Non-believers must not be silenced to save the feelings of the faithful

Editorial by Terry Sanderson, NSS Newsline, 9th May 2008

Non-believers must not be silenced to save the feelings of the faithful
Lord Lamont, speaking in parliament the other day said:

"Part of the tension between Islam and the West is not a clash of religions, but a clash between belief and unbelief.

We simply do [not] understand or appreciate how deep, how embedded or how strong is religion in many parts of the world. Not so long ago, a friend of mine and Member of the other place [House of Commons] told me how he went to the Middle East and rather fancied himself as someone who could talk to people of extreme views there. He met someone from the spectrum of political Islam and they did not get on very well. After a while, the Muslim on the other side of the table said,

'Well, we are not agreeing politically, but there is one thing we have in common: we believe in the same God', to which my friend replied, 'I do not believe in God at all'.

That is the not the way in which this dialogue can proceed constructively. We have an aggressive secularism in the West which is deeply antipathetic to people in other parts of the world."

I had to read this deeply intolerant statement twice to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me. The implications of what Norman Lamont is saying are shocking.

He seems to suggest that if you don't have religious beliefs it is somehow rude or counterproductive to say so. It is this kind of stupid thinking that allows religious people to get away with murder (sometimes quite literally).

Under no circumstances — Normal Lamont seems to be saying — try to make clear that you don't support the sometimes grotesque beliefs of the faithful.

Admittedly when in Rome (or the Middle East) you should be diplomatic and try not to upset your host, but that does not give your host the right to force you into pretending to subscribe to beliefs that you do not have.

If we are to inhabit the world together, religious and non-religious people alike, then tolerance has to be a two-way process. It cannot be unquestioning respect for religion and automatic disrespect for those who cannot bring themselves to believe.

Lord Lamont's statement should be disregarded by everyone, whether they have a religion or not. Non-believers have as much right to be honest about where they are coming from as have believers. Non-belief is a legitimate and defensible standpoint that should not be yielded to satisfy intolerant religious believers.

Thought For The World - Tolerance should not be tolerant of the intolerant

AC Grayling

from Think Humanist by Humanist Society of Scotland

Thought for the day - Monday - Darwin Day

Original audio source

Transcript
A.C. Grayling 12th February 2007
One of the essentials of a good community that is, a community in which each of us can build flourishing lives for ourselves and those we care about, is tolerance. Tolerance matters for the obvious reason that the diversity of interests and desires people have is sometimes so great that we don't even understand why others should think and behave as they do; and yet we acknowledge their right to do so, because we cherish the same right for ourselves.

Thus the very possibility of society turns on tolerance. Society involves people getting along peacefully all the time and co-operatively most of the time, and neither is possible unless people recognise the entitlement of others to their choices, and give them space accordingly.

But here, of course, is the familiar rub: the paradox of tolerance, which is that a tolerant society is at risk of tolerating those who are intolerant, and allowing movements to grow which foster intolerance.

The profoundly dismaying spectacle of the contemporary Netherlands illustrates this point. What was one of the most inclusive and welcoming societies in Europe has been stabbed in the heart by people it sheltered and who have grown into intolerant activists wishing to impose conformity and censorship on others by violence. And alas, it has happened here too.

The remedy for the paradox of tolerance is, of course, that tolerance can't tolerate intolerance. But this truism is often greeted with the response that if tolerance is intolerant of something, it is in breach of itself: it becomes self-defeating in another way.

The answer is to insist that although it's natural to think that tolerance is a warm, woolly, feel-good attitude, in fact it is a principle: it's an ethical demand that everyone should respect everyone else's rights and liberties. And this does the trick all by itself. Tolerance is not a demand to license just anything whatever, least of all behaviour that threatens the rights of others.

Tolerance thus has its central place in the good society along with other principles that stop it from being a merely flabby acceptance that anything goes. These are the principles of pluralism and individual liberty, which essentially require tolerance, but indicate its rational limit. Insisting on this vital point is what explains why tolerance not only cannot but must not tolerate intolerance.