Miles Kington: Back to basics: the meaning of fundamentalism

Time for another visit to the United Deities, that ecumenical gathering of gods past and present, to see what they are thinking about us up in Heaven. Here are some of the minutes from their current session...

1. The chairgod called the meeting to order and asked Thor to put down his hammer. He said that the first item on the agenda was a request from an unnamed Japanese god to clarify the meaning of fundamentalism.

2. The chairgod said that, if words had any meaning at all, fundamentalism meant getting back to the basics. Humanity seemed to think all beliefs were pure and good in their early days, and got choked up with clutter as time went on, and that now and then it was good to clear away the undergrowth and get back to the original patterns.

3. This often took the form of getting back to the original holy writings of a religion.

4. The Catholic God said if this was applied to any other branch of human study, there would be uproar. Did scientists ever go back to the original writings of Isaac Newton for enlightenment?

5. Why was everything old in religion thought to be better than everything new?

6. The Jewish God said this was not, in fact, so. The Christians thought the New Testament was better than the Old Testament. In his opinion, they were wrong, but that was what they thought.

7. As a matter of interest, said the chairgod, what did the Jews think of the New Testament?

8. They didn't think about it at all, said the Jewish God. It was irrelevant to them. It was like an unnecessary sequel to Gone With the Wind. The Old Testament was good enough for them.

9. And the Jews didn't even call it the Old Testament. They called it the Torah. And it was so hard to understand they had another book, the Talmud, which Jews said explained the Torah to them.

10. Well, it was a bit the same with Islam, said Allah. The Koran was the holy book, but it was too hard to get into for most Muslims, so there was a whole host of commentaries on the Koran which people consulted instead.

11. Zeus said he could not understand this fixation with holy books. He said that one of the great things about the Greek religion had been that there were no sacred writings at all. There were lots of great stories which people told each other, but none of this stifling mountain of scholarship and critical footnotes.

12. The Jewish God said that Zeus should not knock holy books till he had tried them, and that if there had been holy Greek books maybe people would still believe in the Greek Gods.

13. Zeus said maybe, but at least it meant there weren't people charging round slaughtering each other in the name of ancient Greek fundamentalism. You could publish a cartoon of Zeus doing the most awful things, and nobody would burn down the Greek embassy anywhere.

14. The chairgod asked if Zeus was saying that the only good religion was a dead religion. That seemed a bit defeatist.

15. Zeus said that maybe monotheism was to blame. If you only had Jesus as a figurehead, or the prophet Mohamed, or Jehovah, and you had therefore put all your eggs in one basket, you would naturally get upset if people attacked your figurehead. But if you had a spread portfolio of gods, as the Greeks had, and as Hinduism still had, it would be harder to upset anyone by attacking one out of many gods.

16. He could not imagine a cartoon of Ganesh leading to riots in India.

17. The Jewish God said, with respect, an elephant-headed god looked a bit like a cartoon already.

18. Ganesh said he resented that, but that he forgave him.

19. The Jewish God said he was welcome.

20. The chairgod asked the Japanese god if he was any closer to understanding fundamentalism.

21. The Japanese god said he was not, and that listening to the discussion he had lost the will to find out.

22. The chairgod said they should move to the next item - a proposal to throw a party for Gaia, the Greek earth goddess.

More of this as and when ...