Tolerance Does Not Mean Agreement
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Yeah. Question.
Say, okay, but my religion is not to harm you. Or if I want to be in a homosexual relationship, that’s not you, it’s like a couple different. Now we can’t bring in, harm another person because that would… Does that make sense?
Okay. Yeah. So, in other words, the person my respond was saying, Well, the example of the phone situation is, where you’re hurting somebody else, because you’re taking their property. But with regards to maybe homosexual behavior, you’re not hurting other people. Now, first of all, that’s an assumption that I think would have to be proven on their part, that homosexual behavior doesn’t hurt other people. The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would beg to differ vigorously, that homosexual behavior is not hurting anybody, because the vast majority of new STD infection rates come, not from the heterosexual community, not from the intravenous drug abuse community, but from the homosexual community, because according to their studies, and this is all available in this CDC website, available to anybody, the fact of the matter is, is that one in five people, one in five men who have sex with other men, in 21 major US cities, have HIV, and about 64% of those, aged between 18 and 21, do not even know they have HIV.
So they are infecting other people with a deadly disease. Now, it’s the CDC, which is a pro-gay, pro homosexual, I mean, it’s not like they’re advocates of that, but they’re affirmative of homosexuality, saying that homosexual behavior is indeed harmful to the culture because it’s hurting other people. How could you say that, oh, well it’s just consensual? It is hurting other people. And they post, literally almost every month, a study that shows that they are hurting people. So the first thing I’d say to the person is, Well, wait a minute, your example is a bad example because, arguably the secular pro homosexual source is not saying that homosexual behavior is not hurting anybody. It is. But second of all, it doesn’t matter whether it’s hurting anybody or not, because now they’re just invoking this new condition on their own.
Why does morality restrict it only to what hurts other people or not? You’ve just created this moral rule, that what is right and wrong is simply a matter of what impacts other people. Well, they just invented that out of nowhere. That’s not what God thinks. So now there might be atheists, they don’t believe in God, but then if they don’t believe in God, where are they getting their standard of morality from, other than, guess who, themselves? And they’ve just now invented this rule, well, what’s right and wrong is dependent upon whether it hurts other people. Well, that’s nice that you think so, but there’s thousands and millions of other people who disagree with you. So who’s going to adjudicate between you and everybody else? So this is the problem with moral relativism, it just leads to absurdities.
People can talk like moral relativism isn’t true. They can say what’s right and wrong is up to each person, but they can’t live like it, because moral relativism is a unlivable system. The moment someone violates their rules, all of a sudden, oh, now that rule is incumbent upon everybody. Oh, that’s nice. You’re a relativist when it comes to things that don’t affect you, but then when it does affect you, now all of a sudden you’re an objective truth believer. So they can’t live consistently with it. But we can also take the roof off of religious pluralism, remember the idea that all religions are basically true. And again, let’s follow the steps of the taking the roof off tactic. Let’s adopt that rationale just for the sake of argument. Let’s just say, Okay, yeah it’s true, that all religions are basically the same. What logical absurdity might that lead to? What logical conclusion might that lead to, that might cause us to question the rationale here? Is there anything contradictory about that notion, all religions are basically true? Yeah.
Religions contradict each other?
Okay. Yeah, religions contradict each other. Can anybody think of an example? Yeah. Go ahead, since you answered.
Some say there is no… Like atheism of course, says there’s no God, there’s no chance there’s any God, and differences between Islam and Christianity, basically any other religion is different.
That’s right. Yeah. If you take any two religions, really any two religions, and just get past the superficial things that the religions say, when you get down to their core, fundamental issues, they contradict each other in radically different ways. And so, for example, I guess the way that I illustrate this, one time I was talking to somebody or talking to a group of people about this, and I asked them, I said, Hey look, can you guys tell me what you think my mother looks like? And they’re kind of like, What? I’m like, Just, just guess. None of these three guys have met my mother. So I asked a guy, I said, Well, what do you think my mother looks like? He’s like, I don’t know, five foot, three, weighs 130 pounds. She’s got black hair. Okay, good. Thank you.
