About Rationally Speaking


Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Religious tolerance: an oxymoron?

Is religious tolerance an oxymoron? To those of us outside of God’s Fantasy World it would certainly seem that way, but philosopher Matthew Lopresti asks the question seriously, albeit within a pretty funny framework. Lopresti’s essay, “The challenge of religious diversity in ‘This Week in God’” is part of a recent collection of writings on the philosophy of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. The essay’s title refers to one of the irregular segments of the show, which a-periodically asks what God (or, rather, his followers) has been up to of late.

Lopresti nicely summarizes the options available to religious people who wish to be tolerant of other religious traditions (tolerance toward atheism, of course, is a different matter...). First, one can decide not to be tolerant at all, and embrace exclusivism. This is the familiar position of many in the Middle East and in the American Bible Belt: there is only one God, and it’s mine. If you don’t believe in It, no matter how pious and well intentioned, you’re going to Hell (or another horrible place of my choice). Clearly, there are few options to “accommodate” other traditions if one is an exclusivist: usually believers in other gods are (often forcibly) converted, or exterminated. Hence the religious wars in Europe for most of the Middle Ages up to the Enlightenment, and the chronic disaster that is Palestine.

The second alternative, according to Lopresti, is inclusivism. Here the idea is that “we all believe in the same God,” sort of. This, as it should be immediately obvious, is plainly not true. Despite heroic fits of mental gymnastics by progressive religionists, there is just no sensible way in which the God of the Old Testament is the same thing as the Spaghetti Monster, or, for that matter, the same thing as the God of the New Testament. I’m reminded of a moment in Bertrand Russell’s autobiography, which I read when I was a teenager and which obviously made a lasting impression on me. Russell was arrested by the British government for demonstrating against Britain’s entrance in War World I. When he was brought to jail he was asked the customary questions by the local record keeper, including “What religion are you?” When Russell responded that he was agnostic, the guard pondered the answer for a bit, obviously confused, then shrugged, wrote something down and commented along the lines of “Oh, what the hell, we all believe in the same God.” No, not really.

The final option presented by Lopresti is pluralism: the idea is that different religious traditions are in fact distinct (a la exclusivism, contra inclusivism), but they also have enough shared values and common objectives to foster reciprocal collaboration. Lopresti’s example of shared goals isn’t exactly flattering, though: “Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the holy city of Jerusalem banded together in a show of solidarity -- not for peace, social justice, or some other wacky idea, but against a gay-pride parade.” In other words, religious people can set aside their internal disputes when they rally behind the common banner of religious intolerance!

More seriously, pluralism faces a variety of obstacles, beginning with the obvious one: what are we to make of the suggestion that various religious traditions are different ways to get at the same truth, if one rejects the whole idea that there can be such thing as a religious truth to begin with? Indeed, what would such “truth” look like, and how would we know it? It is useless to invoke religion as a guide to morality, first because one can obviously be moral without being religious, and second because religious “morality” has been responsible for countless atrocities throughout human history. It won’t do either to go minimalist and claim that what all religions have in common is the “truth” of the existence of God, because the various notions of “god” proposed by different religions are often incompatible, and -- more importantly -- because god truly is just make believe.

It’s hard to be tolerant when one is religious.

28 comments:

  1. M,
    I am not at all confused by the inclusive /exclusive stuff and you do not need to be either. The word(s) 'religious tolerance' were coined not by well intentioned people in the first place. it was clearly invented as an pejorative to broad brush anyone who has a belief.
    (and particularly any belief that may crimp someone elses style)

    Without beliefs the world JUST does not go around. So you say, well don't have such extreme beliefs and don't hold them quite so strongly then. Well, to that I say, whenever there are human rights abuses there are hopefully people who are convinced that something ought to be done. They, more than anyone, MUST be extreme, clear and strong about what they are about to combat. Thinking it might be okay to take a passive view of obvious evil in the world is an incredibly bad idea.

