Schimmel opens with a glimpse into his own struggles and journeys, from his traditional Orthodox beginnings until his midtwenties when he began to acknowledge the “unreasonable” aspects of his beliefs and the worldview that was central to his life, as the backdrop for this book. His explicit goal is to give intellectual and “moral” support to those coming from similar fundamentalist backgrounds who are seeking to make their break from that belief system and world. His larger, also explicit purpose is that he hopes to make the case sufficiently well enough to persuade people — Jewish, Christian, or Muslim who are not struggling or dissatisfied with their beliefs — of the complete and utter error and foolishness of their ways and beliefs, and to instead ascribe to a rational approach grounded in modern current empirical knowledge and “truths.” He refers to his own mantra throughout the book as dealing with the issue of why some otherwise smart people sometimes think and believe stupid things.
Schimmel’s central thesis is that any Godcentric religious belief system that is predicated on a revelation story and a core scriptural inerrancy and infallibility is by definition not subject to empirical demonstration of its validity, and therefore should be seen as errant thinking by intelligent, rational people. Through multiple textual examples in the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Koran and their respective traditional fundamentalist explicators, he shows that numerous internal consistencies, conflicts, and discrepancies exist, which seem to be reasonable, defensible, or explainable in ways that make most sense only to believers of said belief systems. Schimmel also suggests that fundamentalist religionists might be “better off ” if they stopped trying to substantiate and/or defend their beliefs through reason and/or empirical demonstrations of the validity of these beliefs. Finally, he offers a fairly good overview of basic psychological concepts that explain why and how people hold on to religious beliefs that are unsubstantiated, unverifiable, and/or irrational. While he struggles to maintain a somewhat respectful tone, he often slips into what is far too deprecatory a voice.
Schimmel demonstrates his own rigidity and orthodoxy, putting rationalism, democracy, and “Western values” on a pedestal of questionable height and shaky foundation. More troubling is his tenacious need to demonstrate the errors of their ways to said fundamentalists lest they continue to be the source of intellectual dishonesty for themselves, harm their children, as well as be the source of many problems in the world, big and small. It is disingenuous at best for Schimmel to acknowledge that non-fundamentalists also cause harm in the world but since they aren’t the focus of this book he doesn’t need to address that perspective. While his focus on Orthodox Jewish scriptural fundamentalism is dominant, his particularly sharp attacks on Muslim scriptural fundamentalism become entangled in comments that he relates to Islamic militancy, 9/11, and concerns about security, all of which seem to belie simple unconscious prejudice. And the notion that a rationalist approach to demonstrating the foolishness of belief in fundamentalist Islam to Muslims can serve as a quasi political strategy in confronting intra- Islamic support for terrorist acts against the West is ludicrous at best.
