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The Fundamentalist Mind: How Polarized Thinking Imperils Us All

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I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian. I wish I could still be one, but the nagging discomfort I felt as a young man blossomed into a full-blown rebellion at the intellectual and spiritual bondage I felt. Dr. Stephen Larsen's book has been a formidable resource in assisting me as I still struggle to articulate my own thoughts and ideas about my spiritual life. I found the book compelling, that is, if I picked it up I almost couldn't put it down. His experience with Joseph Campbell has given him a perspective that resonated with me from the very first page. In particular I found Dr. Larsen's discussion of "fragmented gods" illuminating and satisfying. If I were teaching a university course that dealt with Christian fundamentalism, I would certainly make his book required reading, and I might even adopt it as a text.

You're either democrat or republican. Pro-Choice or Pro-Life. There is no in between. "The Fundamentalist Mind: How Polarized Thinking Imperils Us All" take a look at the belief in extremes in American society and discussing the problems such opinions create in modern society. Fundamentalism is the target, and Larsen attacks it in its many forms, ranging from religion, to political fundamentalists, and even scientists are not innocent from this thinking. Suggesting a middle path and to open one's mind, "The Fundamentalist Mind" is an interesting treatise on extremes.

This highly readable book presents to those skeptics among us who love our religions a priceless understanding of our beliefs, ourselves and others. Stephen Larsen writes with great respect for faith,and appreciation for the divine. He clarifies for the reader those aspects of faith which bring on the horrors we have seen today and in the past. And he does this with the knowledge of a neuro-biologist, psychologist, mythologist, and is a really good writer.

the book was in great condition just like i had expected! Good seller! I needed it for class Multicultural Psychology and it was great. It offered alot of information on how people who are fundamentalist miss out on things. Great Book!

While I found the historical religious parts of this book interesting, Larsen's discussion of "fundamentalist" science, which he calls "scientism," shows that he doesn't understand how science works.

For one thing, he overstates scientific opposition in the 18th Century to the idea that rocks could fall from the sky, when in fact Baron D'Holbach, the Enlightentment's most prominent scientific materialist, speculates in his book "The System of Nature" (1770) that comets could have struck Earth in the past. The scientific world view of the time accepted comets as bodies whose orbits could bring them close to Earth's orbit, where they also apparently shed matter as they passed around the sun; so the idea that smaller, hard-to-observe, rock-like bodies, possibly cast off from comets, could also orbit the sun and fall to Earth occasionally did not pose a fundamental challenge to the existing "paradigm."

This and Larsen's other examples of originally controversial scientific ideas also undercut his thesis about scientific "fundamentalism." Science, unlike religions, has effective error-correcting mechanisms. Therefore today we no longer see scientific "fundamentalists" who deny that rocks can fall from the sky, that microorganisms can cause disease, that the human liver has four lobes because Galen says it has five, etc. The scientific community can definitively modify its model of reality when the evidence warrants the change, in other words.

Religions, by contrast, can continue to generate the same kinds of fundamentalist beliefs over and over again. Some Christians in the 21st Century promote beliefs in creationism, the end times and witchcraft similar to the beliefs Christians held hundreds of years ago. Their scriptures don't supply them with a mechanism to break out of this loop because we have no independent way of knowing whether such a god exists and how to communicate with it to get the facts straight.

Larsen's book also reveals other biases. For example, apparently it never occurs to Larsen that fundamentalism might have as much, or even more, legitimacy as an expression of "spirituality" as his over-educated, Joseph Campbell-inspired woo. If the fundamentalist god really exists, and it really wants its followers to behave in such rigid ways, then Larsen has a problem on his hands.

Larsen's brief discussion of Chinese "energy medicine" also made me laugh. Yes, the traditional mainland Chinese, with their rotting teeth, iodide deficiencies, tuberculosis, parasitic worms, influenza-breeding livestock populations, etc., sure know a lot about staying healthy by keeping their "Qi" balanced.