More to the point, is "modern society" tolerant at all?

__________________
"Well done Dubya. You freakin' imbecile." - ViolaLee

Tolerance is the prerogative of the majority in a society. If you're in a minority you don't get to tolerate anything, if you're lucky you are the beneficiary of tolerance. If you're unlucky then you are the victim of prejudice.

Tolerance is everyone else saying, okay, we won't send the police around to arrest you in the middle of the night and beat you up in the cells and put you in front of a kangaroo court and get you sentenced to x years in prison simply because you're in the minority.

Tolerance is everyone else saying we're okay with that, no harm done, live and let live.

Tolerance isn't approval. That's why it's so hard.

Approval is easy. "Hey look at that, they're just like us!". That's approval.

Tolerance is, "heck that's really horrible but since no-one is being hurt, no-one is being oppressed, we'll just have to accept it and let them be."

Tolerance is hard work. It's not just a word.

In a word, NO!

__________________
If you set out to fail and do, have you?

Ina coherent argument?

__________________
Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

"Extremist" is a better word in that context. However what really pisses me off about this stupidity you and others are spewing forth is this perverse notion that any system of belief must conform to what you or anyone else dictates! It's up to individuals to conform to whatever particular religion or philosophy they choose, not the other way around.

The only correct "interpretation" is that of the authors.

Then you clearly don't understand the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation started as a rebellion against corruption that had become entrenched in a Church that had fallen far from what was taught in the first century.

And I didn't say you said anything about political correctness. Try reading what's written instead of interpreting it.

This reformation is conformity to your perverse notion that religion must change with the times and submit to the will of those who do not believe.

Actually, he does have the "right." Rights exist independent of government and society. He does not, however, have legal sanction in most countries to exercise that right.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Chan things people have the right to execute their relatives. That should pretty much tell you something about his ideology.

__________________

Its youre right to beleive what you want, but there is room for change in all things, especially religion. Theres no way if you followed every rule to the letter in religious books that modern society could survive. We would have anarchy and constant religious war between "righteous beleivers" and infidels.

The "extremists" are those who have not seen the room for change, those that follow the most to-the-word lettering of the Islamic texts. Same for a lot of other non-islamic religious nuts.



Thats true. But even the authors had to interpret their stories from what they observed. If you look at Christianity, the 4 gospels all tell the same stories with different variations--different interpretations of events. Which one is right? Are there things to be learned from the veiwpoint of each?
Is it really still necessary that our lambchops be made only after sacraficing poor Mr. Fuzzy on an altar?

__________________
"...Follow the crystal star to the pyre of the flame; there exists the dwelling of the spreading fire. The heart of this life rests upon the fate of that place, and what begins there sends a contagion to the rest of the universe.
As long as the fire burns we shall never be free..." (The Shadows of Yavara, Final Reclamation)

Not if that religion was God-ordained (I'm not saying any particular religion is but you really do have to take into consideration the fact that some religions claim to be God-ordained).

You're assuming that "modern society" must survive and that its interests supercede those of religion.

Why must there be change? Why must religion conform to society? Why shouldn't society conform to religion?

The four gospels tell many of the same stories but one might have them grouped chronologically while others have then grouped differently. They're not actually "interpreting" anything.

The point of the matter is that the premise of this thread sets up "modern society" as a standard against which other things (e.g. religion) must be measured.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

What ideology allows that?

__________________
"Well done Dubya. You freakin' imbecile." - ViolaLee

I'll give you a hint: Religion is not true. Society's needs supersede religion's by a long shot.

__________________
"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.