Within a single society? Maybe. If the society is entirely homogeneous.

Across societies?
Got me. I'm skeptical.

Religions are inherently in-group biased. I suppose somebody could invent one whose in-group was EVERYONE (that existed at its invention), but that would only work so long as some new group that didn't exist at the time of invention didn't come along...

As for a religion that wasn't ever in-group biased...what would be the point?

Yes I think so. The eastern religions such as what's practiced in Japan and China is more on inner peace and doesn't have all the rigid constraints and obligations that Europe has.

Stoicism is another interesting philosophy that is starting to make a reemergence in the West. It's from ancient Greece. Some of their ideas are that it's healthy to accept ones life for how it is and to understand ones limitations and not start projects that are too hard to complete.

Here is an interesting podcast from Radio west about the Ancient Greek and Roman Religion (before Christianity)
http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/how-be-stoic

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/can-anyone-stop-burmas-hardline-buddhist-monks/538992/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/22/2018 09:12AM by anybody.

anono this week Wrote:
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> The eastern religions such as
> what's practiced in Japan and China is more on
> inner peace and doesn't have all the rigid
> constraints and obligations that Europe has.

That may be your perception, but it is far from the truth. Next time you meet someone from China or Japan, ask them how tolerant their native faith is according to them.

(See my post farther down for more on this.)

People tend to divide into groups,us versus them, with or without religion. It is more about human nature than religion per se.

bona dea Wrote:
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> People tend to divide into groups,us versus them,


I would recommend anyone to listen to "Us & Them", from Dark Side Of The Moon.

Prophetic.

But "after all, we'r'e only ordinary men"

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me

bona dea Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> People tend to divide into groups,us versus them,
> with or without religion. It is more about human
> nature than religion per se.

True.
Religion, however, pretends to give supernatural sanction to the dividing -- and often promises heavenly rewards for doing so. Making them much harder to overcome than run of the mill "my neighbors are different!" sorts of divisions.

Quakers.

No.

Not as long as their own in-group has the one and only, truly, RIGHT way.

And anyone who does not acknowledge that is a lesser person.


Mormonism is a prime culprit here.

You might want to look at religions whuich dont believe they have the only way. There are some.

bona dea Wrote:
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> You might want to look at religions whuich dont
> believe they have the only way. There are some.


Well, that's great if there are religions that believe that.


The unfortunate point is, there are all to many others who do believe that not only is their own religious viewpoint the one, only, correct way to their own particular Heaven, their particular God smiles down upon them for exterminating anyone who does not agree.

That idea is not the norm among most mainstream Christians or among mainstream members of other religions. Everyone who.is religious is not a wild eyed fundie fanatic and those who do go to war against other religion usually have.other motivations besides religion. People may have killed people they considered heretics in the past but we no longer live in the Dark Ages. It happens sometimes, but it is hardly the norm

bona dea Wrote:
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> People may have
> killed people they considered heretics in the past
> but we no longer live in the Dark Ages. It happens
> sometimes, but it is hardly the norm

A lot of people in this world do still live in the Dark Ages.
It may not run the entire world, but for billions of people on many dozen millions of square kilometers, life under violent fundamentalism is very much the norm.

There are some, yes, but it isnt really the norm

I'm afraid more people live in religiously intolerant societies than in tolerant ones.

Count together all the people living in societies that experienced Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and compare that to the numbers living in societies governed by the unbending principles of orthodox christianity, sunni islam, hinduism, buddhism or any other faith. See how buddhist monks in Thailand or Burma attack their muslim neighbours. See the constant riots between muslims and hindus attacking each other's mosques and temples in India. See how the orthodox church is turning Russia into a homophobic, sexist theocracy.

What can be called the norm in the USA and Western Europe is not the norm in most of the world.

True.

I would add, though, that "progress" is reversible. Such countries as France and Germany were touched deeply by the Enlightenment and yet brought us the French Revolution and Naziism. Some (Isaiah Berlin) have argued that the Enlightenment contributed significantly to the emergence of totalitarian philosophies in a number of European countries.

So yes, the West is a freer place than most of the world. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these things are permanent.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I would add, though, that "progress" is
> reversible. Such countries as France and Germany
> were touched deeply by the Enlightenment and yet
> brought us the French Revolution and Naziism.

Enlightenment brought us the American and the French Revolutions but not Nazism.
To the contrary, Nazism sort of wanted to return to the Ancien Régime, with a class system, no trade unions, and no elections.

