Re: Is religion antithetical to democracy [formerly: Are Islam and Democracy Incompatible?]

AE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> chris alden wrote:
> > AE wrote:
> >>Christian tolerance always meant that everybody was allowed to become 
> >>Christian, not that other religions ever would have been tolerated.
> > 
> > Define tolerance. 
> 
> The base of tolerance is to believe the other person is equal to oneself.
The other person, or the other person's ideology?  Certainly you're
not accepting my ideology as equal to your own, or as correct in the
long run.  Are you being intolerant?  Human tolerance allows for the
person being tolerated to be wrong, while still loving him.

> The mere fact that Christians believe there is only one god and all 
> other ones are false means it is impossible to truely tolerate other 
> believes.
You're not "tolerating" my belief, by your own definition.  You are
making an exclusive truth claim that all exclusive truth claims are
bad, but that the ultimate goal of tolerance is to accept all truth
claims as equal, even if they are exclusive.

> Others are tolerated while known to be on a wrong way and any true 
> Christian would have to try to evangelize them to protect them from 
> perdition.
So it's intolerant to introduce an idea to a person who may or may not
accept it as true? Don't cite examples of the Catholic church ramming
religion down the throats of Native Americans, or cite the Spanish
inquisition.  Those are examples of religious hegemony, and are not
compatable with Christendom.

> These two facts - monotheism and the order to evengelize - make it 
> impossible accept other religions as equal.
Are you accepting my beliefs to be equal to your own?  Suppose someone
says that all Gods are equal, but also chides someone for making a
relative truth claim regarding one God.  Isn't that person a
hypocrite, since they just declared that all Gods and religions were
equal?