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Religious fundamentalism: a conceptual critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2013

RICHARD McDONOUGH
RICHARD McDONOUGH*
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, Republic of Singapore188065 e-mail: [email protected]@cornell.edu
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Abstract

The article argues that religious fundamentalism, understood, roughly, as the view that people must obey God's commands unconditionally, is conceptually incoherent because such religious fundamentalists inevitably must substitute human judgement for God's judgement. The article argues, first, that fundamentalism, founded upon the normal sort of indirect communications from God, is indefensible. Second, the article considers the crucial case in which God is said to communicate directly to human beings, and argues that the fundamentalist interpretation of such communications is also incoherent, and, on this basis, argues that religious fundamentalism is actually an extreme form of irreligiousness. Finally, the article considers Kierkegaard's prima facie defence of unconditional religious faith, and argues that, despite some similarity with the fundamentalists, Kierkegaard's appreciation of human finitude leads him to a profoundly anti-fundamentalist stance.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 561 - 579
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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