Still Passionate and Confused

Fundamentalist dogma is indeed all those things you said. I still do not believe that it makes the people who believe in it stupid.

I will go further (and the rest of this is addressed at the thread in general, not at you or howeird specifically). If you once get past the vocal ones who loudly parrot the dogma because it makes them feel important or secure or gets them on teevee or for whatever reason, I think you would find that the rank-and-file membership of many if not most fundamentalist groups, as of any other religion, includes a number of people who routinely question the dogmas, if only to themselves. They may not speak out about it, and again there are many possible perfectly logical reasons why they might not feel able to. They may speak out about it and simply not be heard or listened to. They may leave the group (at which point they presumably miraculously recover their intellects). But I believe they exist. And saying of any group of which this may be found true that "well, they're not fundamentalists" smacks of the old rhyme about science fiction:

"'SF's no good!' they bellow till we're deaf.
'But this looks good.' 'Well, then, it's not SF.'"

I have no proof for these suppositions...but I *will* not accept that it is okay to pigeonhole and dismiss an entire group of total strangers as stupid on the basis that one does not agree with their beliefs. Never have, never will. It's not only smug and arrogant, it's rotten tactics.