Here is where I will show you that believing in one God is no more intrinsically intolerant than believing in many Gods. Tolerance is "showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with." Allowing the existence of something is not the same as sharing the same belief. A Christian man may allow the existence of a Hindi without sharing his beliefs. Intolerance would be the Christian imposing his religious will upon the Hindi.
Why would a christian do this? Of course the reason will be that he is right and the other person is wrong. From this frame of mind he is in all means right by imposing his will because it is gods will. At least, that is what he believes.
A monotheist may accept the existence of a person of hindu belief. If he is a real monotheist then he also believes this Hindu is utterly wrong. And if he believes the bible is the world of god he also believes it is gods will to kill him. There is no reason to doubt this since is there is only one god and only one truth. There is only one right thing to do.
Some monotheists will force things upon others because they can only conclude that it would be in our interest as well. Surely if I go to hell if I am an unbeliever someone else trying to safe me from hell by imposing his doctrine on me is justified. If only he was right. But that is a matter of faith.
But again, this shows my original point of how there are not intolerant ideas, but intolerant people.
Again, I am not talking about people. You seem to justify ignoring this by calling it 'semantics'. It is not. Surely there are intolerant ideas and ideas that champion intolerance.
Nowhere in Christian scripture does it say "kill those who do not adhere to Christianity." (Christianity itself did not exist until the 4th century AD, during the fall of the Byzantine Empire.)
Uuh... The only way I can interpret this is that there are no christian scriptures. The bible is older than 4th cencury AD. So then we are left with pontifical statements and the like.
As for the bible, some parts of the bible have killing unbelievers as the main theme.
A tolerant Christian allows the existence of other ideas, an intolerant Christian will impose his religious will.
This is silly. No one, at least not many people, would support the existence of incorrect ideas.
I clearly delineated your circular reasoning in my previous post. You spun your opinion in every which way to avoid invective. You said that monotheism is intolerant, and that if one is monotheistic AND tolerant, he is a "weak believer," and that monotheism may be applied in a tolerant mannner, and that there may be monotheists who are tolerant. What does all of this verbiage even mean?
It is rather simple. The old testament is supposed to be the word of god and because of that it is the basis for the three Abrahamic religions. The only way to be a tolerant monotheist is when you don't really believe in the old testament.
Liberal monotheists interpret the scripture selectively. They have a moral compass like I have and then they find and interpret the scripture to match it. Not the other way around. These people are just not true to the scripture itself. They aren't purists. Fundamentalists believers betray reason. But moderates betray reason and faith equally. How to know which part of the bible to understand literally and which not. Surely people do this. But on what basis do they select? Surely they must already have a morality and that means the bible is totally irrelevant. This is how one can be tolerant and this is just weak faith, bending faith, applying and selecting monotheism in a tolerant manner. I don't see how this is circular reasoning at all. You claim you clearly 'delineated' this but you have not. At least not to me.
I mean, lets take one basic example. Adam. The bible claims he existed. But most modern christians accept this story as symbolic. But people do not seem to realise the implications of that. The core of Christianity is God reincarnating himself as Jesus, having himself tortured and then executed. Why. To redeem the original sin, the sin caused by Adam and Eve. So if the story of Adam and Eve is symbolic then how does that work? If Adam didn't exist then the original sin also doesn't exist. And that means Jesus died for nothing. Isn't that strange?
The only way to be a tolerant believer is to bend your belief, to make consessions with reason.
You are either accusing the doctrines of intolerance, or the people, or both.
I am accusing the doctrine of intolerance and the people of lack of reason and thinking.
If the doctrines are intrinsically intolerant (as you purport and as I refuted), then believers of doctrine who follow an intolerant belief are also intolerant. Don't you think this is a bit of a stretch?
I already admitted this. I don't really understand how it is done. To me it is 'double think' How can one claim to live based on christianity, which is based on the bible, which is filled with intolerance while actually being tolerant. Yes is a bit of a stretch. But I am not in a position to explain it. What I am doing is observing this, well actually other people have pointed me in this direction, and I question it. This is also a reason why I think moderate religious people need to be really smart.
As for the refutation, really I have not seen it. You claim I am guilty of circular reasoning but instead of explaining why you think this is you claim you already 'delineated' it. Maybe you did but you failed. Now it may be my lack of intelligence or unwillingness to undestand your previous argument but that is no justification to abandon making arguments.
If you're going to use your own knowledge as a reference instead of an expert's, then you must be circumspect about it. Are you aware that NOWHERE in Jewish scripture does it endorse evangelism and slaying of infidels?
Uuh, I am just amazed by this statement. I almost get the urge to quote all those examples of the bible because I am so curious how you are going to make an argument claiming that it has nothing to do with 'slaying infidels' but I am very skeptic. So before you do this please assure me I will not be dissapointed. Even if you are utterly wrong I would be interested in how you are going to attempt this. And if you are right it will be even more amazing.
Are you aware that Muslim scripture (Qu'ran) DOES endorse evangelism and slaying of infidels? Are you aware that these are both monotheistic religions, yet they deviate enormously in belief, despite sharing many of the same stories from the Old Testament? Ironic, isn't it?
