What's the Purpose of Fundamentalists

By Carl S ~

Let's talk about fundamentalists in every religion, since they have, well, fundamental traits in common. Fundamentalists insist that "God has a purpose for everything," and most important of all, "God has a purpose for you!” This is usually followed by the claimants telling you they have the answers to what your purpose is, which strangely, just happens to be found solely through their particular faith. ("The Purpose-Driven Life" became a best seller.) But wait a second. What is the purpose of fundamentalists themselves? To use their own claim, what purpose did their God create them for? For these answers we only need look at their overt actions, not their words.

One purpose for fundamentalists is to be experts telling us how to live our lives. Every one of them is really committed to telling women how to live their lives, what clothing they should be wearing, the choices and decisions they should make, and how they must manage their bodies. They preach banning contraception itself, eventually with the goal of prosecuting any woman who would have an abortion as guilty of murder, (Fundies aren't terribly concerned about how males behave.)

Another purpose of fundamentalists is to recruit, whether we're speaking of their missionaries, or of ISIS, Mormonism, cult membership, etc. Why does God want more members in each of their one true faiths? Because it is absolutely necessary to bring in new members in order to advertise just how "true" their doctrines are. There is safety in such numbers: as individuals, believers are incapable of coherently defending the irrational beliefs they spout to unbelievers and skeptics, who are spot-on in deconstructing them.

Fundamentalists are needed to take advantage of the most vulnerable in societies, and those others who ﬁnd themselves in dire situations they are unprepared to handle. The fundies will be there when someone is about to die, and when a spouse, friend, or child has died and the survivors are mourning that person’s death. The fundies will be there to exploit their mourning.

A historically successful source of fundamentalist revenue is the practice of keeping believers from knowing what they don't want to know about their religion. This includes ignoring or over-explaining, and way, way overemphasizing those passages in their scriptures supporting their driven purposes. Fundies encourage the world to shun doubts and curiosity as poisons.

Fundies encourage the world to shun doubts and curiosity as poisonsFundamentalists are desired by the religiously rigid, who are scared stiff of social progress, who want to go back to the old time religion of prayers in school, gays in their place, wives subject to their husbands. They believe humans must "increase and multiply and ﬁll the earth," even as the world is overfilled already! While the rest of the world progresses, they seek comfort in forcing movements of regression.

Obvious ways to spot a fundamentalist: someone who is whining about a "war on religion" or faith, who is demanding special exemptions from common laws for the sake of denying rights to others he or she doesn't approve of.

The purpose of fundamentalists is to preach at people and not listen to them, to "teach" us ignorant and sinful creatures how to live, and everything from their side only. While they say everyone should read their scriptures, they do not return the favor when it comes to dissenting opinions, even evidence to the contrary of their claims. Thus, they insult us.

Considering that the basis of religions teaches that we need to be obedient and controlled by a god, it’s no wonder these "God-appointed experts" serve his purposes. Well we might ask: What is the "purpose” of their God? Why, he's always been somebody to mess with human lives, who just won't leave us alone to determine our own purposes. Crap! Since they are following such an "example" as he, we'll conclude: The purpose of all fundamentalists is simply to be a real pain in the ass for everyone who doesn’t agree with them.

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