(August 28, 2014 at 9:07 pm)Polaris Wrote: How far are you willing to go to be legitimately be tolerant of the beliefs of other people (instead of trying to make a show of it as I suspect many of you do here)? Would you accommodate their needs, respect their beliefs, join in their ceremonies?That seems pretty broad. I try to respect and accommodate anyone and everyone I deal with, to the extent that I consider it to be reasonable. I am not offended by most religious rituals or sensibilities, though I find that many religious people are put off by those of other religions or denominations. But even so, they are likely to be respectful as long as they don't feel that any boundaries are being crossed (such as being asked to take part in a prayer to a different god).
I think that people are more likely to be tolerant if they feel that they're outside of their comfort zone. The more of their friends or fellow believers are around, the less tolerant they are likely to feel towards others. Much the same as a sports fan will moderate his enthusiasm if he is in a crowd of supporters of a rival, but will be as loud and boisterous as possible when he's with a sympathetic crowd.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
