[ExI] Tolerance

[Damien Broderick]

On 12/10/2009 12:59 AM, Giulio Prisco (2nd email) wrote:

> Fundamentalists, of any persuasions, are those intolerant bigots who
> cannot accept that others favor ideas and lifestyles different from
> their own.

But "fundamentalist" already has a customary denotation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

<The term fundamentalism was originally coined to describe a narrowly 
defined set of beliefs that developed into a movement within the 
Protestant community of the United States in the early part of the 20th 
century, and that had its roots in the Fundamentalist-Modernist 
Controversy of that time. Until 1950, there was no entry for 
fundamentalism in the Oxford English Dictionary;[5] the derivative 
fundamentalist was added only in its second 1989 edition.[6]

The term has since been generalized to mean strong adherence to any set 
of beliefs in the face of criticism or unpopularity, but has by and 
large retained religious connotations.>

So you might be better off using the term "bigot" or even "intolerant 
bigot" which seems to have a less narrow flavor.

It's odd that you feel no discomfort in describing "their atheism, which 
they make a
religion of," since that characterization in itself seems to be a 
disparagement of religion. For those people who approve of religion, 
this might sound like an endorsement rather than a condemnation--unless 
the religious person is a sectarian fundamentalist, of course.

Damien Broderick