Relgious Toleration

[Montalban]

I believe that toleration, in an absolute sense is not Christian. I note this because it seems that a number of people have accused me of being intolerant towards Islam; by way of posting facts about it. So, I thought I'd look at the general notion of toleration, from a Christian perspective.

As a Christian I believe certain things are right, and certain things are wrong. Those that would claim to tolerate all beliefs might ask themselves if they tolerate the following

suttee - the act of throwing a widow on the funeral pyre of a late husband (practiced by some Hindus, but not exclusive to them)

female genital circumcision - aka clitorotomy, the act of mutilating female sex organs (practiced by some tribes for religious reasons; often erroneously ascribed to being an Islamic practice alone)

Further, the Children of God (sometimes termed a 'cult' rather than a religion) believes in the concept of 'free love' to the degree that children should be involved in sex.

As a Christian, I believe all three of these acts are abhorrent (and thus I am 'intolerant' of them).

 

[Tawn]

Doesnt 'tolerance' have more to do with forgiving people for their differences. It doesnt have to mean you accept or agree with what they do. You can still strive to turn people away from their chosen customs without being intolerant. Intolerance, as I understand it, is when you use threats, violence, force or insults against another persons practices.
Gentle persuasion certainly displays tolerance.

 

[Montalban]

Doesnt 'tolerance' have more to do with forgiving people for their differences. It doesnt have to mean you accept or agree with what they do. You can still strive to turn people away from their chosen customs without being intolerant. Intolerance, as I understand it, is when you use threats, violence, force or insults against another persons practices.
Gentle persuasion certainly displays tolerance.

tol·er·ance P Pronunciation Key (tlr-ns)
n.
The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others.
Leeway for variation from a standard.
The permissible deviation from a specified value of a structural dimension, often expressed as a percent.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=tolerance

How does one tolerate/respect the practice of suttee?

Are you saying that the British in India were wrong for attempting to enforce their belief systems on the native population?

 

[Montalban]

Actually, to put it another way...

Can one tolerate murder?
(even if it's done for religious reasons). I note a number of people talk with disdain about the Crusades - this is intolerance, then, is it not.

 

[Fluffy]

Religious tolerance is the way in which one accepts that another person has a right to believe in what they choose to, NO MATTER HOW FAR such a belief is from one's own beliefs.

If another person truly believes that it is perfectly okay and morally right to have sex with children or murder widows then I would support their right to believe in this.

This does not mean they have the right to exercise their beliefs. They just have the right to hold them. Religious tolerance deals with the latter not the former.

 

[Tawn]

Hmz.. (very interesting discussion by the way)..
I think as Humans we are intolerant to various degrees. It is in our nature.
Perhaps Christianity is about the pursuit of tolerance. God (as Christians understand him) is the ultimate in tolerance and perhaps he does tolerate and forgive murder.
Disagreeing with something is not intolerance. So speaking distainfully of the crusades isnt intolerant.
Hmz.. although im troubled by the term 'respect'.. what exactly do you think 'respect' entails?
If you are the one chosen for ritual sacrifice is it intolerant for you to try to escape? That makes no sense. We would probably say that isnt intolerance.. but then it is hardly respecting their beliefs either.
I think we have to define 'tolerance' better.

 

[Montalban]

Religious tolerance is the way in which one accepts that another person has a right to believe in what they choose to, NO MATTER HOW FAR such a belief is from one's own beliefs.

If another person truly believes that it is perfectly okay and morally right to have sex with children or murder widows then I would support their right to believe in this.

This does not mean they have the right to exercise their beliefs. They just have the right to hold them. Religious tolerance deals with the latter not the former.

Why won't you tolerate them practicing what they believe in? Is this a form of intolerance?

 

[Montalban]

Hmz.. (very interesting discussion by the way)..

I hoped so. Thank you.

I think as Humans we are intolerant to various degrees. It is in our nature.

I agree.

