A Small God
These insightful words come from Jeff Sharlet at Killing the Buddha in an article called God's Own Knowledge.
"The funny thing about fundamentalists is that for all the blood and thunder, the dark nights of the soul giving way to the glory of the light, for all the tears a repentant Jimmy Swaggart can weep, fundamentalism is a cut-and-dried textbook faith. It’s a creed that in seeking to establish theocracy and make God the answer to every question accidentally leaves God out of the picture. For in fundamentalist theology, God—incomprehensible G-d—takes a backseat to his own Word.
"Or rather, the words his or her servants have written; the authority of the Bible displaces the more nebulous authority of the Lord. Literalist readings of scripture reduce the most enduring of stories to pre-processed Bible-in-a-box, a series of if-then and A-leads-to-B logic formulas by which we are to know a world where all nuance can be dismissed as the devil’s deceptions. When you examine the hard-and-fast propositions of fundamentalism, the comparison that calls science a religion cuts both ways: Fundamentalism is science with a choir.
"Logic proofs make for a small god. Some say a dead one."
