Tolerance & Religious Belief

This post, an essay on tolerance, comes to you from the brain of Lucy Taylor. Lucy is a 16 year old student in London, UK. The question posed is...


Does being tolerant require you to accept all religious convictions?

Before answering this question, the meaning of the word ‘accept’ must be established. The answer to the question differs depending on the various definitions. ‘Accept’ could imply that you simply recognise that other religious convictions besides your own exist--in that you accept that there are a variety of points of view. It could also mean that you allow or permit all religious convictions and do not hinder or prevent them from being practiced and preached. ‘Accept’ could also mean that you regard the religious convictions as proper, suitable or normal. This definition could be extended to the extent of meaning that you actually agree with all religious convictions. Moreover, ‘being tolerant’ needs to be defined. ‘Being tolerant’ means that you object to a view or action, i.e. the objection component, and you have the power to do something about the disagreeable view or action, but make a conscious decision not to act on your opposition.

Normally when nations, for example, accept the terms of a treaty, they are agreeing to the conditions outlined in the document. In this way, to answer this question the word ‘accept’ is given to imply that you approve or agree to all religious convictions. This, to begin with, is impossible in itself. It is impossible to approve of or agree with all religious convictions simply because a huge number of beliefs contradict each other entirely: you can only approve or agree with one or the other, not both. For example, if you were a tolerant individual and were accepting of both Hinduism and Islam, you would be contradicting yourself on the fundamental grounds that Islam is monotheistic and Hinduism is polytheistic, a religious conviction that for both faiths is the focal point of all their other beliefs. The other difficulty is that, if you believed in Christianity, but you accepted, as in, you approved of Hinduism, you should be a Hindu, not a Christian: the reason you originally became a Christian was because you agreed with Christian beliefs and practices, not Hindu beliefs and practices, otherwise, you would be a Hindu. In this way, it is apparent that, given that you are a tolerant individual, it is illogical to accept all religious convictions, even though you may be tolerant, when the meaning of ‘accept’ is to consider something right or acceptable.

It is important to realise, however, that it does not make sense in this question for ‘accept’ to mean to agree to or with simply because the very word tolerance means, as established in the introduction, that you disapprove of the view and yet decide not to act on your disapproval. If you agreed with the view, there would be nothing to be tolerant of because there would be nothing that you had an objection to.

If ‘accept’ means allow or permit all religious convictions, the answer to the question again changes. This definition falls under the first of four conceptions of tolerance, namely the permission conception, whereby you allow the practice and preaching of all religious convictions. It would seem obvious that a tolerant person should be tolerant of everything, otherwise they could not be called a tolerant person. This harks back to the concept of the limit of tolerance and the problem that arises when a religious conviction is completely unacceptable, intolerant or intolerable: the paradox of whether the intolerant should be tolerated by a tolerant individual or society. It could be argued that to be intolerant of intolerant views is to deny that tolerance is valuable, which is ironic considering that the pretext of this intolerance is that the view you are being intolerant of is also denying that tolerance is valuable.

The argument against this is that if the reason for tolerance is to respect autonomy, then it is unreasonable to tolerate views that do not respect autonomy. The view does not display tolerance in that, if it were the culture of the majority, it would reject and prevent autonomy. It seems that we would increase autonomy by not tolerating this view because we are preventing it from becoming more widespread and influencing many and allowing the view to exert its convictions over everyone thereby smothering their autonomy in due course. An example could be that of Islamist extremists. Our society proclaims to abhor violence to women, homophobia, and any other variety of inequality, yet we tolerate those who advocate Sharia Law which is diametrically opposed to Western democracy and the implementation of such law would result in the total destruction of tolerance. In this case, for the sake of protecting long term tolerance, perhaps it would be wiser to confront intolerance with intolerance. Moreover, it appears that the threshold of our tolerance is the intolerance towards our tolerant culture. The answer to the question therefore, appears that in some circumstances it is misguided to accept all religious convictions.

Conversely, being able to join and be convinced by these so called intolerant convictions is surely an expression of ones autonomy: the fact that it was the individuals’ choice to follow their lead. By removing these views you are basically saying that the individual is only allowed to be autonomous in the culture you deem as suitable, i.e. one without intolerance. You are not valuing their autonomy because you would be denying them the freedom to choose for themselves, you are censoring the available choices to only those you condone. Moreover, you are being as intolerant as those whom you condemn as being intolerant. They are intolerant because their convictions would prevent any view other than their own from being expressed, which is exactly what you would be doing if you prevented their view from being expressed because it differed from your own view. In a way, this seems to imply that a tolerant individual must accept all religious convictions, although they may be totally despicable and vile, because if they do not, they are denying both the value of autonomy and tolerance.

The last interpretation of the question is that you ‘accept’, in that you recognise that there are other religious convictions besides your own. This meaning comes under third and possibly fourth conception of tolerance which is the respect conception, summed up in Voltaire’s famous quote ‘I disagree with every word that he says, but defend to the death his right to say it’, and the esteem conception where you still value certain aspects of their convictions and even admire them for defending their convictions, though personally, you disagree. The first question that must be addressed with this in mind is that, by agreeing to accept all religious convictions on the grounds of your being a tolerant individual because you respect their opinions and you may even admire them, can you still criticise them, although you accept them? Tolerance does not prohibit criticism because without criticism our government would have no checks and balances; ideas could not be improved and modified; and we would be relinquishing our freedoms like those of freedom of speech, expression and thought. In this way, we are obviously allowed to criticise opposing religious convictions although we do nevertheless accept them, or in other words, acknowledge them. A point to note in relation to the original question is that if we did not tolerate all religious convictions there would be nothing to criticise and further, nothing to tolerate because nothing unacceptable would allowed to be expressed openly. If to 'accept', you simply have to recognise other religious convictions but are still allowed to criticise them and yet be a tolerant individual, then it is reasonable to accept all religious convictions because if you can argue and persuade, there is no reason why you should not accept all religious convictions: if you disagree, you could voice your disapproval and defeat the opposition though debate. For example, Hitchens and D'Souza incessantly argue on the subject of religion. Hitchens loathes religion but his revolt is intellectual, not physical. This suggests that if you are tolerant, you must accept all religious views because you still reserve the right to free speech as do your opposition and both of you have the equal ability to defeat the other through debate.

Depending on the definition of the word ‘accept’, the requirement to accept all religious convictions changes. It seems that there are limits to what extent do we ‘accept’ all religious convictions. If the religious convictions preach fiercely against everything our society stands for, then perhaps they should not be tolerated because as Benjamin Franklin said, ‘they who would give up an essential liberty and security (in a democracy), deserve neither liberty nor security’. At the same time, in not accepting these opposing religious convictions, we are essentially contradicting ourselves and everything our society stands for. There is no one formula for what to do in every circumstance, and no one stance for a tolerant person to take regardless of the individual situation. Each position must be judged wisely for, in some cases, tolerance and acceptance of all religious convictions is often used as either a disguise for cowardice to avoid disputes and controversies or to avoid having to think and actually come to a conclusion for each separate belief: it is easier to have a rule that is always followed. Tolerance and acceptance should not be exploited in this way and used make ones cowardice or idleness sound intelligent and thoughtful. The most reasonable conclusion, in my view, is to examine independently each religious conviction and to then make a discriminating and educated judgement for each on whether to accept it or counter it, rather than creating sweeping procedures that a tolerant person should obey for all religious convictions.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and don't necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought or its editors.