The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #136446 Message #3117100
Posted By: Stringsinger
19-Mar-11 - 02:15 PM
Thread Name: BS: Another View of Religion
Subject: RE: BS: Another View of Religion
Well said, Joe.
One of the problems is when there is a push, there is a push back. That is not always a rational response.
Intolerance is intolerable. Ad-hominem name calling is never a legitimate foundation for a rational discussion.
The Mudcatters that use insults to promote their views are "shooting themselves in the foot."
Intolerance is the enemy of Freethought.
I respect a rational discussion that may contain disagreement as a valid form of discourse but not insults, name-calling or verbal violence (that's what it is).
Views of religion must be very personal and not evidence to be defended in a court of law unless they transgress the Separation that Thomas Jefferson so brilliantly called for.
Fortunately, Americans have a legacy in our Constitution, The First Amendment, a brilliant idea that endures regardless of how some in the Wrong Wing spin it.
Regardless of whether it's a discussion of religion, politics,philosophy or whatever,
insults, intolerance and anger have little place in it.
You can have a sense of justice which may contain outrage, but ultimately the anger is not what prevails when justice has finally arrived. A strategic goal, well thought out,
peacefully articulated with clarity and conviction will win in the pages of history.
The Constitution, the First Amendment, has made Americans the beneficiary of a wise idea and we have inherited a sense of proportional justice that carries over today in our
nurturance of organized labor, the common good, equality and tolerance that defines us.