tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post5932808888276077377..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: In Person and Online, In and Out of PoliticsJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-68151751586948307832017-07-09T12:28:10.892-04:002017-07-09T12:28:10.892-04:00"Beyond that I am just very uncomfortable jud...<i>"Beyond that I am just very uncomfortable judging people for the content of their beliefs. To me prosecution for heresy was one of the most awful things about medieval and early modern society, and I have no interest in bringing back such persecution. It is only what people do that we have any right to judge."</i><br /><br />What if someone's beliefs are awful, and lead them to support or contribute to real, objective harm?<br /><br />Tolerance is for those things that there is no real answer to. If one person insists there's a god, and another insists there isn't, neither of them is hurting the other or anyone else in that insistance, and neither of them can realistically prove the matter one way or the other, and thus tolerance is called for.<br /><br />The same conditions apply in matters such as homosexuality and gay marriage. Whether or not you believe homosexuality causes "harm" is subjective, in that it is based in religious notions of "sin", not in observation based science.<br /><br />Thus, if members of a religion wish to refrain from homosexuality, or to exclude homosexuals from their congregation, that's their right and their choice, and we all need to tolerate it. But at the same time, if people outside their congregation feel no need to refrain from homosexuality, that's <i>their</i> right and <i>their</i> choice, and no one else has the right to be intolerant of them, or work to deny them the freedom and ability to thus choose.<br /><br />But what about situations where the determination of harm is not subjective? Where it is demonstrably, rationally, scientifically real?<br /><br />If one person insists that we need to take away health insurance coverage from 23 million poor and vulnerable people in order to give the rich a tax cut, and the other person insists that's monstrous because it will result in untold numbers of people dying for lack of health care, there is absolutely a real answer to the issue. The person who wants poor people to die so that rich people can get richer is objectively wrong, and "tolerating" their belief is in turn also wrong.<br /><br />Tolerating and respecting someone else and their opposing beliefs is only possible when both views can coexist without infringing on the other. There can be no tolerance between, for example, Jews and Nazis, because there is no world in which the two can peacibly coexist.<br /><br />In theory, a person could believe in the total eradication of all Jews everywhere, but never act on it. But that simply does not happen in reality. If it was just a belief privately held, we could tolerate it. But some beliefs are themselves intolerable, because they inevitably lead the people who hold them to take intolerable actions. Political views do not exist in a vacuum, and a Nazi who wishes to exterminate the Jews will over time work to change the world into one where they can eventually get away with the Final Solution they believe in so strongly.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com