Thinking Christian Comments
Tom,
Plantinga is among the best philosophers of his generation, but this passage seems to miss the point. I had taken 'fundamentalism' to denote a certain attitude to scripture, viz. the attitude that it is, in some regard or wholly, inerrant. Am I wrong?
Franklin
Yes, you are wrong.
Some people use fundamentalist in a more-or-less accurate sense, but the vast majority of the time it's used in a pejorative sense, as described by Dr. Plantiga. The new, fancier, word used for the same purpose is "theocon". An analogy is the word "neocon" in the political arena. These words all have real, more-or-less precise meanings, but most of the people who use them just use them as a shorthand for "people I don't like", or "people who hold views I disagree with".
Franklin, I gotta agree with Mike. There was a time when your take on the term was more or less accurate, but that was long ago.
I suppose that I don't get out enough. In the (I grant limited) circles in which I travel, 'fundamentalist' means just what I said it means.
I'm curious: is Plantinga fundamentalist in this circumscribed but surely correct sense?
I think he would call himself an evangelical, but because of the baggage attached to "fundamentalist," he would be wary of the word.
He believes in the truth and authority of Scripture, that God created all, that mankind began with a perfect relationship with God but fell ruinously into sin, and that rescue and redemption are available through the life, atoning death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Based on what I know about Plantinga, and my narrow understanding of the word fundamentalist, I don't think he is one. But I could be wrong...
I'm a former 'fundamentalist' reseaching cognitive development and fundamentalism. I agree with both streams of comment in this thread and don't think that they are incompatible. Plantinga is right to point out the a priori pejorative use of the term and be wary of it for those reasons. However, there is an epistemological reason why non-fundamentalists derive an a posteriori scorn for or attitude against fundamentalists. Plantinga is a very intelligent fundamentalist. He articulates his position in a very clear and rational way - however, no matter how clearly he articulates the position it will always be foolishness and sophistry to an empiricist or evidentialist. All of Plantinga's work makes two basic points: (1) there will always be a gap (however tiny) between evidence and objective truth, & (2) it is possible to hold a belief with 100% certainty even in the presence of conflicting or no direct evidence. The latter view is a fundamentalist epistemology which empiricists reject. At the end of the day, Plantinga is a Calvinist who believes that people who believe like him are elected by God to see the true evidence and that people who don't believe like him are still lost in original sin whatever their epistemology. Frankly, I agree with him that the truth claims of Christianity are logically reductable to this belief. This is why I left religion. If I am wrong then according to Plantinga I was never elected by God in the first place and will burn in hell for eternity. If he's wrong then he continues to perpetuate the sort of fundamentalist epistemology that will eventually result in a clash of fundamentalisms with different contents that given time and technology will destroy us all.
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