18226 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.patrickkphillips.com%2F2007%2F12%2F04%2Fit%25e2%2580%2599s-about-tolerance-not-belief%2FIt%E2%80%99s+About+Tolerance%2C+Not+Belief2007-12-04+13%3A13%3A35Patrickhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.patrickkphillips.com%2F2007%2F12%2F04%2Fit%25e2%2580%2599s-about-tolerance-not-belief%2F »

Linda said:
Well said, Patrick. Without tolerance, there is no “religion”–there is only the ideology of religiosity which serves the wrong master: The flawed human one who would use his “God” as a weapon.
A favorite quote of mine:
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
—Pascal
# 4 December 2007 at 11:24 am

Cat. said:
Amen. Especially this part: “I’ve known many athiests and agnostics whose minds are as closed as Fort Knox.” Fortunately, I’m usually able to laugh at them (in my head) when they rail against … whatever thing they’re annoyed about ….
And, to clarify, I’ve also known a few religious (Christian) people who made me want to picket their churches. Some of them go to church with me, so that’s a little complicated.
# 4 December 2007 at 12:02 pm

Paul said:
In fairness to me, I did admit in the comments that the choice of the word “theists” was far too broad to be accurate. However, as a newsman, you will be intimately familiar with the value of an hyperbolic headline.
I must admit that I did not even remotely understand your point about the whole ‘marching in the streets’ thing. What were you trying to say with that?
The thing with tolerance is, most people who throw the word around completely misrepresent it. Tolerance is the keystone of secular humanism, and a concept that is almost completely foreign to most conservative Christians. I am entirely tolerant of your beliefs. I am entirely intolerant of people who hold those beliefs trying to impose them on everyone around them. By requesting that a book be removed from a library because one disagrees with the philosophical position it espouses, one is demonstrating an extreme level of intolerance. The reverse example is commonly thrown around by atheists. If you want to choose one book in every library that is crammed full of crime, war, deviant sexual behaviour, vengeance, hate, and intellectual poison…that book would be “The Holy Bible.” By any standards of morality upheld by the majority of Christians, that book could be considered illegally obscene, yet no atheists ever complain about its presence in our children’s school libraries. We are the tolerant ones.
# 9 December 2007 at 11:44 pm

Patrick (author) said:
I must admit that I did not even remotely understand your point about the whole ‘marching in the streets’ thing. What were you trying to say with that?
That was a reference to the British school teacher in Sudan who was sent packing because a child in her class was allowed to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.” Islamic protesters, thinking that the teacher was insulting their God, demanded her execution. I would call that an extreme reaction to a perceived slight, particularly when it was later learned that the child was naming the bear after a classmate whose name was also “Muhammad.”
In comparison, I would call that a much more “extreme” reaction than demands that a movie not be shown because it references “killing God.”
However, as a newsman, you will be intimately familiar with the value of an hyperbolic headline.
My familiarity with hyperbole has nothing to do with my being a newsman; I frankly see much more of it among “citizen journalists” masquerading as “newsmen.”
I might respectfully suggest, however, that one cannot reasonably complain about a tactic then turn around and use it himself without committing a double standard.
# 10 December 2007 at 8:29 am

Paul said:
I don’t see that I was complaining, just pointing out that what I was doing was not out of the ordinary. As for your comment about “citizen journalists” being more guilty that “real” newsmen, have you read your morning paper? I can pick up any newspaper in North America, be it my local community paper, or a National daily, and pick out a hyperbolic, misleading headline any day of the week. It is the rule rather than the exception in headline writing.
And your example of Muslims making death threats only supports my statements. The argument, “we’re OK because we’re not as bad as ‘them’,” is no more valid than Bush trying to distract attention from domestic matters by villifying North Korea or Iran.
# 12 December 2007 at 9:09 am

Patrick (author) said:
Paul, I think you’re missing my points.
I don’t see that I was complaining, just pointing out that what I was doing was not out of the ordinary.
Let’s go back to basics. For you to have made the statement to begin with, it’s logical to conclude that you must have — on some level, even a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 — a problem with hyperbole. And it would be natural for you to have a problem with it. Exaggeration generally accomplishes little other than, as you point out, getting attention. But for you to mention it, and for you to then get in that little “dig” about me being familiar with it since I’m a newsman, there’s an inherent complaint there.
To put it another way, if it honestly didn’t matter to you, it wouldn’t have occurred to you to make mention of it even in jest.
Then you do it, and attempt to justify it by saying that it is “not out of the ordinary.”
That’s fine. But if you have a problem with something and then you do the thing you have a problem with and attempt to justify it by saying it’s common, then why take issue with it in the first place?
And your example of Muslims making death threats only supports my statements. The argument, “we’re OK because we’re not as bad as ‘them’,” is no more valid than Bush trying to distract attention from domestic matters by villifying North Korea or Iran.
The only problem, Paul, is that this ISN’T my argument. Judging by the hyperbole argument, it’s really YOUR argument: hyperbole is common…every newspaper does it daily, so I’ll do it just this once but still won’t be as bad as THEY are.
I’m not saying “we’re OK,” with “we” being Christians, because we’re not demanding the execution of the filmmakers. I’m not saying we’re okay in protesting the showing of the film.
On the contrary, in fact, I say the opposite: Christians in this country have no excuse to take such action. Their freedom to practice the specific religion of their choice in their own way hinges upon the Bill of Rights, the same document that allows these filmmakers to make a movie that they disagree with. If they don’t want to see the film, they shouldn’t see it. But they shouldn’t take actions that would prevent people who WANT to see it from doing so…not if they value the freedom we’re all supposed to enjoy.
I thought I made it clear in the post, especially with the statement, “But that doesn’t really get to the meat of the problem, either,” that such an argument was not important.
What is important is the willingness to respect other people’s beliefs and how they choose to practice their beliefs, even if they differ with your own.
You may be the most open-minded atheist in the world, but I suspect you have your moments of closed-mindedness like everyone else. It’s not about whether you believe or not; it’s about how willing you are to allow others their own position without trying to demean them or demand that they conform to your standards, regardless of their feelings.
And when you offer an argument based on sweeping generalizations, such as suggesting that atheists, unlike theists, are open-minded and don’t try to stop people from listening to other points of view, some of us could easily start digging up blog after blog written by self-proclaimed atheists, who engage in what some Christians describe as a “war on Christmas” by suggesting that “Christmas” should not be mentioned in public at all. I know quite a few liberal Christians who are fond of embracing people that some churchgoers would turn their nose up at faster than you could say Hallelujah. I don’t think either side has a corner of the market on open- or closed-mindedness.
# 12 December 2007 at 11:00 pm

Leave your response!