Editing Fundamentalism (section)

==Criticism==
A criticism by [[Elliot N. Dorff]]:
<blockquote>In order to carry out the fundamentalist program in practice, one would need a perfect understanding of the ancient language of the original text, if indeed the true text can be discerned from among variants. Furthermore, human beings are the ones who transmit this understanding between generations. Even if one wanted to follow the literal word of God, the need for people first to understand that word necessitates human interpretation. Through that process human fallibility is inextricably mixed into the very meaning of the divine word. As a result, it is impossible to follow the indisputable word of God; one can only achieve a human understanding of God's will.<ref>Dorff, Elliot N. and Rosett, Arthur, A Living Tree; The Roots and Growth of Jewish Law, SUNY Press, 1988.</ref></blockquote>

[[Howard Thurman]] was interviewed in the late 1970s for a BBC feature on religion. He told the interviewer:
{{blockquote|I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. Meanwhile, religious experience goes on experiencing, so that by the time I get my dogma stated so that I can think about it, the religious experience becomes an object of thought.<ref>{{Cite magazine
 |url          = http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jul1981/v38-2-criticscorner1.htm
 |title        = An Interview With Howard Thurman and Ronald Eyre
 |magazine     = Theology Today
 |volume       = 38
 |issue        = 2
 |date         = July 1981
 |url-status   = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20020906162337/http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jul1981/v38-2-criticscorner1.htm
 |archive-date = 6 September 2002
 |publisher    = BBC
 |series       = The Long Search
 |via          = Princeton Theological Seminary
 |accessdate   = August 26, 2008
 }}</ref>}}

Influential criticisms of fundamentalism include [[James Barr (biblical scholar)|James Barr]]'s books on Christian fundamentalism and [[Bassam Tibi]]'s analysis of Islamic fundamentalism.{{citation needed|date=January 2020}}<ref>{{Cite book|last=Tibi|first=Bassam|title=The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder|publisher=[[University of California Press]]|year=2002|isbn=978-0520236905}}</ref>

A study at the [[University of Edinburgh]] found that of its six measured dimensions of religiosity, "lower intelligence is most associated with higher levels of fundamentalism."<ref>{{cite web|title=The relationship between intelligence and multiple domains of religious belief: Evidence from a large adult US sample |author1=Gary J. Lewis |author2=Stuart J. Ritchie |author3=[[Timothy C. Bates]] |url=http://www.midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1197.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130421071042/http://www.midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1197.pdf |archive-date=2013-04-21 |url-status=live|date=2011-09-03}}</ref>