And I asked the second person, What do you think my mother looks like? I don’t know. Five foot, five, 150 pounds, brown hair. I’m like, Okay, thank you. What do you think she looks like? I don’t know. Five foot seven, 170 pounds. I’m like, Hey, easy there, it’s my mother you’re talking about. And she’s got blonde hair. Blonde hair? Like a middle Eastern person came out of a blonde hair, okay whatever. So then I ask them, Okay now, can all three of you be right? Can my mom be five foot, three, five foot, five and five foot, seven at the same time? No, of course not. She only has one height. Can she weigh 130 pounds, 150 pounds, 170 pounds all at the same time? Does she? No, of course not. She only has one weight. Can she have black hair, brown hair and blonde hair all at the same time?
Yes.
Oh, jeez. There’s always some smart alec… Yeah. Okay. Yeah, she goes to a salon and asks for that do, I’m talking about like, black all over or brown all over or, but… No, she can’t, right? She’s only got one height, one weight, one color of hair. Well, the same is true when it comes to what you said about different religions. Different religions have different ideas about what God is like. Some religions say that there is only one God, some say there’s many gods. Some say God is personal, or they say God is impersonal. Some say God has a son, and some say God does not have a son. You could just go down the line and find that different religions have different ideas of what God is like. Well, can there be one God and multiple gods at the same time? No, there’s either zero, one or multiple, but all three can’t be true, right?
God is either impersonal or personal. God either has a son or he doesn’t have a son. He can’t have a son and not have a son at the same time. When you die, either you turn into eternal nothingness or you’re reincarnated or you go to heaven or hell, but you can’t do all three when you die. You only do one of those three options, right? And so that’s just a few issues. There are many issues that religions contradict each other in fundamental ways. And if all religions are basically true, then mutually exclusive, contradictory ideas must also be true. But that’s absurd. That’s right. The reason it’s absurd is because the rationale that led to that absurdity is itself, absurd. And that’s why taking the roof off, works in this case. So Christianity might be false, but it can’t be the case that all religions are true.
Now, of course, I don’t think Christianity is false, I think it’s true, but I’m willing to grant that, logically it’s possible Christianity’s false, but it can’t be that every religion is true. That’s the most illogical statement. Now, one of the reasons why the culture has bought into this idea about morality and about religion, is because they’ve bought into what’s called, I believe, the tolerance trick. They’ve adopted a new definition for the word tolerance, that is incorrect and unhistorical, meaning it hasn’t been used historically this way. And oftentimes, if you say someone else is wrong or you say another person’s religion is mistaken, you’ll be accused of being what? Intolerant. Right, intolerant. And nobody wants to be called intolerant because that sounds bad, and we don’t want to be called a bad name. But the reason why people call you intolerant is because they’re completely confused about the notion of tolerance.
You see, the definition that the culture uses primarily for tolerance, is agreement, right? If you agree with some person or some person’s behavior, then you’re called tolerant of them. But if you disagree with their behavior or who they are, whatever, then you’re intolerant towards them, and of course that sounds really bad. But again, this is not the way the dictionary defines tolerance or historically how we’ve used the term tolerance. Here’s what the dictionary says. The real definition of tolerance is, quote, “To recognize and respect others’ beliefs and practices, without sharing them. To bear or put up with someone or something, not necessarily liked.” In other words, tolerance, the real definition, means disagreement with their views or their behavior, while still respecting the person. Notice, on the true definition of tolerance, you have to first disagree with someone before it makes any sense to tolerate them.
You don’t tolerate people you agree with, that are on your side. You only tolerate those people you disagree with. And so when it comes to Christians, it turns out, Christians are the most tolerant people in our culture because we have moral convictions. We have views about how we should behave and how others should live and so on and so forth. And we make assessments and judgements about other people’s behavior, like regarding homosexuality, like abortion, like Islam. Yet we still respect the individual homosexual people or the individual people who commit abortions or the individual Muslims, at least we ought to, and if we don’t, that’s a big problem. But the point is that Christians typically love and respect the individuals, despite disagreeing with their behavior or their ideas. That, my friends is the true and really only definition of tolerance that makes any sense. So Christians are the only ones that can be credited with the virtue of tolerance.
The people who are for homosexual behavior, are not being tolerant, they’re just agreeing with people. And that’s fine. They’re allowed to agree with people, but you can’t credit them with a virtue of tolerance, because you have to first disagree with someone or the idea, before it makes any sense to tolerate individuals.
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