    cal

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  2. I think that it is actually possible to be fairly tolerant while profoundly religious - I know quite a few people who are both, strange as it might seem. Usually, it seems to me that they achieve this by being inconsistent. Or, rather, they are being consistent on the emotional level in that both their tolerance and their religiosity is an expression of their generally good natured character. It is, of course, much more difficult to be both religious and tolerant while being intellectually consistent. The way a number of people I know (Catholic philosophers) try to achieve this is by claiming that acknowledging human fallibility requires such tolerance of them. While morally such a stance is to be applauded I do not find myself altogether convinced by it. Acknowledgements of fallibility must, after all, be counterbalanced by the need to act on the basis of our beliefs. And it is hard to think of a belief that should affect behaviour more profoundly, if held, than a religious belief. Which leads me to the conclusion that the beliefs in question must not be held too deeply - a thesis that Dan Dennett has, of course, expressed on numerous occasions.

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  3. It is useless to invoke religion as a guide to morality, first because one can obviously be moral without being religious, and second because religious “morality” has been responsible for countless atrocities throughout human history.
    As Bertrand Russell wrote in "Why I Am Not a Christian", "Religions behave as if morality had nothing to do with increasing human happiness."
    ---
    Cal, don't confuse belief with faith. I beleive the Sun will rise tomorrow because I have good scientific evidence for believing so and a track record of its doing so. Faith, OTOH, is a belief in something for which there is no evidence. I have plenty of beliefs; I have zero faith.

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  4. When exactly does an action become "intolerant"? It seems there is a range of actions between just voicing a contradictory opinion and beheading the infidel.

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  5. Hello,
    I am a first time poster here but I read your blog quite often. My question is with your definition of pluralism. I may have misread your post but it seems to make pluralism synonymous with relativism. I have seen definitions of pluralism, most namely from Diana Eck, that suggest that pluralism is more intuned with discussion and understanding of other religions. In addition, these discussions do not infer any agreement, but some form of coexistence. Also, atheism would also have to be considered in these discussions to form some sort of coexistence.

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  6. As long as a religion does not instruct a person to do anything that would conflict with people's observance of other religions, then they are compatible and tolerable. Unfortunately, most religions instruct their followers to mind other people's religious business and to muddy secular issues with religious superstition. I love the link to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Thanks

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  7. Jerm,

    pluralism is usually not construed as a form of relativism. The problem, in the case of religions, however, is that many of them make absolute claims about truth. The stronger such claims, the more likely it is that the only possible pluralism begins to sound like relativism. A bad situation, if you ask me.

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  8. Kimpat "Cal, don't confuse belief with faith. "

    okay, lets not then.
    Said this before elsewhere.

    There is an artificial separation in the use of these terms.

    In the original Greek faith/belief were essentially THE SAME WORD. Just a matter of a verb and noun distinction. Now if it suites you to tolerate (grr!) this level of imprecision because it bolsters your world-view-philosophy, who would ever be able to tell you differently?

    the way I see it,
    misapplied tolerance, even more than "religion" also causes massive numbers of people to lose their lives and be brutally harmed. In the end, the matter of tolerance is just a belief about how one should confront, or not confront, evil doers. And also, how we ought think about the suffering of other people and what we should do about it.

    Not to my credit,
    I almost DID NOT inquire about the problems a woman at Greek pizza place in Albq. was having last week. She was just sitting in the middle of the place tears running down her face - very sad. I noticed her once...Thought about asking her about it. And then my youngest daughter gave me the nudge and I was thankful for it. Turns out this girls husband just had surgery for a fast moving prostate cancer. And she did not think he will live a year. In the end, we wound up having a good (but difficult) discussion with a person we had never met before.

    To HER credit :)
    My daughter has also has reached out to a person who was sitting at the table crying over his pizza. (she use to work there) She said his countenance like immediately changed when she started talking and asking him how he was. and by the end of the few minute conversation, he was smiling.

    Is that not worth it, or what?

    what I learned from my kid (s)
    Do not ignore the suffering of other people. It'll harden your heart if you do. And when you harden you heart, you will not want to make the hard choices that will present themselves in other areas of your life.
    And that, I feel, is exactly how we arrived at convoluted ideas of what tolerance ought to be. We fear what will happen if we have to extend ourselves to other people.

    cal

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  9. Massimo said:
    "Despite heroic fits of mental gymnastics by progressive religionists, there is just no sensible way....."

