally crazy. Um,
if you need a sense of community, go join a
religious group that's like a built in, ready made community
for you. Who's going to accept you into it? Moderate
(53:35):
and progressive, I should say, um groups. Um, But there's
the religion doesn't have to be the only institution in
society that addresses things like angst and unease and um,
you know a need for reassurance, Like what if society,
what if? What if? Science? What if? Um a culture
(53:58):
in general just kind of undertook the project of finding
meaning in this crazy modern world and like helping reassure people.
Like that's what people join fundamentalist movements for is reassurance. Ultimately,
that is the basis of joining a fundamentalist movement. They
want to feel reassured that everything is going to be okay.
(54:19):
And if you can find equally reassuring alternatives to fundamentalism,
I would guess that fundamentalism. I don't think it would
ever fully go away. There's always going to be fundamentalists,
but they would be so increasingly small an insular that
you could conceivably just generally let them do their own
thing and tolerate them. Maybe. So Okay, that's it, he said,
(54:44):
with a resigned sigh. Uh. Well, I'm just gonna ask
just to button it up. You've got anything else. I
got nothing else. I don't either, Chuck. If you want
to know more about fundamentalism, start researching it. There's a
lot out there that will probably open your eyes. And
since I said open your is, it's time for a
listener mail. Uh, this is about basectomies. And by the way,
(55:07):
we heard from a few dudes that are that already
have said, and this is day one of getting emails
in real time, that hey, vasectomies aren't quite as painless
as y'all made it out to be by the way,
I guess it can vary obviously from person to person,
but we've had quite a few guys that were like
it heard bad for a couple of days, and I
was very uncomfortable for a couple of weeks. Poor guys.
(55:28):
So I just wanted to say that, hey, guys, listen
to the basectomy episode. I have to say you're doing
a great service by disseminating this information. I'm a twenty
six year old who's been with my wife for almost
nine years. We've talked, oh well I got married young,
Good for you. We've talked about not wanting children for years,
but made the jump to getting mesectomy in July. For me,
(55:50):
it was relatively painless, but for the rest of that
day it did feel like someone had landed a low
below punch. Uh. The next day I had little pain
with use of ice packs. Uh, it was fine, and
by day three I was back to exercising. After a
couple of months, I feel psychologically and sexually liberated. Our
friends stated their concerns on how we would move on
(56:13):
if regret crept in. Since we made this decision about
not wanting children, um, having biological children is not a concern,
and if we ever regret it, because life is never definite,
we can look at adopting highly about all the answers,
he should start a fundamentalist group, got all answers. You
guys mentioned that should be called a asodomy because there
(56:33):
isn't anything removed. But with my procedure and for others
I've seen on YouTube, they remove about one centimeter of
the vase completely and send it to a tissue sampling,
so technically ectomy still works in this case. Thank you
for the years of knowledge and entertainment. YouTube. Put special
comfort in the podcast realm wishing you Unburdened ejaculations that
(56:58):
is from Ryan. Very nice, Ryan, thank you and for
everyone here in the United States. About one centimeter of
best differences point three nine three seven zero zero seven.
Well done. Uh. If you want to be like Ryan
and share your viewpoints and have us be like wow,
this guy really knows what he's talking about, you can
(57:21):
send us an email too, and guy of course, is
as always gender neutral, because we're in a modern society
and we love that fact. Anyway, you can send us
that email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
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(57:43):
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