Saturday, July 27, 2013


“Tolerance”

Proposition:  Tolerance is recognizing, understanding and respecting the ideas and beliefs of others WITHOUT SHARING THEM.  Tolerance is not an obligation to agree with everyone. A tolerant person is not required to abandon his or her own personal moral code.  A tolerant person may believe that certain actions, attitudes and beliefs are absolutely wrong or even immoral.  Any person who agrees with everything is absolutely wrong.  Those who do not allow other people to believe that certain actions or attitudes are immoral are, themselves, intolerant.  We may, therefore, respectfully criticize the actions or attitudes of others and still be tolerant.  We must always respect and care about the feelings of others, because human beings are, most times, unable to directly alter their feelings, even when those human beings acknowledge that their feelings are based upon erroneous facts.  We may, therefore, decide that a person is absolutely wrong and still not condemn that person for his or her feelings about the matter.

Question: Do you agree with this?  If not, would you be tolerant of someone who held this view?

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