So what is this big deviation in belief? Or rather deviation in dogma?
Finally, you claim that religion is a "virus" of the mind. Let us put aside political-correctness and examine this principle. If it is a "virus" of the mind, and it's followers are "infected" with this "virus," does this not make you intolerant?
Well, that is a different discussion. A 'virus of the mind' would not naturally make one intolerant. It is only an idea, or meme, that goes from mind to mind like a virus does. What the content of this idea is is irrelevant. It could just as well be tolerant. I guess one problem will be that a virus infecting someone forces something upon the victim. So the virus itself is not very tolerant in regard to the mind it infects.
Does this not make you a victim of your own crime? Saying that religion is, or is analogous to, a "virus," is perhaps the most intolerant perspective I have read regarding religion.
Of course my views of religion are intolerant. But my intolerance is not based on faith. It is justified by reason. And it can be broken. I am willing to argue and change my mind. I was not taught by my parents to be intolerant because they told me to be. I have to be intolerant towards religion because I have reasoned it to be unethical.
I am not a religious person myself, but I have a fairly good understanding of my own book (Old Testament) and I resent your accusations. I think people themselves are the main manifestation of intolerance, not the doctrines to which they subscribe. People kill people in the name of religion, and the worst atrocities are committed in the name of God (Armenian Genocide, Darfur Genocide, Crusades, Holocaust and Eugenics movements, Islamic Jihad). These acts are not commands of God. They are perverse interpretations of God's will used for self-interest.
I disagree. If you read the scriptures and you believe it is the word of god then it is very reasonable to start killing. I also don't believe it is all self-interest. Many of these people committing acts of 'evi' believe themselves that they are doing something good. Like I said before. If I believe I can save people from going to hell by killing people then this will be the rational and compassionate thing to do. Hell is not a pleasent place.
They give religion a bad name. But let us examine these acts for what they are: atrocities committed by intolerant people. Nowhere in any religious scripture I have come to know does it endorse genocide and macabre sacrilege.
You claim you know the scripture. But then how can you say the old testament is not filled with genocide? Because it is.
The closest example I have seen is the Qu'ran, because Mohammed did believe in slaying infidels and did so himself. Other than that, I think your opinions and ideas about religion as a virus epitomize the vices of intolerance itself.
Do you think it is justified to determine the belief of a child. This is what happens. Religion passes from generation through generation. Now because of reason some people are able to shake it off but many people are not. They have been taught to be religious or rather they have been brainwashed or infected and they cannot get rid of it.
Religion is not something you reach through examining evidence. It is a major meme. Because children depend on their parents they need to believe and accept anything their parents say without questioning them. Because of this children will be infected by religion. The concept of the meme exists and religion is an example of it. Ideas and information just spread as a epidemic through a population.
As for a difference between monotheist and polytheism. Let's inspect the religion of the greeks and romans. Any teacher teaching teenagers at a gymnasium or something similar that first introduces the concept of polytheism to western people alread grounded in monotheism will be the nature of these gods. The first thing that is strikingly different is that the greek gods are as flawed as any human. They may be divine but they aren't superiour to us in terms of morals. They are jealous, they have tempers, they make mistakes, they gety angry, they are cruel at one point and compassionate at another, the quarrel and fight among themselves. They are just as human as any one of us.
These gods actually learn us something. They learn us that even the gods can't be perfect. It learns us that live is a struggle to be right. A monotheist just has to have faith and everything will turn out right. This world is just an illusion or a test. You belief and thus accomplish it and get rewarded by eternal bliss.
Of course it can still go very wrong. But this is in the details. If people think one of these gods can drive the sun up and down the sky by using the blood of those that are sacrificed in its name then this can still cause a lot of victims. But there is a lot more room for reason since these people don't believe this god personifies right, truth, love and justice. Of course traditions as always will be hard to break. But there is no reason why they can't start believing this god of the sun tricked them into sacrificing. This god will not nessesary be a virtuous god. It will just be a very powerful human. This will be unthinkable in monotheism. No matter how cruel the god of the old testament, as long as she is omniscient and omnipotent it would be absurd to question her. Like Pianistimo says; only god knows what is truely good and evil. We just have to surrender to god.
Also, a polythesist believes in many gods. This means they will also believe that gods of other people exist eventhough they are not aware of these gods. They have no reason to claim that these people are wrong. And this is what you see in history. Polytheism is a lot more flexible. While monotheism is still the same today as it was 4000 years ago. It is just that people have stopped believing in it as absolutely as it seems to demand. People have started to specifically select and ignore parts of the bible in ways they prefer.
As for the old testament and other religious texts. They may all be as worthless in terms of understanding how nature works. But if you look at the stories of the greeks, hindu's, Sumerians or any other polytheistic religion in general they will have a higer quality from a literature perspective.
Like I have pointed out before the poem of Giglamesh is a very strong piece of proze while most of the stories of the old testament is utter ugly rubbish. Granted, the new testament is much better. But then it goes all wrong when Jesus has to be tortured to death for a very strange reason. If you present, for example, an asian with the bible more often than not they will be sincerely shocked. The god of the old testament is probably the most unpleasant character in all of literature.