Fundamentalists: Hylics and Simpletons

This page is about fundamentalists who consider their religious text of choice to be inerrant. In particular I have in mind Christian fundamentalists who consider the Bible to be inerrant, and Muslims who consider the Koran to be inerrant. How do such people arrive at the decision that their text is infallible, and what logical problems does this incur? Do they take the text more or less seriously than liberals? On this page I use the term "scripture" to refer to whatever text an individual has chosen to consider inerrant.

List all the pages on fundamentalism

1. Criteria of Selection
2. Translation of Scripture
3. All Scripture is Interpreted Subjectively
4. Liberals Take Scripture More Seriously Than Fundamentalists
5. Hylics and Simpletons

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1. Criteria of Selection

Fundamentalists largely hold that Scripture is the only authority we have as regards to the truth: It is an absolute truth. However, in order to select which text they consider inerrant there must first be non-scriptural basis for this selection. Before a person considers a text inerrant, they are in a position where their cultural and class position in the world dictate their knowledge of religious texts and their approach to them. These secular and coincidental factors determine whether a person comes to decide that a text is inerrant.

It is an illogical situation that once a fundamentalist has chosen a text, they then deny that they have no other source of authority: If there is no source of authority other than the text they've chosen, then their reason for selecting the text has become invalid. Beyond this point of self-contradiction it can be seen that the reasons are complex psychological ones.

Fundamentalists have been unable to arrive at a logical criteria for how a secular living person should select, from all the religious texts available that have adherents who claim it is inerrant, which one is true.

1. Through Prophecy? All claim that correct prophecies validate their text, and all claim that all the other texts don't really have correct prophecies. It is impossible to investigate all such claims yourself, in one lifetime, so it appears that a logical intellectual choice based on prophecy is impossible. Or it is ignorant: A choice can't be made without ignorance until a person has actively investigated all claims of prophecy by all religious texts. Until the individual has done this, they're merely guessing which one can be judged, by criteria of its prophecies, to be "more" divine than other texts.

   Sensible possibility: That God has inspired multiple correct prophecies in multiple religious texts or that magic operates as part of the natural laws of the universe, and supernatural prophecy making is possible whether or not God has a part in it. Of all the prophecies that have not come true (such as the thousands made about the end of the world, etc), you could very sensibly infer that any true prophecies are only true by coincidence and luck, not by supernatural means. In all cases, it can be seen that judging religious texts by their prophecies is a poor method.

2. Through Faith? Decisions by "faith" are determined in 99% of cases by cultural and societal factors, by psychology, and not by virtue of which text is true. Faith is a cultural and psychological phenomenon. Or, of course there is the chance that a God does actually support multiple (even contradictory) religions, and therefore that it doesn't really matter which one you pick.

3. Through Morals? It is circular logic to claim that a text is an absolute authority on morals, and then to claim that you can judge a text by the morals contained in it, before knowing which text is true. If you assume particular morals, then look at religious texts, you will end up selecting the text that most matches your own morals. If you select a text then claim that its morals are absolutely correct, you could have drawn exactly the same conclusion no matter which religious text you'd selected. The factors which determine which one you select in the first place are therefore purely cultural and psychological - not moral. We have no rational basis for claims of what morals God considers best. Selection by morals is a fundamentally flawed selection criteria, requiring either genuine stupidity, ignorance or doublethink.

4. By Popularity? If you judged by popularity you would conclude that at the moment the Christian text is 'absolute' and correct. But, in previous centuries, Roman paganism was absolute and correct, and before that, the animist worship of multiple simple spirits was the correct set of beliefs. It makes no sense that to say that now, at the moment, a particular religion is true merely because it is popular. Especially given that within a religion such as Christianity, there are many varied beliefs. To base claims on popularity is to undermine the idea that one particular religion has correct beliefs.

2. Translation of Scripture

This is the case especially with Christian rather than Muslim scripture: We have very little of the original text. We know that from very early on numerous mistranslations have been introduced₁, such as the mistaken usage of the word "virgin" to describe the prophecy of Jesus' birth since the major Septuagint translation (which was the version used for nearly all modern Bibles until academics have discovered older (and some original) Biblical text).

Thankfully, one thing that fundamentalists do get right is their determined and enviable attempts to read scripture in its original language. Obviously this is much easier for Muslim Arabs who still speak the same language the Koran was written in. By learning and reading it in the original language, or in very early translations, we minimize the translation errors (and assumptions) that slowly crept into later version.

However, we only have portions of the original texts and mostly we do rely on translations. Also, we can only possibly read the text from within our own cultural framework. We read text literally, chronologically and philosophically, where both The Koran and much of The Bible was written in prose, in poetry, was not written literally but written with many symbolic aspects, word games, shifts in time and place and many cultural references that we cannot possibly understand now. All these add up to create fearsome troubles with translating these texts and understanding them across hundreds of years of cultural difference. The longer the time difference between when something was written and when it is read, the less of the original meaning is preserved.

3. All Scripture is Interpreted Subjectively

This is a major problem with all divine text. When we read things, our brain takes in the text and interprets the information. Such interpretation is subjective. There is no "clear" meaning except what our brains give to what we take in through our sense. All people read different nuances and subtexts into text, and read the very text differently, according to their own experience of life and reality.

“We forget things, think things have happened when they haven't, we make up and forgot things we've done... we're sure something is true but discover it isn't. Our brain is an imperfect organic machine, not a mystical repository of truth. Whenever we view, perceive, store or retrieve experiences we make errors.... lots of little errors and sometimes big ones. The results is that the total picture is just a mis-match of guesses and patchwork. We all hope that we get by. The reality is that no two people ever experience the same event or thing in the same way, because the complexities and depths of their errors and assumptions are different for every person, every event is experienced slightly differently. No-one has precisely the same point of view on any event. [...]

