The Problem with Dogmatism
4th January 2006
A while back I wrote a post I titled, Fundamentalism and fanaticism in any religion is dangerous. In that post, I highlighted the issue that worse examples of fundamentalism that we often read about these days may belong to some other religion in a far away land, but then they are not too dissimilar with examples of fundamentalism in the religion that we have grown up with, even though typically we do not see the same kinds of extreme examples.
Recently, I have been thinking about this, and I think that the problem with a fundamentalist perspective and outlook does not only reside in people of faith, and in the realm of religion. Even those who claim not to be religious and those who call themselves atheists may succumb to fundamentalism, or more accurately, dogmatism. It is the perspective that what I hold to be true is the only truth and anyone who disagree with me is either sadly mistaken or idiotically irrational. In fact this is exactly what I meant when I wrote that fundamentalism can even thrive the realm of science and among scientists. I also addressed this perilous and unhelpful attitude in my post “On the Need to Be Right”.
Recently, I left a comment along the same lines in response to
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