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

chris alden wrote:
> AE wrote:
> > 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.

I don't judge your ideology. You might be right or wrong - I couldn't tell.

What I'm claiming is that you are not tolerant - and that you can't be
due to your ideology.

I think it is wrong to claim Christians would be tolerant and not
knowing whether Christian believes are right or wrong I think their
believes are not doing much good in _this_ world: A world as full of
Wiccans as our present one is full of Christians would be more peaceful
and would give people more freedom.

This might not matter in case Christians are right so it's not up to me
to say their behaviour would be wrong.

> > 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.

When did I claim your believes would be inferior to mines?

> 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.

I'm not saying they are good or bad: I'm saying exclusive truth claims
are incompatible with tolerance.

> > 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.

Fine - so I won't mention the library of Alexandria either ;-)

> > 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?

Am I claiming to be tolerant?

But to be true: I don't know whether I'm closer to truth than a
Christian or Moslem or Hindu or Buddhist.

I think this lack of knowledge allows me to accept them as equal to me.

> 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?