    Well religion is going to be full of inconsistencies and contradictions anyway, whether one is an exclusivist or a pluralist. So I think I prefer the more relativist/pluralist religionists in their inconsistencies, than the dogmatic religionist who are slightly more consistent.

    Look at the example of fundamentalist Christians who are exclusivists. They still somehow embrace the contradictory Gods of the old and new testaments.

    Cal said:
    "The word(s) 'religious tolerance' were coined not by well intentioned people in the first place. it was clearly invented as an pejorative to broad brush anyone who has a belief."

    This is simply paranoid fantasy from Cal. Religious tolerance is a neccessity in a pluralistic society where we have people of different religions, or none.

    Don't you want us atheists to be religiously tolerant of you Cal? This means that even though we think what you believe is absurd, we still think you have the right to pursue your folly free of any coercion or intimidation.

    The line is simply drawn when the religious attempt to translate their beliefs into public policy, or perhaps when they abuse their children in some way in the name of religion.

    As we have seen in our history, and in the British Isles/Ireland, even differences of Christian doctrine can lead to a society divided along religious sectarian lines.

    Did anybody catch any of the multi-segment program on the Mormons on PBS last month? Very interesting, but I only saw bits and pieces. The Mormons were quite persecuted by mainstream Christians of the 1800s. Then once they got their foothold in Utah, they ended up massacring a group of non-Mormon pioneers who were passing through the Utah territory, then they blamed it on the Pawnee indians. So there is some religious morality for you.

    I will take religious tolerance anyday, because the alternative is barbarism.

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  10. Cal said:
    "Do not ignore the suffering of other people. It'll harden your heart if you do.'

    Cal,
    What on earth are you talking about? What does this have to do with religious tolerance?

    Confronting evil doers is about dealing with actions of people doing harm.

    That was very nice of you to concern yourself with a person in distress. Pat, pat on your head. But I am still lost on the connection to religious tolerance.

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  11. no pat on the head, sheldon. I totally bawled all over the place. And it was not a pretty site.

    I could absolutely could not stop tears from spilling out all over he place when I first started to ask this woman what was going on with her. I just looked at her face and knew it was serious. I bawled when she told us her story, and of course, lastly too when I asked her if we could pray for her before we left.

    Yeah, we were all real proud of how I controlled like NONE of my emotions. Fine fella I turned out to be. But you know, who cares? At certain point in person's life if you can't wreck your own rep for another hurting and very sad person, what are you good for anyway?


    back to the topic tho

    My thought on the current obsession with society being unquestioningly tolerant is that some people will redefine 'tolerance' so that their conscience is not totally brought to the breaking point (like I was) by the suffering both in our world and immediately around us.

    But is this reasonable and does it make sense?

    To me, the essence of this issue has far less to do with religion and more to do with things and people we don't want to have to respond to. So try to not JUST put it on "religion". Too broad and unassuming of a scapegoat for me.

    Bottom line, we all want to be loved unconditionally but giving it back sometimes is a whole other matter. The quest for tolerance, I think, is really one for authentic unconditional love.

    cal

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  12. Thanks for the link J. And all this time when I had heard Dawkins talk about orbiting teapots, I thought it was just an example he thought of because he is British!

    By golly there is a teapot cult which is being persecuted by religiously intolerant Muslims!

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  13. "By golly there is a teapot cult which is being persecuted by religiously intolerant Muslims!"

    yeah, & what's sillier... worshiping a teapot or being jailed for it?

    If this woman put her faith in something sincere (mother Teresa like) or something truly anti-Muslim , I mean something that might come across as a real threat to Islam it would be understandable. But tea pot worshiping is no threat to Islam.

    Demonstrates that Islam is completely anti-freewill in it's philosophy. Yet very often the left would often rather side with it (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) than to give any consideration to the right. At least most people on the right believe each person should choose their path and make their own decisions about God.

