"In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."
---Dorothy Sayers
4 comments:
I agree. Tolerance of Christianity must be stopped.
In the world, or at least the world I live in, that state of mind is called Depression and is, quite rightly, seen as an illness, not a sin.
Where the limits of tolerance should lie is a very serious and difficult question, but it is just not true that those who tolerate different lifestyles or different religions do so only because they do not care whether they are good or evil.
The fallacy that Sayers is identifying is the claim that tolerance for other viewpoints requires an indifference with respect to the truth claims of those viewpoints, that it is somehow intolerant to say that someone has it wrong.
If you teach philosophy courses, you often get students arguing for a kind of relativism on the grounds that we all have a right to our opinions and that we ought to be tolerant of one another. You have to patiently explain that part of what it is to have a belief is to believe that the contradictory proposition is false.
Tolerance is a social virtue, having to do with how we treat others. However, it is not an unlimited virtue, in that we aren't obligated to tolerate the view that it is perfectly OK to, say commit murder.
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