> Some (Isaiah Berlin) have argued that the
> Enlightenment contributed significantly to the
> emergence of totalitarian philosophies in a number
> of European countries.

Enlightenment led to the rise of the Enlightened Despots, yes.
But better a progressive dictator who protects ethnic and religious minorities than a democracy where the people elect hate preachers.
In fact, I do live under such a dictator, frankly, and I support him big time.

> So yes, the West is a freer place than most of the
> world. It would be a mistake, however, to assume
> that these things are permanent.

Sure but I never did.

I'm not accusing you of saying progress is irreversible. I'm just underscoring that critically important point.

Where we do disagree is on the relationship between the Enlightenment and totalitarianism. As Nietzsche observed, the Enlightenment and rationalism marked the end of Christianity as an organizing principle in European civilization: "God is dead." As he also remarked, new gods were already arising in Europe. The two states he specifically named in this regard, in Beyond Good and Evil, were Russia and Germany.

Isaiah Berlin took the argument further. He saw that in the Enlightenment "negative freedom" grew into "positive freedom." Negative freedom was the essential notion that people should be free from excessive government intervention. There should be limits on the power of the state and the power of the majority, leaving a space for personal autonomy beyond the reaches of the powerful.

But just saying people should have freedom from state intrusion gets boring; it leaves philosophers nothing to do. So they start thinking in terms of "positive freedom," meaning how to improve society and move it forward. I can't remember all the philosophers he described, but negative freedom was JS Mill, Hume, etc. Advocates of positive freedom included Voltaire, Rousseau and Marx, but especially Engels, and a number of others.

As intimated in that list, the nucleus of positive freedom is the notion that the people aren't bright enough to understand what society needs in order to progress. It follows that progress requires a small group of leaders, a vanguard, who are supposed to do what reason dictates regardless of what the masses want. Naturally, the philosophers were happy to offer their services in this regard; and sometimes they found rulers who were happy to fly their flag in order to reinforce their own power. (Yes, Frederick, that means you.)

But the vanguard idea was also the basis for the French Revolution (the American Revolution was a more limited phenomenon based on "negative freedom") and Engels/Leninist communism with their notion of a vanguard of the proletariat. It was also what Mao absorbed. But it was additionally part of the ideological milieu from which rightist totalitarianism arose. When Hitler and his propagandists reached back to embrace, explicitly or implicitly, Nietzsche's superman, they were pursuing their very "enlightened" notion that a single person or a small group of people are the best government for a nation of morons. They misrepresented Nietzsche, to be sure, but they did so in a predictable way--which is what Berlin was pointing out.

So yes, the Enlightenment contributed to both the American Revolution on the one hand and, on the other, more sanguinary political movements. The notion that a small group are uniquely enlightened, uniquely inspired, to rule others is one of many ideas that gained currency as a result of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2018 04:05AM by Lot's Wife.

No human organization can exist without some inequality and abuse. I try to belong to as few as possible. Mormonism, in particular, is suffocating and relentless. I consider that abuse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2018 10:45PM by donbagley.

I think this is right. Hierarchy and inequality are inevitable in political organizations, and every organization--from family to country--is to some extent political.

Regarding the broader question, I'd venture that the problem of intolerance is less religious and more biological in origin. If you start with the notion that in a world of scarce resources, groups need to compete for food and other necessities, social dynamics become important in terms of survival. In such circumstances anyone who is perceived as a potential threat to the group become an enemy to be repressed or expelled.

There is probably also a scalar dynamic. I'd suspect that there is a natural group size, corresponding to a large extended family or clan, that defines the upper range of stable groups subject to variation based on the availability of food and other resources. But I bet that if you get much beyond the original scale, the emotional and social connections between people grow tenuous and the probability of group division rises.

Technology would have increased the size of sustainable groups, perhaps with less internal cohesion, over the recent millennia, and that lessened cohesion might need to be reinforced by greater state power. Such a dynamic would also help explain permanent ethnic underclasses, since in a large group the evolutionary bias in favor of smaller groups would undermine a universal social commitment.

It's tempting to believe, further, that technology may over the last couple of decades have stopped facilitating larger groups and become a centrifugal force. The rise of cable TV, for instance, has helped polarize public opinion and drive wedges right into modern societies. The internet could be even worse, enabling people more easily to live in very small emotional communities or perhaps as individuals.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that the topic of biology and group consciousness is a fascinating one.