    Maybe some just feel that the pressure to have to think about it at all would be off if they had NO CHOICE and could choose nothing but the prevailing world religion.

    just a theory
    cal

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  14. "Yet very often the left would often rather side with it (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) than to give any consideration to the right. At least most people on the right believe each person should choose their path and make their own decisions about God."

    Cal,
    It is hard to respond to this without specifics.

    So for example, in the past year a local Denver right-wing talk show host "Gunny Bob" has advocated extra special surveillance measures of Muslims, simply because they are Muslims. So of course advocates of civil liberties, whether we be on the left or right, are going to be critical of this.

    Since 9-11 there has been alot of incendiary rhetoric against Muslims in general that in many ways is unfair. So some on "the left" may indeed come to their defense in the name of religious tolerance.

    We also know that there are some on the religious-right who want to promote their own version of theocracy aka Dominionism, and would make Muslims, pagans, atheists, and others second class citizens.

    Also, I think your framing this has a right-left issue is totally wrong-headed. Religious liberals also believe that people should choose their path and make their own decisions about God.

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  15. "We also know that there are some on the religious-right who want to promote their own version of theocracy aka Dominionism, and would make Muslims, pagans, atheists, and others second class citizens."

    I totally understand what you are saying about dominionism. I personally don't think it is much of a Christian world view because if Christians think that their goal is to collect as much stuff as they can in this life, they surely can't be much interested in the next. The Bible just doesn’t support it.

    It is kind of a fallacy tho to think that anywhere Christian civilization has spread to there is nothing but exploitation and the goal of causing other people to JUST do what we want them to.

    We take medical teams to remote regions of Mexico.
    (and will again the end of March.)

    Much of the Mexican culture rejects and does not want to offer general services, medical or otherwise, to the Indians. Our doctors, dentists and med personal have pulled hundreds of teeth per trip, Removed skin cancer, Stopped persistent infections with the proper antibiotic and accurate info on how to use it, Checked people for TB, Give the proper treatment and education if it is present, Pregnancy tests...prenatal vits and children’s vitamins...you name it. But we'd rather never insist or coerce anyone to become a believer, but on occasion some will just choose to. The Indian religion, btw, where we are working is a mixture of paganism and Catholicism.

    and about disproportionate persecution of Muslims...
    Keep in mind too that most Arab or Muslim violence is Arab on Arab. If you can't get along with your own family, it is difficult to expect more mercy from other people than you would extend to your own. Today Arab on Arab violence has caused 54 (? ) Arab lives...and Arab on Jew has caused about 9 or 10 in Jlem today.

    Some cultures DO cater to very murderous and violent attitudes and and I cannot see that there is anything persecutory about it to just call something what it is.

    cal

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  16. Cal,
    My comments were specific to the problem of incendiary rhetoric against Muslims (not neccessarily Arabs) in our country. Then you in turn start carrying on about something different. And then this non-sequitor:

    "If you can't get along with your own family, it is difficult to expect more mercy from other people than you would extend to your own."

    So Muslims are not due respect and civil liberties, or mercy in your words, because of something happening in the Middle East?

    Then of course during the European theatre of WWI and WWII it was violence between Christians, so Christians are not above those problems either.

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  17. Cal, we're not speaking ancient Greek. But we can have this discussion in modern japanese, if you prefer...
    If you are going to conflate faith with belief, then what term do you use to describe evidence-based knowledge? As I said above, belief based on evidence and belief based on no evidence are incompatible, and as such, must have different terms... unless you're into Newspeak, of course.

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  18. Cal said:
    "I totally understand what you are saying about dominionism. I personally don't think it is much of a Christian world view because if Christians think that their goal is to collect as much stuff as they can in this life,..."

    Cal,
    No you don't understand what I am saying about "Dominionism". You seem to suggest I was talking about the "Gospel of Prosperity" which seems to be another variation of Evangelical and/or Pentecostal Christianity.