The same fact presented to two people will be interpreted and stored in two different ways. It's almost as if there is no "real" world... just millions of versions of the world and we just haven't got the mental power as living beings to see what is real and what is not. Logic and consensus are the only ways of ascertaining what is real and what isn't, but we can only ever know to the extent that experience gives us only a fuzzy and inaccurate picture of reality, and consensus is merely a diplomatic compromise with only logic and reason to back it up. [...] At the end of the day it's only one persons' point of view versus another and logic is not self-affirming of the world, only self-contained.”

"Subjectivism and Phenomenology" by Vexen Crabtree (2000)

This subjectivism applies especially to written text. The longer ago something was written, the less the context is clear to us today, and this opens the way for much subjective opinion. The legal profession has much experience with determining the accurate meaning of texts, and one author warns us:

“Law is not merely an attempt to subject human conduct to the governance of rules; it is an attempt to guide the future through the use of rules. [...] It is an attempt through the use of language to devise rules. The problem which this presents is that language has an open-textured quality; language, we might say, has a limited grip over reality. There is an inherent vagueness in the ordinary use of language and, because of this, rules - even if we accept that they have a core of settled meaning - are often surrounded by a penumbra of uncertainty. [...] Words do not always have simple, literal meanings: they often acquire meaning within particular contexts.”

"Sword and Scales" by Martin Loughlin, p84 & 91

Combined with the problems of translation that we opened this text with, it is surprising that anyone thinks a god would attempt to communicate with us in any particular language, let alone ancient ones. If I was god, I would transmit my message directly into everyone's brain. That way problems with translation and subjectivism would be removed and people could make informed decisions and moral choices based on the full facts, rather than miscommunicated ideals.

There would be none of this "inspired" scripture, no culturally-bound religious founders, no revelation to random roaming mystics in the middle East, but instead it would impart such knowledge to everyone. This would end all translation problems, all transmission problems and be somewhat more instantaneous than the historically hap-hazard and slow spread of religious text. The conservatives are severely limiting God's power by saying that it itself is bound by a book of text, they are saying that God itself is short-sighted, inefficient and somewhat haphazard in its methods.

4. Liberals Take Scripture More Seriously Than Fundamentalists

I regard "fantasy" as being less serious than reality. For example, wishful-thinking about a woman and her character is to take her less seriously as a person than to honestly look at the reality of the woman. To give her more respect and to take her more seriously you'd have to accept her as she is, plainly, and without personal fantasy corrupting your approach to her.

The conservatives do not take scripture seriously, nor give it as much respect, as liberals. They allow personal fantasies to distort its reality and therefore corrupt it with their own wishful thinking rather than approaching it realistically. They must, subconsciously and partially-consciously, know that their wishful thinking is overriding a realistic respect for scripture.

To respect scripture should be to view it realistically, as-it-is, and not as you want it to be. A persons' want for an authoritive text (so they don't have to make their own choices or justify their own beliefs) is not an honest or respectful bias to take to a religious text: Such an approach corrupts the text and produces a caricature and distortion of truth. To understand the cultural differences between its composition and your understanding, between the symbolism and poetry of the original and the context-removed dry atmosphere in which we place religious texts, is to be more aware of both the beauty and truth of the text.

5. Hylics and Simpletons

The Roman Empire's early Christians equated textual literalism to be the modus operandi of the hylics, the least spiritual class of Christians. Fundamentalism is in opposition to early Christianity on a number of counts, including scriptual adominitions of legalism. St Paul's "the letter kills, while the spirit gives life" [2 Corin. 3:4-6] is the most famous verse against fundamentalism.

“The Gnostics called those who identified with their body 'Hylics', because they were so utterly dead to spiritual things that they were like unconscious matter, or hyle. Those who identified with their personality, or psyche, were known as 'Psychics'. Those who identified with their Spirit were known as 'Pneumatics', which means 'Spirituals'. Those who completely ceased to identify with any level of their separate identity [...] and realized their true identity [...] transformed the initiate into a true 'Gnostic', or 'Knower'”

"Jesus Mysteries" by Freke & Gandy [Book Review], p156

In Islam, it is also the case that more those with deeper spiritual connections to their faith consider the literalist to have only understood the first 7 layers of interpretation (which were equivalent to understanding the Koran in seven local dialects, each with slightly different possible meanings for some words).

“Uberweb points out that, according to the mystic, every text of the Koran had 7 or 70 or 700 layers of interpretation, the literal meaning being only for the ignorant vulgar. [...] In the Muhammaden world, however, the ignorant seem to have objected to all learning that went beyond a [surface] knowledge of the Holy Book; it was dangerous, even if no specific heresy could be demonstrated. The view of the mystics, that the populace should take the Koran literally but wise people need not do so, was hardly likely to win wide popular acceptance.”

"History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell, p418-419

Christianity and Islam have mystical orders. Mainstream Christianity is quite mystical in its liberalism, whereas Sufi Islam is widely held to be the closest equivalent. In both, however, the fundamentalist literalists have a strong presence (overwhelmingly so in Islam). These simple masses, the vulgar and the hylic, surely represent the biggest threat to true religious understanding. To be a literalist is to destroy the majority of depth and emotion of any written religion. The only advantage of the fundamentalist attidude to scripture is that it caters for the simplistic minded.