Perhaps Christianity is about the pursuit of tolerance. God (as Christians understand him) is the ultimate in tolerance and perhaps he does tolerate and forgive murder.

I disagree. A classic point given me by those who suggest Jesus was a kind of new age guru is when He sees the crowd who are about to stone a prostitute. He says to them "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone". To this degree, he was suggesting we should be more 'Christian'
However, He turns to her and He says "Go, and sin no more". In other words her behaviour is not something she should be doing. He is tolerant only insofar as He doesn't brow-beat her over it. But He is firm in telling her what she is doing is wrong.

Disagreeing with something is not intolerance. So speaking disdainfully of the crusades isn't intolerant.

It is when people disagree with the nature of them; people don't support the horrors enacted in the crusades, they are appalled. They would not tolerate it.

Hmz.. although im troubled by the term 'respect'.. what exactly do you think 'respect' entails?

I can respect for instance Judaism, which even though, as far as I'm concerned, they don't have the 'right' idea of Jesus as Christ, they and I can agree to disagree.
I can respect you being an atheist. I can tolerate that you have a reason, or reasons for doing so.
However I would not respect a person who says that he/she has sex with kids. I don't actually know how you could. I would not tolerate such a person.

If you are the one chosen for ritual sacrifice is it intolerant for you to try to escape? That makes no sense. We would probably say that isn't intolerance.. but then it is hardly respecting their beliefs either. I think we have to define 'tolerance' better.

Tolerance is to put up with; to allow. It doesn't necessarily mean agreement with. Thus I tolerate Atheism, and don't go around killing people who deny Jesus Christ; and hopefully you put up with Christians and don't go around killing us (or maybe you do - I thought I saw your picture somewhere before)

But I would not put up with (tolerate) you if you said (even if it were for religious reasons), that you have sex with kids.

 

[Tawn]

Well youll be glad to know I share you particular moral objections to having sex with children... and no I havent killed any Christians (yet )

He is tolerant only insofar as He doesn't brow-beat her over it. But He is firm in telling her what she is doing is wrong.

Well thats being tolerant in my view.

However I would not respect a person who says that he/she has sex with kids. I don't actually know how you could. I would not tolerate such a person.

And how would you act differently towards such a person as opposed to a Jew?

 

[Fluffy]

Why won't you tolerate them practicing what they believe in? Is this a form of intolerance?

Hmmm well first I would say that this is definitely not a form of religious intolerance as the name of this thread implies since you are dealing with how people choose to express their beliefs and the beliefs in themselves.

This differentiation is important because otherwise I can make no distinction between the person who believes that killing is wrong, and doesn't, and the person who believes killing is right, yet still doesn't.

However, to answer your question is fairly complex but my reasoning goes along these lines:
A persons beliefs cannot interfere with another person directly. They may indirectly do this by influencing a person to interact with another person but these interactions can be limited and controlled so the beliefs themselves should be tolerated.
However, to exercise a belief of tolerance to everything, I would have to tolerate somebodies wish not to be killed just as much as another person's wish to kill them. Since the 2 beliefs are clearly contradictory, and both people wish to act on them, a choice has to be made on my part as to which I would support. The most tolerant attitude, in my opinion, would be to support whichever option kept things the same as much as possible. Through this logic I would prevent the person from being killed since this would tolerate the most things in the given scenario.

 

[Montalban]

Hmmm well first I would say that this is definitely not a form of religious intolerance as the name of this thread implies since you are dealing with how people choose to express their beliefs and the beliefs in themselves.

This differentiation is important because otherwise I can make no distinction between the person who believes that killing is wrong, and doesn't, and the person who believes killing is right, yet still doesn't.

When someone shoots a person, the police seek to know 'intent'; the mere thinking about it is weighed up as a factor. The act of thinking and believing something can also be deemed sinful (at least from a Christian perspective; which is the one I give), there are impure thoughts. So someone who incites religious hatred, but actually takes no part in it, is still guilty of religious hatred.

