Talk:Religious fanaticism

message: There have been some edits back and forth involving this sentence, and I went ahead and took it out altogether. My reasoning is, yes, it's true, it's possible to get hit with stones if driving in certain parts of Jerusalem during Shabbat, but it's not the work Relgious fanatics, rather the work of teenage orthodox hooligans. Nobody seriously considers that an emanation of religious extremism such as a 9/11 style suicide attack. - CrazyRussian talk/contribs/email 18:20, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Haredi]] [[Jew]]s stoning people on [[Shabbat]] 

message: I just conducted a major rewrite on this section. It was very poorly written and very loose with facts. It is now reasonably consistent with most contemporary ideas about utilitarianism, at any rate.
"Alternatively, religious belief could help an individual to find their place in society or give to the whole society a philosophical ethos, as religious belief can sometimes help persons find meaning in their lives." - this sentence still worries me a little, as finding meaning does not necessarily lead to an increase in utility. However, I qualified it with the sentence which follows it, so I think it should hold.
On another note, the original text tried to argue that according to utilitarianism, the fanaticism of a religious believer is continuous with how beneficial or detrimental their actions are to utility. I haven't ever heard this argued, and the source wasn't cited. Judging by the level of care put into the previous write-up, it is quite possible that the author pulled this out of their ass. However, I haven't any evidence to the contrary, so I left it in. Good luck with your revert war! Stringman5 06:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Religious fanaticism and utilitarianism

message: We are not fanatics! We just love the savior!Jesus is the one true Savior (talk) 00:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delete this article immediately! 

message: I think that we need to see some other opinions. --Vojvodaeist 17:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Impact

message: Oh dear God, could someone please save this article? It looks like shit and reads like an op-ed. I say delete the whole damn thing and start over from scratch. It's a shame that such an important subject should have such a terrible article. Rewrite it now, or you shall taste my wrath.
63.245.144.68 (talk) 17:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Save this article 

message: I agree with everyones' comments above. I have removed the section Conclusions as it could have been a paragraph in a 12th grader's essay. I have tagged the article as reading like an essay; I don't have time to work on this article and if I did I wouldn't know where to start. Hopefully someone can work on this. Ltwin (talk) 17:27, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Tagged the article

message: I typically hesitate to condemn the quality of articles for which I can offer no concrete solutions, but I urge anyone with something to contribute in this area to do so--this article is well below the minimum standards of quality that I've seen elsewhere on this site.
I am not a religious expert, nor do I have time to do the research, but my general feeling when reading this article is that it spends way too much time on a single source and a single group (namely Christians), while failing to give a more global and comprehensive view of the concept of fanaticism.  Fanaticism exists in all of the world's religions, without exception, and has probably existed within every society and during every time period of recorded human history.  Reading this article would leave you with the distinct impression that this is primarily a Western problem, however, and more specifically, a Christian problem.  Simply mentioning at the end of the article the fact that other religions can exhibit fanaticism is probably not enough--it looks as though the author(s) mean this to be only a casual observation, with the emphasis still strongly against Christianity.
I should note that at least this article doesn't go in the opposite direction--attacking only Islam--which is an easy trap to fall into given the tenuous relationship between Islamic Fundamentalism and the Western world in recent history.  More often than not, in today's media, the word fanaticism has become almost synonomous with Muslim culture.  Nevertheless, it's surprising to me that more time is not spent in this area, especially considering the considerable political, military and financial resources expended on these issues in the previous few decades.
Other things that might fit nicely into this article, in terms of external linking, might include:
- Religion versus medicine. Several cases of refusual of medical treatment of either children or consenting adults have appeared over the years, some quite recently.  Can this be called fanaticism?
- Historical splits within a religion.  Religious adherents, whenever sufficiently fanatic about their beliefs, have split from their mainstream counterparts (sometimes with great bloodshed).  Are there historical accounts that could be considered fanaticism?
- Religion versus politics.  A slippery slope for many discussion, to be sure, but given today's climate the question of fanaticism influencing politics is a very real one.
This is not, by the way, a call for others to do original research here, and hypothesizing about fanaticism can certainly send us down that road.  I'm confident the sources are out there to talk more broadly about this subject though, but it will require individuals to keep an eye out for the information.  I think that the proper use of this article, in my humble opinion, is to instruct on not only what things might be considered fanaticism, but how such behavior and philosophy has affected our world.  --Bdmccray (talk) 23:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: 10 years later, and this article is still of terrible quality.  It's not about religious fanaticism.  It's a few cut and pastes of examples that particular editors think fit under the label of religious fanatacism. --PluniaZ (talk) 23:14, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality 

message: In the 'Islam' section of the 'Popular Examples of Religious Fanaticism' part, "Further information: Islamism" should be changed to "See also: Islam and violence" for the sake of neutrality.
--Spmoura (talk) 14:21, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Islam and violence 

message: On the Fundamentalism page, it is suggested that Fundamentalism be merged with Religious fanaticism.  I have seen little discussion of this idea on either page, which concerns me somewhat, as I think it should be discussed before being done. Personally, I don't see the two as being the same topic, though they are connected.Marikafragen (talk) 18:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  merging Fundamentalism to here? 

