I'd like to actually get some response to this, but this post is gonna be a bit lengthy, so bear with me and follow the signs....
I. Definition of Fundamentalism
For my purposes here, fundamentalism will be defined as religious orthodoxy based on literal interpretation of scripture. By default, I refer to Christian, mostly protestant, fundamentalism, but other kinds can and do exist (just with a different set of scriptures or derived beliefs.)
By extension, I also apply the term fundamentalism to attempts to cause government to adhere to a fundamentalist belief system
II. Where I'm Going With This
I believe fundamentalism is always a mistake. For some people, in some situations, it may appear necessary or desirable, and certainly provideds a strong measure of security and stability (these are good things, no doubt), but inevitably leads to the reduction of religious faith (which I also take to be a good thing) to superstition ( which is at best ugly and useless and at worst, dangerous and sometimes legitimately evil).
III. Some Background Info
I am obviously, from some above statements, not a moral relativist, neither am I a moral realist ( in the traditional sense, this means one who accepts moral conditions as facts ). I can't get out from under the shadow of Hume and treat anything factual as normative. This doesn't require justification on my part, it is simply a demand of logic: is never implies ought. They just don't mean the same thing. Likewise, no factual state of affairs can ever be accepted as factually good or bad. If you're clever and have a bit of a philosophy background, you can probably tell already why fundamentalism doesn't make sense to me. But slightly more on my own situation.
IV. The Argument
Obviously, I can't then subscribe to any particular moral or ethical theory, or to any set of moral laws, since I can't with certainty say of a situation or event whether it was good or bad, or both, or in what combination. I simply don't know the truth, but am obligated, as a human being, to make moral judgments. That is, moral judgments occur to me when I think about certain things-- I can't help it. But nothing in this world, including any rule, could possibly tell me whether what I perceive is correct, an illusion, or flat out wrong. That rule too, as a fact, a real, everyday, part of the world, would be unable, in itself, to show me value .
Fundamentalism is wrong, not because it struggles to apprehend an absolute value (we all do this, in one way or another, although some give up in despair), but because it claims that scripture, that is writing, even writing dictated by God, is that absolute. In the end, in order to claim such writing is absolute, the scripture itself must be treated as being equal with or a part of the Godhead. This is why I say that fundamentalism reduces religious faith to superstition-- In religious faith, we humans struggle with our relationship to an absolute which we cannot comprehend. In superstition, we substitute something temporary and comprehensible( a book, a statue, a law, a government) for the absolute and thereby abolish faith.
The most greivous sin of fundamentalism is elevating a rule, a law, that is, a lifeless thing, over real, living people. If my literalist reading of the Bible, for instance, compells me to see homosexuality as absolutely wrong, I have no choice but to oppose it and its practitioners by any necessary means. I have elevated the law, "Homosexuality is wrong," over all else, and law is an unforgiving master. No one needs an exposition on the horrors such extreme legalism has enacted in history.
Some will object to this line of reasoning, saying that I can draw the line somewhere, that if I follow God's Law, for instance (whatever that means--I consider myself to be an orthodox and reasonably well-read Christian, and I simply can't find Biblical justification for the idea of some absolute divine Law which we are compelled to follow and enact in the world), if I follow it well enough, that I can find the 'right answer' to any situation, and thereby not do wrong. The trouble is that any rule requires interpretation, and any rule can be followed in a multiplicity of ways. Furthermore, if I am capable of obeying a law of absolute correctness, then I must myself be absolute, perfectly good and able, and therefore the law is unnecessary. I am ultimately fallible and incapable even of knowing if my chosen action is truly in accordance with the law.
In short, "doing the right thing" is a pipe dream. I can give it an honest effort, but I (and anybody else willing to try) am able to second-guess my efforts indefinitely, and, if I look hard enough, to see a little bit wrong with virtually anything.
Being a truly good person, at least for me, isn't just hard, it's impossible. That's why I need religion in the first place.
Other things wrong with Christian Fundamentalists in the US:
Literal reading of the Bible makes no sense. Sure, one could read some books literally quite easily, but a literal reading of Daniel or Revelation misses the entire point. Judaeo-Christian apocalyptic literature is an established genre with rules, style, and idioms peculiar to it. Symbolic language and extended metaphor are essential to the genre. Reading Revelation as a straight-up predictor of future events makes about as much sense as reading the October 12, 1993 edition of TV Guide as a study of 17th century British knitting techniques. Reading the Bible and actually getting something worthwhile out of it is tricky, and takes a bit more effort than most fundamentalists seem ready to give.
Bringing the government in line with a literal reading of scripture is perverse. The entire point of the religious beliefs of the founding fathers (Christian, Deist, or whatever...) intruding into a few sentences like "endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights..." was that it served to justify their view of human beings as being worth protecting, and served to place their form of government in a context as subordinate to the Divine, thereby relieving government of the responsibility of aspiring to perfection. That is, governments try and do the best they can. That's all. Fundamentalists believe they can perfect government by bringing it in line with Divine law. This creates a new superstition, a new idolatry, which makes the state a kind of deity in its own right.
Slavish devotion to sets of rules, pietism and legalism all ignore the reality that laws, governments, and even morality were created to benefit humanity, not humanity created to support such institutions.
Fundamentalists, though by no means stupid or undereducated, are bad theologians, bad philosophers, and occasionally bad human beings because they allow themselves to be deceived into accepting a false security.