So regardless of whether someone posts a web-site about supporting The Children of God's ideas towards children, and someone who actually participates, both are guilty, but only in degree. I am intolerant of both the inciting and the action. You seem to think one should be tolerated if only because the physical act is not carried out.

However, to answer your question is fairly complex but my reasoning goes along these lines:
A persons beliefs cannot interfere with another person directly. They may indirectly do this by influencing a person to interact with another person but these interactions can be limited and controlled so the beliefs themselves should be tolerated.

This is a concept of 'freedom of expression' that would be great in a pure environment... and it goes along with the 'sticks and stones can break my bones', but words are just as powerful as deeds... else do you think that there's a difference between someone who incites religious hatred, and the person who follows that advice?

However, to exercise a belief of tolerance to everything, I would have to tolerate somebodies wish not to be killed just as much as another person's wish to kill them. Since the 2 beliefs are clearly contradictory, and both people wish to act on them, a choice has to be made on my part as to which I would support. The most tolerant attitude, in my opinion, would be to support whichever option kept things the same as much as possible. Through this logic I would prevent the person from being killed since this would tolerate the most things in the given scenario.

I still don't understand why you think the inciting of an act, or thinking about it should be tolerated, only that you deem them different.

 

[Cr0wley]

Sleeping with children and murder is not only intolerable, but it's illegal too. If you DO find someone doing this, wouldn't you report them to the police? There's not need to tolerate anything at all. If they do whip out the excuse that it's in their religion, the police will deal with it. By not saying anything, you too are aiding them in the murder/molestation of that person. Humans affect everything around them, even by keeping quiet.

What I see as a problem with Relgious Toleration is when I'm peacefully doing my own thing, not offending anyone at all, and someone from another religion wants to convert me. Shouldn't we all just let everyone else be?

 

[Tawn]

Sleeping with children and murder is not only intolerable, but it's illegal too. If you DO find someone doing this, wouldn't you report them to the police? There's not need to tolerate anything at all. If they do whip out the excuse that it's in their religion, the police will deal with it.

Depends what country and what era of history we are discussing.

 

[Montalban]

Sleeping with children and murder is not only intolerable, but it's illegal too. If you DO find someone doing this, wouldn't you report them to the police? There's not need to tolerate anything at all. If they do whip out the excuse that it's in their religion, the police will deal with it. By not saying anything, you too are aiding them in the murder/molestation of that person. Humans affect everything around them, even by keeping quiet.

I agree. These things are intolerable. Dressing them up as 'religious belief' does not disguise this fact.

Not that this was 'religious', but...
I got into a big argument with a neighbour once because I called the police on his tenant who was bashing a woman. My neighbour told me it was none of my business.

What I see as a problem with Relgious Toleration is when I'm peacefully doing my own thing, not offending anyone at all, and someone from another religion wants to convert me. Shouldn't we all just let everyone else be?

I won't knock on your door then. :biglaugh:

 

[Montalban]

Depends what country and what era of history we are discussing.

So morals are relative? What happens when we share the same historic time period?

On another topic I suggested that the UN goes about saying a particular religious practice might be harmful REGARDLESS of the religious norms... viz...
"Fact Sheet No.23, Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children
Traditional cultural practices reflect values and beliefs held by members of a community for periods often spanning generations. Every social grouping in the world has specific traditional cultural practices and beliefs, some of which are beneficial to all members, while others are harmful to a specific group, such as women. These harmful traditional practices include female genital mutilation (FGM); forced feeding of women; early marriage; the various taboos or practices which prevent women from controlling their own fertility; nutritional taboos and traditional birth practices; son preference and its implications for the status of the girl child; female infanticide; early pregnancy; and dowry price. Despite their harmful nature and their violation of international human rights laws, such practices persist because they are not questioned and take on an aura of morality in the eyes of those practising them."
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu6/2/fs23.htm
Fact Sheet No.23, Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children
"Child marriage robs a girl of her childhood-time necessary to develop physically, emotionally and psychologically. In fact, early marriage inflicts great emotional stress as the young woman is removed from her parents' home to that of her husband and in-laws. Her husband, who will invariably be many years her senior, will have little in common with a young teenager. It is with this strange man that she has to develop an intimate emotional and physical relationship. She is obliged to have intercourse, although physically she might not be fully developed."
(Ibid)

Do you think they've a right to do this? Should they be telling people what to do? Should they issue condemnations on people who don't share the same values?