    The link below explains what I was referring to with "Dominionism"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism

    Christopher Hedges, a journalist with a theology degree, and a more liberal variety of Christian, has written a book "Christian Fascists" that is at least partly about Dominionism. I don't know if I approve of the title by the way, but still worth reading.

    And Cal, I commend you on your humanitarian service to Mexico's impoverished and discriminated Indian peoples. Now, taking you at your word, that not too much conversion pressure is applied to these peoples in your humanitarian mission, then I would have to say you are practicing religious tolerance, whether you like the term or not.

    You know, it is too bad that you do not see the contradictions between your humanitarian Christian impulses and your conservative politics.

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  19. yeah, & what's sillier... worshiping a teapot or being jailed for it?

    Talking about religious intolerance, (tea)pot meet kettle... What's sillier, worshiping invisible friends (be they humanoid or pot-shaped) or being jailed for it?

    Sheldon,
    When I saw the headline of the teapot story I thought about Russell's teapot, which is where Dawkins originally got that.

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  20. S: No you don't understand what I am saying about "Dominionism". You seem to suggest I was talking about the "Gospel of Prosperity"

    Dominionism small d vs big D.

    I get it. I think what bugs some people about Dominionism, with a big D, is that they just think of it as the means of some believing people getting their way and having the world around them to be what THEY want to be. Honestly, I hope that for most christians it amounts to a whole lot more than that. I think a lot of the believers I happen to know really do wish peace and safety for other people in the world, even those we do not agree with.
    So I don't quite understand why you would think this: "You know, it is too bad that you do not see the contradictions between your humanitarian Christian impulses and your conservative politics."


    Keep in mind also that most belief systems that exist do have the goal of at least spreading if not outright taking over the world. Even atheism.

    I've heard the story ages ago of what happened with MM O' Hare, but was reminded again of the events in San Antonio on American Justice(?) last week. So I do think it must be just a totally human trait to want to share what you know especially if you think what you know about happens to work. I can't say I understand why some people think Athsm works, but...

    Of course if Ms O'Hare was alive today, I'd petition God for a change of heart for her too. I'd be her friend if it was possible. If she never changed her mind, I'd still be her friend. God, you see, according to the Bible, is no respecter of persons. You can't be too evil, poor, rich, bright, stupid to be out side of His reach.


    RE Medical missions
    Thanks Shel, for your well wishes.
    Have you ever been in the back country/mountains of Mexico? Jesuits don't like us. You should go sometime. It will really surprise you.

    Very poor but also amazingly proud.

    cal

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  21. Cal, that's Madelyn Murray O'Hair.
    O'Hare is an airport in Chicago.

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  22. correction accepted, Kimpat. just didn't bother to look it up.

    I'll be going to be away for most of the remainder of the month.

    You folks have a good one.
    cal

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  23. "Have you ever been in the back country/mountains of Mexico? Jesuits don't like us. You should go sometime. It will really surprise you."

    Yes, Cal, I have been to Mexico several times, in several states, for 1 to 3 months trips. Oaxaca being my favorite.

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  24. Back to the topic at hand, one example of religious tolerance in practice from history was the Mogul emperor Akbar. While he was a muslim, he also had Hindu wives and he promulgated edicts of religious tolerance in his empire. He even made a stab at trying to create his own religion that was a fusion of Muslim, Hindu and Christian beliefs.

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  25. What we have to consider is if Judaism, Christianity, Islam are actually religions, at least in their present forms. Personally I don't think they are, and the practical proof is all the irreligious behavior that is performed in their names. What is obvious is that this disgraceful triumvirate are simply political grouping that falsely employ the sanction of God for the inhuman behavior they habitually exhibit in order to achieve their political and very earthly objectives.

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  26. While I agree with most of what you have said, i would like to add there is no difference between the God of the old testament and new. If that's true then evolution says we come from a retarded monkey frog fish. Let's try not to spread disinformation.

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  27. I beg to disagree, there are huge differences between the gods of the old and new testaments, as many fundamentalist Christians are well aware of (so much so that, when it's convenient, they claim that Jesus "erased" the old testament and replaced it with the new gospel).

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