Yes, religions can be tolerant. As a golden rule, small minority religions tend to be very tolerant of "the others" since they rely on their goodwill to survive, while established religions tend to seek dominance over the whole of society, even interfering with the lives of non-members. Think blasphemy laws, higher taxes for infidels, etc.

To see this in practice, just compare christianity in the USA with christianity in Lebanon; compare buddhism in the west with buddhism in Burma; compare judaism in London with judaism in Beit Shemesh; compare hinduism in Bangladesh with hinduism in southern India; compare islam in Sweden with islam in KSA.

That is why liberals in the west are often so supportive of salafist islam while liberals in Morocco or Turkey would like to run a truck over hate preachers. Progressives (as in supporting women and gays) in muslim-majority countries are often equally supportive of, say, former Pope Benedict or American televangelists. The reason is very simple: Pope Benedict never tried to take over their state.

Yes, there is a great deal of truth here...unfortunately.

The golden rule is flawed. It assumes what is good for one is good for the other.

EXON46 Wrote:
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> The golden rule is flawed. It assumes what is good
> for one is good for the other.

From a Jewish perspective, the Christian Golden Rule is also posited from the central motive of the self and possible advantages to the self...rather than the regulating principle (as in the Jewish version) being the possible/potential effects on others.

The Jewish version of the Golden Rule (which predated the Christian version) is: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah, the rest is the explanation, go and learn it." [Talmud, Shabbat 31a]

This somewhat earlier than Christianity version (which was first written down between 110 BCE and 30 CE) was one of the enduring products of a [friendly] on-going, lifetime, debate between a Jewish sage named Hillel and a Jewish sage named Shammai. When the Christian version was first spoken, it was the latest iteration of this continuing Jewish debate which had begun a century before Jesus was born.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/22/2018 02:30PM by Tevai.

Within American society, I know of several religions that are "not intolerant"--in fact, "tolerance" is so accepted that the subject never arises.

I was raised (both serially, and also simultaneously) in the following religions (none of which are, in American society, intolerant):

1) Hindu/Vedanta
2) Unity School of Christianity (and this would apply across the spectrum of most of the American "New Thought" denominations, such as Science of Mind)
3) Buddhism (for only a short while, but practicing Buddhists have always been a part of my life)

As an adult, I converted to Judaism, which (in American society, and some of the ultra-Orthodox, mostly in the U.S. Northeast, groups aside) is one of the main pillars in the many struggles AGAINST intolerance throughout American society...and this is true historically, as well as currently. (An outsized share of non-black Americans in the Civil Rights Movement were Jewish.)

And judging from what I know, I do not think that most of the Native American religions are intolerant in the sense it is meant here. Some of them (Hopis, as the easiest example) can be very selective in the "outsiders" they allow into their most sacred ceremonies, but I don't think this equals "intolerance" in the meaning of this thread.

So, yes, LOTS of religions can exist within a society and not be intolerant.

Your phrasing is ironic. Essentially, you're saying "Can't there be a religion that agrees with me?" And when religions say, "No, we disagree with you," you label them as intolerant.

Your disagreement is enlightened. Their disagreement is intolerant.

There you are, as intolerant as a religion.

These folks don't share the same view of scripture. It's not about agreeing or not agreeing with me or anyone else.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/us/anti-trump-evangelicals-lynchburg.html

So again I ask:

Does god turn off your brain? Do you have free will to think and reason?

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/30/17301282/race-evangelicals-trump-support-gerson-atlantic-sexism-segregation-south

"I spent the first 15 years of my career as a scholar studying American evangelicals and race, and in my view, the failure to consider motivations rooted in anxieties about race and gender as an explanation of evangelical Trump support represents a striking omission. The history of American evangelicalism is intensely racially charged. The persistent approval for Trump among white evangelicals ought to prompt far more critical self-reflection within the evangelical community than we’ve seen so far.

Evangelicals’ tenacious affection for Donald Trump is not a bug driven by expediency. Instead, it reflects defining features of American evangelicalism that become clearer when we examine the historical record. Doing so reveals that when white conservative evangelicals feel threatened by cultural change, the old demons of racism and misogyny, which lurk at the heart of the American evangelical tradition, return with a vengeance. Trump is just another chapter in that story."

Do you do what you do becase some imaginary friend in the sky told you to or do you justify what you are going to do anyway by projecting it onto the supposed dictates of a deity you have no choice but to obey?

Flip Wilson -- The Devil Made Me Do It
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5kaiLcwHXB4



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2018 04:51PM by anybody.