 

[Tawn]

I am of the opinion that morals, right and wrong are subjective.. and yes, relative. They change according to different cultures and different time periods. Women and Black people havent been able to vote for a great deal of time historically speaking - yet now we consider these to be morally correct.
This relativist view does not mean (as so many wrongly assume) that I cannot condemn particular moral perspectives that differ from my own. I have my views and I believe I should be able to fight for them.. even if they might change over time and even if they are not morally absolute (supremely correct - because no moral perspective is cosmologically 'correct')

The problem is that certain differing beliefs cannot exist together within a society without some form of conflict. Laws are passed to try to resolve differences by making one set of beliefs 'socially correct'. The beliefs that are determined as such are usually chosen based on what creates social conhesion. Stealing and murder are usually disallowed because they cause anarchy and would break down society if they were allowed.

of course this is going off track.. we were discussing tolerance...

I dont know what it is to be a Christian. In my view it is a set of standards created by some people at some time in history which most likely have undergone gradual change over time. In my view religion has often been used to support and validate the set of beliefs chosen to be 'socially correct' and as justification for setting down these socially correct beliefs as law.
Tolerance itself is also a belief custom. Tolerance has real social value, because it basically tells people not to use excessive means of persuasion and force to deal with people with slighly different beliefs to your own - it creates social cohesion because it encourages everyone to get along together. Of course those beliefs that wildly differ and are against your laws are acting outside what is socially correct. Tolerance is no longer useful because being tolerant of such wildly differing beliefs undermines your social system.

 

[Fluffy]

Montalban,

I think you may have introduced a third factor into our discussion based on a misunderstanding possibly because I did not make myself clear in my previous post which was mostly a confuddled mess . So to clear all of that up I will try and first reiterate what I said and then show why i think this is different from how you have interpreted it.

In a real (i.e. not a hypothetical) circumstance, there is no general consensus on what is right or wrong. Obviously there will be overlaps between belief systems, such as "An it harm none, do what ye will" and "Thou shalt not kill", but generally these will not be all encompassing especially where morality is concerned. This is not saying that there is no objective morality, just that there is not any authority which one can use to enforce such a morality in a real life society and be accepted by all.

If we were to pick an issue at random, say murder, I can formulate a number of situations which can arise from it. The first is the belief that murder is right. The second would be inciting others to go out and murder others. The third would be going out and murdering others, yourself.

What I propose is a system of slack, wherein A is tolerated to the furthest possible extent no matter what A happens to be. In a hypothetical world where the only belief was A and so no other beliefs existed to contradict A, this system would work perfectly. However, the system talks of equal tolerance for ALL beliefs. So if I introduced a second belief, B, into the system then this would be fine also, as long as A and B are not contradictory.

Unfortunately, such a system does not work if A is such that it cannot be carried out without overriding B. Therefore another condition needs to be worked into the system which deals with these kinds of situations, whilst limiting the original aim of the system, to give equal tolerance to all beliefs, by as little as possible. So now the problem comes down to working out what this condition should be.

A traditional approach is to say that whichever belief is more illogical should be discounted where it conflicts with another belief. Yet this does not help if the initial premises are not agreed upon by the people making the judgement. An example of this might be where A is the belief that murder is right whilst B is the belief that murder is wrong. In such a scenario, there are no premises shared between either party and so a logical judgement cannot be taken because the beliefs are not based on logic.

