Tolerance: A Smug,
Superior Attitude?
Bob Webster
From: "Bob Webster"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Positive_Atheism_Letters_Section
Date: Friday, March 16, 2001 3:47 PM
Hi.
As part of your letter to JR (Why Fight So Hard To Suppress Information?), you mentioned tolerance vs. intolerance. I wasn't aware that anyone else had come to the same realization that I had many years ago; namely, that Tolerance and Intolerance are merely two sides of a bad coin. The implication is that we somehow have the right to judge whether someone should be able to say something or not. I find this goes completely against the spirit of the founding fathers of the US, who (in their documents, anyway) valued liberty above all. In my mind's eye, the word "tolerance" summons up the smug, superior attitude with which so many Christians approach atheists, as well as people of other religions.
Robert Webster
"Superstition ain't the way."
-- Stevie Wonder
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Bob Webster"
Subject: Re: Positive_Atheism_Letters_Section
Date: Friday, March 16, 2001 4:33 PM
This idea dates back at least to Paine, who didn't have all that many original ideas but was a masterful organizer and compiler of extant ideas, with an eye for discerning the most ethical and ideological among a range of choices.
| Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it. -- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man |
This rejection of tolerance as a counterfeit of intolerance led to the concept of Liberty as it was understood in the late eighteenth century, during the crafting of American government. To seek out the history of this crucial point would make an exciting study.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Five years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Bob Webster"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: RE: Positive_Atheism_Letters_Section
Date: Friday, March 16, 2001 4:28 PM
Thanks for your prompt response; I'm always excited to have independently come up with the same conclusions as someone like Thomas Paine!
Robert Webster
"Where ignorance is bliss / Is it foolish to be wise?"
-- With apologies to Thomas Gray
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Bob Webster"
Subject: Re: Positive_Atheism_Letters_Section
Date: Friday, March 16, 2001 4:59 PM
I'll buy that, because it is highly unlikely that you'd have even heard about Thomas Paine in grade school or high school. He wrote a book that criticizes the Bible, you know, and thus his rightful place in the telling of America's history has been stripped from him -- and the rest of us as well.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Five years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Bob Webster"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: RE: Positive_Atheism_Letters_Section
Date: Friday, March 16, 2001 4:50 PM
In that case, I guess I need to get a copy of "The Rights of Man" ASAP. Maybe he's someone I need to look into more.
Robert Webster
"Where ignorance is bliss / Is it foolish to be wise?"
-- With apologies to Thomas Gray
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