The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs: Fundamentalism and the Fear of Truth Book

The full title of this book (The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs. Fundamentalism and the Fear of Truth) succinctly summarises the gist of this work. This is a must-read for anyone (from whatever persuasion one might have) interested in these issues.

The author comes from a background of committed Orthodox Judaism, through doubts about it, and ultimately to a denial of its claims to truth concerning its dogmas and doctrines. This is a process familiar to atheists and agnostics with backgrounds in strongly established religious groups ' we don't take our journey to atheism very lightly; and often it takes some time to come to terms with what it means for us, and eventually feel freed from religion's constraints and limitations. We may still retain a certain emotional attraction to many of the rites and rituals of our individual backgrounds, but we are also fully aware that there cannot be anything so absolutely binding and/or compulsory as the claims made by fundamentalists, particularly in their exclusivist, prohibitive and extremely punitive manifestations, and especially when they maintain that these must be applied absolutely, not only to themselves, but also to everyone else, believers or not.

Schimmel comes across as a concerned human being, puzzled by what appears to be an obsessive clinging to ideas which should no longer be tenable today, and attempts to present some common grounds on which mutually beneficial exchanges of ideas can be presented and discussed without rancour or denigration. One would think that such an approach would be amenable even to fundamentalists, especially since there is no universally accepted agreement on what, exactly, is so "fundamental" about them. It appears that every religion, life-style, sect, cult, sub-group, "family", society, etc. (and they are prolific) has its own set of selective "fundamentals" peculiar to them.

In the book, Schimmel limits himself to just some of the issues related to this phenomenon, and only in relation to what are known as the Abrahamic family of religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) with which he is more familiar. While the more moderate and liberal manifestations of these three faiths do contain many who are prepared to accept and discuss variations in their beliefs, hard-core fundamentalists are less accommodating in this regard. It could be argued, however, that the very definition of "fundamentalism" precludes fundamentalists from ever even tentatively admitting that there may be alternative ways of presenting their ideas, because then they would not be fundamental at all…

The author also admits that among these fundamentalists there are, and have been, many very intelligent and dedicated thinkers; but brilliant thinkers in one particular discipline does not mean necessarily that they are brilliantly intellectual in other disciplines or areas of thought. There's the rub. As Schimmel states (p. 104):

Once again we see that very smart people can believe very stupid things ' perhaps a guiding mantra of this book.
Without going to the extremes of postmodernist literary theory, which negates a single, authoritative, determinate meaning of any text, it should be evident to anyone who reads the Bible that there are hundreds of passages whose meaning is unclear, or at least susceptible to several plausible, and often mutually exclusive, interpretations, putting the lie to the doctrine of "scriptural clarity".

Musing on these things, particularly in the current West's political, social and cultural mix (which require mutual understanding and respect for alternative approaches in order to live positively, creatively and harmoniously together) any separatist, disruptive, exclusivist fundamentalist ideologies of whatever make or colour (while permitting them their say) should never ever be allowed to dominate or unduly influence power-bases in the smooth-running and happiness of society in general.