Another approach is to go with the moral majority. So if A was shared by 99% of a population whilst B was shared by 1% then A would be the accepted morality for that society and A would override B in all cases where the 2 came into conflict. Yet to accept this condition would mean that when you moved into a society where the percentages were reversed, you would have to accept the exact reverse meaning that morality would be meaningless.

My reasoning suggests that if I believe in A then I should be allowed to do anything related to this belief as long as it does not conflict with B. So if I believe murder is right then I can do anything related to this belief, including exercising the right to believe it, as long as it does not lead to someone who believes that they do not want to be murdered, being murdered. This would mean that I would be allowed to hold this belief, and explain to others why I believe as such. I would be able to tell others that murder is right, but I would not be able to tell others to commit murder to someone who held B. If others are convinced by my reasoning and then go on to murder, then that is their fault, not mine, since I am clearly stating that I do not believe that I have a right to exert my beliefs over anothers.

Now this way of thinking is obviously going to be biased towards my way of thinking because I came up with it after having a fairly well established set of moral beliefs. But what it manages to do is to allow anyone to have any kind of belief, no matter how different it is from mine, and express it as long as it does not conflict with anyone elses beliefs.

When I state this view, people normally come back to me saying "Well if you saw a murder happening before your eyes, would this mean you would not step in and prevent such an atrocity?". My answer is yes I would, and I would still be within the bounds of the system I have explained above because I am NOT protecting one set of beliefs over another, I am merely preventing one set of beliefs from overcoming and quashing another.

So to sum up, I support the right to hold ANY belief and I support the right to express ANY belief AS LONG AS the expression does not take a form in which it prevents others from expressing the opposite or conflicting belief.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I believe that toleration, in an absolute sense is not Christian.

More importantly, it's not ethical.

tol·er·ance P Pronunciation Key (tlr-ns)
n The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others.

That is a terribly flawed definition. Tolerance is a social contract - for example

Tolerance is a social, cultural and religious term applied to the collective and individual practice of not persecuting those who may believe, behave or act in ways of which one may not approve. Authoritarian systems practice the opposite of tolerance, intolerance. Tolerance is seen as a more widely acceptable term than "acceptance" and particularly "respect," where the application to controversial parties is concerned. Tolerance implies both the ability to punish and the conscious decision [en.wikipedia.org]​

Absolte tolerance is absolute - and absolutely dangerous - nonsense.

A classic point given me by those who suggest Jesus was a kind of new age guru is when He sees the crowd who are about to stone a prostitute. He says to them "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone". To this degree, he was suggesting we should be more 'Christian'
However, He turns to her and He says "Go, and sin no more". In other words her behaviour is not something she should be doing. He is tolerant only insofar as He doesn't brow-beat her over it. But He is firm in telling her what she is doing is wrong.

It is a lovely little story no matter how inauthentic, but I have no problem tolerating the average Christian's ignorance of issues surrounding the biblical text.

 

[Montalban]

Montalban,
So to sum up, I support the right to hold ANY belief and I support the right to express ANY belief AS LONG AS the expression does not take a form in which it prevents others from expressing the opposite or conflicting belief.

Cool, then to sum up you don't believe in toleration as an absolute, because you perceive circumstances where it won't do.

Does this mean we agree on something, if not what precise situations reflect your beliefs on impinging on other's rights, etc.

Using a 'real' situation, what right has the UN to make claims about religiously held views on female circumsicion, if all the parties (members of a particular tribe) accept it, and in fact encouarge it?

 

[Fluffy]

Cool, then to sum up you don't believe in toleration as an absolute, because you perceive circumstances where it won't do.

I suppose so but the circumstances I am suggesting are ones where it is physically and logically impossible to exercise an absolute tolerance, just the closest thing to it. To say that tolerance, in the absolute sense, is not Christian, is therefore understating the significance of such a point since Christians can exercise exactly the same level of tolerance as everyone else whilst still being denied the absolute tolerance that is denied to everyone else through its impossibility.

So yes I think you have convinced me that absolute tolerance is impossible but for anybody, not just Christians.