message: I reinstated his material, which was deleted by . The act appeared to be simple vandalism. I have notified the IP of this thread.Pectoretalk 04:12, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Lloyd Steffen

message: This article is terribly written, how do you even define 'fanaticism' here? I read about the inquisition, Constantine I and the crusades... + Osama Bin Laden thrown in as a footnote to make people think this wasn't written by a 2-bit scoundrel of a liberal humanist. - Somehow this equates to 'fanaticism' and yet never even attempting to broach the topic, what is 'religious fanaticism'? How does this answer that question?! Who is the 'Steffen' on the first line? Who is this 'Shafer' on the sixth line of the second title?
Why is there a blatant, (and ignorant), attack on Christianity reckoned here, yet a one line reckoning of Osama Bin Laden's Islam, followed by seven times that length of western humanists and infidels apologizing for the same?
If we're having some dispassioned Wikipedia examination of a history of 'religious fanaticism' then why are Buddhists who burn themselves alive in the street not mentioned? WHy not hindu self-flagellants, or Confucian and Chinese pagans who used to bury wives alive with their husband when he died, or the Chinese royal court all jump off cliffs when the emperor died, or Japanese committing hari-kari for one reason or another, or beheading American POWs for insulting the Emperor, or indian hindus who used to force men's wives onto the funeral pyre?
Where are the explanations and differing views? This is nothing more than a pathetic and snide attack on Christian faith, without vaguely understanding what that is.
Is 'religious fanaticism' merely violently attacking and assaulting everybody who doesn't believe as you do? Is that the definition?
-Eli  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.30.23 (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Is not an atack to the christian faith, this article is wtitten by a fundamentalist/creationist/apologists to deflect the "religious fanatic" , you can see it blames Chatolics and not protestants (fundamentalist/creationist/apologists). worst of all, this article is automated for undo/revert. Try adding any reference agains creationism and antiscience and this will be erased in 2 minutes. 177.236.13.17 (talk) 09:30, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  How does this article define 'Fanaticism'? 

message: Quote: "... markedly different from the peaceful message that jihad is meant to employ." This is the biggest bit of hogwash I have seen lately. Says who? Why do some people in the West insist on thinking that they understand the concept of jihad more than the jihadis themselves, who grew up with the term since childhood and know exactly what it means? The problem with jihadis is not their supposedly "distorted" interpretation of the concept of jihad, it's the Islamic concept of jihad itself. The "struggle" that is jihad is first and foremost to establish Islam as the dominant (and ideally, the only) religion on Earth, since Qur'an explicitly states that "The religion before Allah is Islam" (4:19). The Western do-gooders and disingenuous Islamic apologists try to hide behind vague Qur'anic references to "oppression" in order to deem that military jihad is only defensive. It's complete nonsense. For Muslims, "oppression" is both real oppression and the mere sovereignty of non-Muslims (especially so if they are polytheists). And that includes countries like France where numerous Muslim immigrants reside. The mere French state is "oppression" to them, which is why they don't integrate like non-Muslim immigrants do. The Qur'an contains numerous explicit calls to fight unbelievers without any mention of defense. And the historically undeniable fact is that the copious "jihads" which created the Islamic world as we know it today were completely unprovoked and aggressive in nature - against Egypt, Byzantium, Sassanian Iran, India, North African Berber kingdoms, Mediterranean islands. I am not going to change anything here, since it's futile anyway, but at least let the objective truth be stated. 81.218.33.195 (talk) 13:27, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Whitewashing of the abominable concept of jihad

message: Quote..."The start of Christian fanatic rule came with the Roman Emperor Constantine I as Catholicism. Ellens says, "When Christianity came to power in the empire of Constantine, it proceeded almost to viciously repress all non-Christians and all Christians who did not line up with official Orthodox ideology, policy, and practice". An example of Christians who didn't line up with Orthodox ideology is the Donatists, who "refused to accept repentant clergy who had formerly given way to apostasy when persecuted". Fanatic Christian activity, as Catholicism, continued into the Middle Ages with the Crusades."..unquote. Total nonsense. Whoever wrote this is trying to demonise Catholics by retrofitting history.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.58.230.77 (talk) 13:10, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: the article is automated by som fundamenalist, deflecting to chatolics is an old trick from them, try adding some reference to Fundamentalists and creationists and this will be undo in less than 2 minutes. the same if you remove "Shafer" or "Steffen" . 177.236.13.17 (talk) 09:35, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Christian fanatism

message: I've been poking around for a little while now looking for the pros and cons of religious fanaticism and was kinda surprised to find that this article, being about the same general topic, wouldn't have something already down. Obviously there would be a lot of hard points to put down though it wouldn't be impossible, especially as a lot of the good and bad things would be a pretty broad cover with a few unique to other religions.
I also noted that only Islam and Christianity have been covered, and none of the other religions (so far) I guess that could be because its far more difficult to find someone who has not got a bias towards a religion or atheism in general.
Whilst I don't have any immediate suggestions I would love to see some heavy expansion on the topic, things like the pros and cons, the different sects of religions or the different groups within a main religious body, and even a note of extremist or fanatical groups that are known historically for whatever reason. Food for thought overall but I think it would be nice to see.
--(Chaos)Jester (talk) 23:56, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: It's unclear to me what positive aspects there would be to fanatism.  There may be evolutionary reasons and it may serve some protectionist purposes.  On the other hand many examples exist of radical ideologies harming its own members (if not outsiders as well).  One could argue that some fanatic sects managed to improve human rights in some circumstances, perhaps.  The coverage is probably systemic bias: Abrahamic religions are the most known and documented in the west.  I agree that we could find sources about fanatism in other large world religions. —PaleoNeonate – 01:12, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expansion on the topic 

message: Please don't defame ruling party of India 42.105.212.245 (talk) 11:09, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please remove article