[QUOTE=john-boy]Don't take this into religion vs politics being the biggest killer mozart, that is another issue (and probably one where I can agree with you).
"men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction".
You seem to think that tolerance is a worthwhile human condition. I think that the human condition is precisely the opposite. There are many types of behaviour and beliefs that we consider not worthy of respect or tolerance.[/QUOTE]
"Worthwhile" is an understatement. I think it is an absolutely necessary to the human condition.
I certainly think there are beliefs that are not worthy of tolerance. That would include any belief that is strictly intolerant of me or my values, personally speaking, or the non-aggressive value systems of other individuals. This doesn't mean mere disapproval on their parts, as that is something that others have a full right to do. I am speaking strictly of physical or institutionalized violence. Only a few months ago on this very forum, I lambasted fundamentalist Islam for this very kind of cultural poison. But it would be incredibly stupid of me not to point out that I have many sincere and devout Moslem friends who oppose legislating their religion almost as much as I do. I tolerate them, not just because I have to (and in this case, I do indeed have to), but because I want to.
I am saying that there are distinctions, valid distinctions in fact, to be drawn in these crowds, the same way there are valid distinctions to be drawn from many rational or Objectivist atheists, and those who take a more authoritarian route. In most of these cases, the one BIG distinction is tolerance -- the ability for them to hold and promote those views without attempting to legislate them or force others to agree.
The opposite of this point-of-view is the tendency to generalize. I remember years ago when I was in West Virginia hearing that stupid wind-bag racist minister they have up there say that one of the things that we have lost as a people is our ability to generalize. This was his excuse for generalizing that all Jews were bad because some of them might have bad practices in the world of banking and money (which I am not convinced they do). If I could find that kind of generalization, and for that matter over-generalized justification for generalization, to be repugnant, would you expect any less when it is applied here on this forum?
I've known enough Christians who were far more tolerant than the average liberal pretends to be, and show far more human understanding than the average skeptical rationalist who bashes everything he doesn't personally believe in. For that, those individual Christians earn my respect, and I refuse to group them conceptually with Christian individuals who do the opposite. I've also known some Christians who tirelessly fight to legislate their own morality onto the rest of us by a point of a gun, and those people meet not only intolerance from me personally, but my ire.
That's pretty much where I HAVE to draw the line. I can't draw the line on religion alone, because quite frankly, there are too many atheists with socialist backgrounds who are just as fervent in legislating us into a box as their conservative Christian counterparts. It is because of the exceptions, the many many exceptions to this condition, that tolerance is absolutely essential.
[QUOTE=john-boy]Religion falls into that category for me. And I'm sure there are certain religions that are intolerable to almost anybody, and some to almost everybody. I assume you are just happy with the nice fluffy ones (from your perspective of course).[/QUOTE]
I think there is a nice big fluffy difference between intolerance and disapproval. You may disapprove of Christianity all you like. I disapprove of any form of mysticism. But if your hope is to be able to generalize that all Christians are evil and themselves intolerant simply because they have Christian beliefs, then you are FAILING to make a distinction that is very much present in the reality we live in. Doing so is a denial of the reality of the situation, and a flimsy one at that.
[QUOTE=john-boy]One day mankind might be able to leave all this nonsense behind and move forward. Not until people die out though. When I was a child I believed in fairy tales too. Mankind is very old. Organised religion is very young and already killing itself. I live in hope.[/QUOTE]
Then I await not only the legislating Christians to die out, but the atheistic socialists and communists as well, who have done at least as much harm to humanity and in a much shorter time period. I don't care if that group is largely Christian or largely athiest. They can even be largely Moslem. So long as they count human rights first, and recognize that their beliefs cannot be legislated and their personal morality cannot be forced on us by the point of a gun, then I wouldn't care if they were Branch Davidians.
I guess for me human rights are NEVER a fairy tale. They are the center-point, and the only part of morality that can ever be truly enforced. They can be violated, but never really taken away. I look forward to the time when violating them either on a personal level or institutionally (through Government) is the one thing that is never tolerated.
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