Understanding the Mentality and World View of the Christian Fundamentalist

[Delta4Embassy]

Its not what you believe , its how you live your life. Even the Pope said "atheist can go to heaven" . I live a Christian life, I think a person needs to live their life for this life and what ever will be will be. Not all Christians are the same, for instance, I do not believe Jesus was God, but a man who worshipped God in a different way than the Pharisees.
There were different Jews in those days as well.

Pharisees were what we now call 'legalistic.' Jesus by opposition, a spiritualist. He taught Judaism in the spirit of it, not letter of the law, and as such made it more attractive and accessible than the legalistic approach.

According to Judaism you don't have to be Jewish or anything else to receive a place in the world to come ('heaven.') Follow 7 simple laws and you're in like Flynn. And these are common-sense things like don't murder, steal, commit adultery, be a bastard (might be remembering that one wrong.) So by extension you could be atheist who coincidentally is doing those things anyway.

 

[PratchettFan]

Basically, the Evangelical Christian has two powerful things controlling his/her mind and emotions – the fear of eternal punishment in hell and the reward of eternal paradise in heaven. Those are essentially the two most powerful things that can control someone’s mind, period. They are the ultimate brainwashing tools ever designed.

Understanding the Mentality and World View of the Christian Fundamentalist

A complete load of garbage. Pop psychology at its worst. All this comes down to is "They don't believe what I believe, so there must be something wrong with them." Which makes you no different than someone like Gysmis.

 

[PratchettFan]

Basically, the Evangelical Christian has two powerful things controlling his/her mind and emotions – the fear of eternal punishment in hell and the reward of eternal paradise in heaven. Those are essentially the two most powerful things that can control someone’s mind, period. They are the ultimate brainwashing tools ever designed.

Understanding the Mentality and World View of the Christian Fundamentalist

I wouldn't agree anything's controlling their's, or anyone's mind re: religious faith. Absent empiricism, I like to think no one believes in fairy tales. Probably a few exceptions on either size of the bell curve like, but by and large...

I think rather in the modern data age, there's just so much information out there about every little thing that many people suffer a kind of 'input overload.' And if they can moderate the imput with religion so they're only getting however much they can handle they'll do that. It's a kind of willing self-deception. Up until recently, they had a tiny world world-view which now is threatened with a wealth of scientific knowledge at our fingertips via the internet. And for many people that's a tempting lure to take a look. When they do, and realize everything they grew up with is wrong and empirically refutable, they run back home to mama as it were.

You touched upon an important issue when you wrote: "...everything they grew up with..."

People rarely choose what their religious beliefs are and rarely do they apply very hard standards to those beliefs. Overwhelmingly, people simply accept the religious beliefs of their parents and the predominant religion of their social circumstances. Religious belief is almost entirely a function of happenstance involving parentage and geographic location.

Accepted. But don't stop there. What does that tell you about the nature of human beings?

 

[Youch]

Basically, the Evangelical Christian has two powerful things controlling his/her mind and emotions – the fear of eternal punishment in hell and the reward of eternal paradise in heaven. Those are essentially the two most powerful things that can control someone’s mind, period. They are the ultimate brainwashing tools ever designed.

Understanding the Mentality and World View of the Christian Fundamentalist

Discussing a religious fundamentalism that is currently harming no one, is interesting, but isn't the religious fundamentalism of those that are harming thousands and desires to harm millions if not billions, far more interesting? If you say no, then that betrays a "fundamentalism" all it's own and I'm quite sure that is rather unhealthy.