The Dunning-Kruger Effect and the Key Trait of Cultic Fundamentalism

Just to be clear, I am not using "Fundamentalism" to refer to orthodox Christianity that holds to the fundamentals of the faith. I'm using it to describe an ironic viewpoint where the individual or individuals involved claim to be influenced by the Bible alone in their theology while being heavily steeped in traditions that undermine and replace what the Bible teaches in context.

These people tend to proudly proclaim that they do not, nor need to, study church history, philosophy, historical theology, etc. They just read the Bible for what it says. They then go on and on to philosophize, give endless analogies rooted in their experience to explain their doctrines, and then throw in some verses out of context to support all of their man-made traditions and philosophies that they say they don't have.

This view seems to create a sharp disdain for the educated scholars and theologians that would contradict its adherents.

However, what I want to say is that, even though they claim that it is the educated elite who are arrogant for contradicting their positions, this displays a type of narcissism identified as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a phenomenon where the individual thinks he is much smarter, more in tune, and right in his conclusions than others are without any external evidence that he actually is; but because he is so confident that he is right, and so confident that everyone even more educated than he is has it wrong, he can never be corrected. In other words, he may be mistaken and highly uneducated in everything that he says, but because he thinks so highly of his ability to know what is true and right, he cannot see how wrong he is, even when told by numerous educated people who know more than he does, and even when shown the facts for himself.

This happens quite a lot in Fundamentalist circles. There is a view that education in things like philosophy, historical theology, linguistics, church history are worldly, man-made subjects to study and just confuse people from what the fundamentalist thinks is the obvious biblical truth that he himself has come up with by his simple reading of the text. When told that he, in fact, is not coming to Scripture with a blank slate, but rather assuming all sorts of historical and philosophical traditions that he now cannot analyze because he does not believe he has them or a need to study these things, he simply dismisses it as error.

What this means is that he will be doomed always to think false things that come from man-made philosophies and traditions and think that they are just his straightforward reading of the Bible without any ability to think otherwise.

This, of course, means that he is trapped in the cult of his own arrogant ignorance. If corrected by a more educated scholar, he will chalk it up to that scholar being deceived. If he is shown the biblical data, he will ignore or twist it out of context until it confirms his bias.

In essence, this sort of Fundamentalism is simply dangerous, and that causes us to attempt to identify its key trait, which I believe to be an inability of its members to be humble/teachable. As I have always said, many people believe heresy, but none are heretics but those who refuse to be corrected from it. In that regard, even if this type of person were to affirm the fundamentals, I would still consider him a heretic. This is the true nature, therefore, of cultic Fundamentalism.