Religious Toleration

[nemorathwald]

The manger scene in front of the civic activity center near R's new apartment.


The sign reads "THIS DISPLAY DOES NOT REPRESENT ANY ONE RELIGION." That is counterfactual but I'll give them an "A" for effort. The photos were taken last week; when I drove past this morning, the sign had been torn down.

Every Christmas Eve and Easter I get paid to operate a video camera for the services of the church I used to work for. As I sat listening to the sermon titled "Yes Sam Harris, There Is A God", in between moments of slack-jawed astonishment that any pastor would make a favorable comparison between Santa and one of the most intellectually sophisticated ideas in human history, it also occurred to me to wonder: "If we secularists are really all that intolerant, how would he explain my presence here?"

I'll tell you how I explain it. Friendship. It's not some forced artificial obedience to an ideal of tolerance, it's sincere friendship with the pastors, staff, and members, pure and simple. I was no less chummy with the organist just because he thinks I shouldn't like technology so much, no less nervous around the cute girl just because she thought R should have treated her medical problems with prayer, no less friendly with her dad just because he agrees with Jerry Falwell about 9/11 being a punishment from God, because one learns that ideology is best left on soapboxes and set aside otherwise. With doctrinaire standards, none of us could have any friends. Better yet, I like to think of my life as a web-comic starring a cast of eccentric and opinionated goofballs like myself. That makes everybody seem lovable and their quirks enrich my experience. If that's not toleration I don't know what is.

Sam Harris might agree. He's one of my personal heroes, and I don't think the pastor's unflattering interpretation of "Letter To A Christian Nation" was more accurate than Harris' unflattering interpretation of the Christian bible. Harris, and Dawkins, and Dennett, are remarkably civil and even gentle. It's difficult to recognize that, because faith has had sacred cow priviledges for so long that any opposition is seen as ugly.

I recognize good people. I've learned that the virtue or monstrousness of someone's opinions seldom has any correlation to the virtue or monstrousness of their behavior, so we must be judged by actions. Given a set of extremely different drivers who approach your broken-down car on the highway, one driver who is a racist pig, another who is an atheist, another who is devoutly religious, and so forth, the odds of which one will pull over to help you is pretty much even. Sweet and kind people can mouth the most awful atrocities while on a soapbox but not go through with them when they witness real people in real pain; the other side of that coin is that sociopaths can be very gifted at faking what you want to hear.

That goes to show that Matthew 12:34 is another place Jesus of Nazareth was wrong, by the way. On that note, if I ever write a book of the type Harris, Dawkins and Dennet have written, one advantage I have that they lack is a knowledge of theology.

Happy Holidays, everybody. And no, there is no formulation of well-wishes that would offend me, so don't worry about it.