"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Unfortunately, "fundamentalist" is one of those terms much abused by the
> media.
> It ought to mean something like "believing or adhering to the
> fundamentals of",
> whereas, it has come to mean something like "one ready to exercise violence
> against those who disagree with his beliefs"

That's what I'd call "radical" (though they're typically also fundamentalists).


> For instance, the essential difference between Christianity and Judaism
> is the acceptance of Jesus as divine.

A bit more than that, to all I know; Judaism does not even acknowledge Jesus as
a prophet (which, for instance, Islam does).

There's also strong dissent about the position whether the Mosaic rituals are
still binding; Jews are obviously convinced that this was the case, and even
many of the earliest Christians (who were Jews after all) seem to have
continued, and partially even insisted on, this tradition, while Paulus seems
to have taught otherwise among the Gentile christians (though he also seemed to
have strongly opposed the position that it was particularly *bad* to follow
those old rituals). And the thing is of course complicated further by various
christian sub-groups having introduced their own rituals instead (which
apparently were often adapted versions of older traditions).


> A lot that many christians believe about Satan,
> heaven, angels, etc. is,
> I think, accumulated tradition. Of course some no doubt regard the who
> of christian belief as
> accumulated tradition.

That's a very difficult topic, because a lot can be interpreted into the bible,
so it's hard to tell which is true christian, and which is heathen tradition
projected onto biblical terminology and the like.


> I agree. We should always beware of assigning motives to others, though
> few of us
> observe that caution. Perhaps we might say that differences in beliefs,
> however important
> and however strongly held, should never result in discourtesy (in a
> broad sense). :)

There's a point to that indeed.

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