There was a recent article featured in the BBC World Edition concerning a speech by Lord May of Oxford which I've excerpted as follows:

"Ahead of us lie dangerous times," he will say in his fifth and final anniversary address.

"There are serious problems that derive from the realities of the external world: climate change, loss of biological diversity, new and re-emerging diseases, and more.

"Many of these threats are not yet immediate, yet their non-linear character is such that we need to be acting today.

"And we have no evolutionary experience of acting on behalf of a distant future; we even lack basic understanding of important aspects of our own institutions and societies.

"Sadly, for many, the response is to retreat from complexity and difficulty by embracing the darkness of fundamentalist unreason."

'Denial lobby'

Lord May will say that fundamentalism applies not only to organised religions but to lobby groups on both sides of the climate change debate.

The climate change "denial lobby" and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) opposed to nuclear power are not exempt from a denial or misrepresentation of scientific facts, he told reporters in London.

Speaking in a week that saw the opening of climate talks in Montreal, and the re-opening of the nuclear power debate in the UK, he said there had to be open questioning and inquiry of such issues.

The huge problems with nuclear power had to be weighed against the problem of putting more carbon into the atmosphere and the future potential of land and sea turbines, he said; "rather than ruled out of discussion on what you might call some fundamentalist belief system".

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I might also add that there seems to be a vilification of the United Nations by some fundamenalists as the "whore of Babylon" that I've noted on some forums..

So what about it? Is fundamentalism a danger to scientific thinking and appropriate response to the world's problems?

- Art

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"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

It seems to me that fundamentalism is a danger to all thinking - and thought, but that it's especially dangerous when it affects - and effects - long-term changes to the environment.

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"An object is perceived, or not perceived, according as the mind is, or is not, tinged with the colour of the object. "
Patanjali - Sutra 4:17

I agree with Aged Hippy. Fundamentalism is dangerous to ALL thought. And I don't care if it is Muslim Fundamentalism or Christian Fundamentalism or Athiest Fundamentalism or some other kind. Any belief that is rigid and thinks everyone else is wrong is dangerous.

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So much to learn and see and do