Hedges' chapter "New Fundamentalism" in "I Don't Believe in Atheists" is rich with insight.
"Fundamentalism is a mind-set. The iconography and language it employs can be either religious or secular or both, but because it dismisses all alternative viewpoints as inferior and unworthy of consideration it is anti-thought. ...... They are utopians. ..... The atheists and religious fundamentalists speak in slogans. ....All fundamentalists reject intellectual investigations. ...
Atheists,... like Christian fundamentalists, consider themselves .... the chosen few. They see and know the truth.
Built on a scaffolding of lies, such beliefs allow the believer to reject compassion and empathy. They eradicate individual conscience. They are hard to resist. The alternative means facing a world that will not be glorious. It means we cannot place ourselves at the center of creation and must accept that, tainted and flawed like all human beings, we will never rise to the heights of angels or create a paradise on earth." (pages 69-76)
Now I am motivated to look up the lyrics of Cold Play's tune "Paradise" which I like very much although I have no clue as to the lyrics other than the word "paradise" repeated often. Perhaps it is one of the scaffolds, "it" being their tune.
(October 30, 2012) I've looked at the lyrics to the song "Paradise" and I don't think it is part of the "scaffolding of lies." ( http://www.elyrics.net/read/c/coldplay-lyrics/paradise-lyrics.html)
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