Why have tolerance?

[ManTimeForgot]

If we have tolerance towards a religion that says doing good and avoiding bad will land you a spot in heaven, with little to no evidence for this claim, then we must also have tolerance for religions that say killing yourself and others will land you a spot in heaven, with just as little evidence for their claim. If you disagree and think "their" religion is weird and not moral than your enthocentric.

To take this a step further people who fly planes into buildings because of a religiously-inspired hatred of America are actually morally exquisite and brave. What they are doing is for their God and in their culture is seen as an incredible quality, laying down their life for God. But a Christian is ethnocentric if he says it's immoral because he believes in similar rubbish. You have to climb into their skin to understand them.

There are so many logical errors with this that I hardly have any idea where to start, so I will just list them as they come to me.


1) Tolerance =/= Acceptance. I tolerate something I consider might have the possibility of being wrong but am not willing to take a stand against it because it might also be correct. I accept things I consider to be right and proper or something which is indifferent (2+2=4 has nothing to do with politics but if a politician says 2+2=4 I am not going to be swayed one way or the other). I reject things which I consider to be wrong or immoral. Blowing up other people is something I generally reject.

2) Cultural diversity only protects social mores which do not have an impact upon the cohesiveness of the society. If a behavior promotes resentment, then it is apriori a topic of morality. Once you have to consider morality, then whether or not they believe it is true and needed for their society; the rest of us need to get rid of them to avoid becoming sacrificial bait. Lousy neighbors get eliminated. Welcome to the human condition.

3) It is necessary and generally good to analyze any idea or set of ideas we are unfamiliar with because that is how humans arrive at better ideas. Comparison and synthesis of ideas is what leads to new ideas. Change is necessary in order to improve. Ergo free discourse is needed. So I tolerate ideas I don't disagree with only inasmuch as they remain within the bounds of free discourse. When you start putting some idea into practice, then it is no longer in the bounds of discourse. I can disagree with your actions while still tolerating your ideas.

Example: There are some people who believe that Communism is a good idea. Implementing a dictatorship in order to centralize monetary control is not something I agree with. Those "communists" who believe that communism is currently impractical I tolerate because they aren't actually doing anything to be judged one way or another (and as such the idea remains in the realm of Free Discourse).

4) Christianity has already had its dark age. In point of fact almost all the other world's major religions have had periods of violence and hatred associated with them. Islam is one of the few that has not had its "chance" at a thousand years of war. There isn't any extant error in learning from history. Why should Christians want a repeat of the crusades? If you learn how to behave better because of history there isn't anything wrong with declaring that action wrong.


MTF