This I believe....

[Outis the Unready]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138

A bunch of UEWwies and I did essays for an internal list based on the above.
Since we all were UEWwies, the essays were damnably similar.

However, I suggest some [gasp] NEW CONTENT...

Howsabout some of us discuss what it is we believe, so that we can start being about "worldwide religious tolerance" and not about the Pastafarian Diaspora.

It can be a....gasp...project.

[Opsa]

We had a thread that was all about this called "Interfaith Assembly Hall" back in the old monastery, so I'm glad you brought it up. You probably didn't get enough time in to discover it.

I think that starting this discussion back up is a fine idea.

[Outis the Unready]

SWEET!!!

Maybe it's own Comp theo board?

[beagle]

I suppose my core values are that people everywhere are pretty much the same. i.e. have the same motivations, vices, ambitions, vanities etc.
For me Shakespeare expresses that best (no doubt in part because of English being my only competent language), and is the nearest I get to a Holy book.   Of course the sort of humanist ideas permeating  Shakespeare are very similar to, or derived from Biblical ideas, and those of other religions.

Perhaps more interesting is where the humanist and religious can diverge. The belief that this transitory world is so unimportant that we can always afford to "turn the other cheek" for example, or conversely that acting in any way, however violent, can be justified by Divine revelation of the gods of a major religion.
So my personal limitations when it comes to tolerance are in understanding the balance to be struck between those (at the edges of mainstream religion) who claim absolute knowledge, and those who only claim to be groping for adequate working knowledge. Hence my post in another thread. I'm interested in how tolerant one should be of the intolerant.
When we say we aim to be tolerant, is there an unspoken coda, "as long as you don't think too differently from me"?
What is the correct attitude? Is there one?

[Aphos]

I love a quote from one of the Discworld books (I forget which one)...

"The presence of a man who is searching for the truth is infinitely preferable to the presence of a man who knows it."

[Griffin NoName]

I'm interested in how tolerant one should be of the intolerant.
When we say we aim to be tolerant, is there an unspoken coda, "as long as you don't think too differently from me"?
What is the correct attitude? Is there one?

Spot on with that. In my new career, which is not yet even at ground level never mind off the ground, we have to be tolerant of anything in anyone with specific exceptions - harm to self or others and terrorism (however one defines these is never specified).

I suspect it is actually easier to do this professionally than personally.

[Sibling Chatty]

I'm pretty much of the 'don't hurt others, don't destroy--and if you want to destroy yourself, i'll try to talk you out of it' school. Speaking only for myself...i'm evidently the rare Christian humanist (not the only one, by a long shot, but other "Christians" don't tolerate us well) that believes that I don't have any business telling someone else what to believe, my only responsibility is to be honest about what I believe, to tell you if you bring it up, and to express my feelings honestly. (When placed in a position where I can do so.)

Yeah, the whole 'bleeding heart liberal' thing plays into it..sorry, but I can't see the spirituality in one who will allow his brother or sister to be in need, hurting, hungry, damaged or destroyed by war.

Anger and hatred can often be dispelled by honest communication.
Fear is a major cause of hate.
Lack of knowledge is a major cause of fear.

And a combative attitude does nobody any good.

[Bluenose]

To me, with the sole eception of some branches of mathematics, there is no such thing as absolute knowledge, thus just about everything becomes a matter of belief.

Whilst for day to day convenience it is useful to assume that certain things are true - that the sun will come up (although I acknowledge that that is an illusion, I do understand astronomy), that my car will start when I get in it, that sort of thing, I'm sure you get the drift - when we start to get deep and meaningful, I don't think that way at all.  What I do, at the deep and meaningful level, is assign probablilities to things, so things like whether the sun will come up, or perhaps it would be better stated that the Earth will continue to rotate giving the appearance of sunrise, I ascribe a very high probability almost to the point of certainty, and other things such as whether I am going to levitate off my chair and float up through the roof of my house I ascribe a very low certainty almost to the point of negative certainty and many other things fall somewhere in between.

The important point is that I always allow that I may be wrong on even the most apparently certain (positively of negatively) things.

I am a very firm believer in the rational, scientific view of things and if people make a claim for something, I ask for the evidence.  The more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the requied evidence.  I do not believe things just because someone says it is so.  Obviously if a recognised expert says something is so in his or her field of expertise, then that will get the statement a reasonable degree of probability on my personal "probability meter", but I will not move it closer to one of the reasonably certain ends of the guage until I have considered the statement in relation to other evidence I know of (or can find) and considered the reasonableness of the statement.  Even experts can be wrong, after all.

I do not believe in any god or gods for the simple reason that I do not see anything that requires a god to explain.  In my view gods are a human invention.  This does not mean that I insist on my POV being imposed on everyone else, others are of course entitled to make whatever conclusions they wish.  It just seems a great pity to me that so many people simply go along with the religion they happen to be born into without ever going through any real critical thought process to determine whether they really, personally believe.  It has been my experience that so many people simply do not want to have to think about things and they simply want someone else to tell them what to think.  It is sad, but it is fact of life.

One of the things that attracts me here is finding peole who have gone through the thought process.  It allows us to discuss these things without disrespect.  Who knows, we might even learn something from each other in the process. 

Plus I get to be a pirate.

Nick

[Sibling Chatty]

Yup. Piracy is an important thing. Hang the temperature, it's a way to 'take back' our piratical nature--ever watch a bunch of primates play?? The playing generally includes some sort of "I have it, you want it, we'll pretend to fight for it" or hide and seek game...but their real life often contains similar acts. (Zoo docents at the Audubon Zoo had offices near the back of the primate enclosures. I used to think that the baboons looked a lot like the faculty congress at Loyola.)

I also despair for people that have never though through what they believe and why. "My family have ALWAYS been..." is the worst excuse for ANY belief, whether political, religious, philosophical, philanthropical... If you can't defend a belief anyway but through family history, chances are you know very little about it.

Those who adopt a religion for expediency or fashion are even more clueless. The Republiclones that become 'religious' on the outside and remain as unthinking as they were before are a particular irritant.

I figure everybody's got a right to believe what they want, but if you've never THOUGHT about it, don't try to push it on others. If you HAVE thought about it, you should know better.

[Aggie]

I love a quote from one of the Discworld books (I forget which one)...

"The presence of a man who is searching for the truth is infinitely preferable to the presence of a man who knows it."

Small Gods, I think.  An especially appropriate piece of Pratchett for the Monastery, I think.  The 'small gods' concept fits quite well with my beliefs as well, me being the sole true believer in my God.