Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
I don't think that's a very good distinction. I think it puts more Christians into the fundamentalist group than you intended. There's plenty who consider their religion much more than just a 'part' of their life, who consider more of a focal point, yet come nowhere near being militant or (sometimes) even political. There's something kinda inauthentic, to me (as a lapsed non-believing Catholic), in treating a religion like Christianity as a hobby rather than a driving force. Some religions can work that way, but doing that with Christianity strikes me as cherry-picking. It's just that important. It's supposed to take you over.
Hopefully not in that bad, militant way like with Koran burners or anti-smokers.
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Christianity is objectively internally contradictory, therefore all Christians cherry-pick. That shouldn't even be the issue, though.
The issue is those who go from being religious to being essentially obsessed. It's that line between healthy and unhealthy where the distinction of fundamentalist, in my mind, comes into play. It's the same thinking that goes into establishing mental disorders: it's a mental or behavioral pattern that causes distress or disability and is not a part of normal (objectively healthy) mental or behavioral patterns. Burning someone else's holy book would be a prime example of this, but lesser things like creationism (trying to scientifically explain the supernatural by bastardizing science while flatly denying the demonstrable) also qualify.