Fundamentalism as Paradigm

My unending project. Maybe someday it will be book

Thesis: That fundamentalism is an ideological paradigm which cannot be utilized in a value neutral manner, and that modern religious movements must be examined in an institutional framework, if value freedom is to be upheld.

I. Introduction
The term "paradigm" as applied to "fundamentalism" has an ironic dimension, for both terms evolved over the course of the 20th century in such a way that to use them in the same sentence is a linguistic anachronism. Just five years before the Fundamentals were written, the 1900 Merriam-Webster dictionary described "its technical use only in the context of grammar or, in rhetoric, as a term for an illustrative parable or fable". Thus, not only is the term "fundamentalism" a rhetorical symbol, so also is the term "paradigm"1. But to classify a rhetorical symbol as a "parable or fable" which by its own internal logic rejects the truth of fables remains an interesting twist. For among the core symbols of fundamentalism as explicated by real fundamentalists, and not those who simply write about fundamentalists, is the concept of presuppositions. A fundamentalist might well argue that the term paradigm itself betrays its own presuppositions through the logical history of its own symbology. The misapplication of both symbols, fundamentalism and paradigm, should not dissuade us of this insight.

Thomas Kuehn’s "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" attempts to revise the paradigmatic symbol into a term of science. Indeed, his description of a paradigm would not be unfamiliar to Aristotle, since it describes a paradigm as defining 1) what is to be observed, 2) the questions to be asked about the object of observation, 3) how such questions are structured, and 4) how one interprets the results of investigation. Fundamentalism, as with any system of theology or philosophy, must have all four elements of Kuehn’s paradigm. Since this study itself represents an exploration of fundamentalism as a paradigm, it would be appropriate from the outset to consider all four aspects of fundamentalism. How is it to be defined ? What questions are relevant to the exploration of fundamentalism, as paradigm ? Since, by now, it is understood that we are dealing with a paradigm within a paradigm, how should questions about fundamentalism be structured ? What, other than our own presuppositions about fundamentalism, do we have to guide our interpretation of the extant data about fundamentalism, in order to construct a coherent and reasonably accurate representation of the phenomena.

Regrettably, the vulgar use of the term fundamentalism has indeed created a kind of paradigmatic fable that must be examined, if only for the purpose of exposing its all-too-apparent logical and factual errors. This is the most obvious sense in which fundamentalism enters the stage in the guise of paradigm. For what many commentators do, in speaking to the topic of fundamentalism, is to describe conclusions as facts, and presuppositions as evidence of what fundamentalism is and what its systematic logic motivates human beings to do. Only a radical criticism will suffice to overcome the misapplication of rhetoric and misrepresentation of fact here.