A question of morals

I must admit I am perplexed. I’ve been called a lot of things in life, but this has got to be a first… someone called me a bigot. Part of me is shocked… the other part finds this hilarious. It’s so obvious that this person doesn’t know me – because I know all of my friends are laughing…

According to the American Heritage Dictionary a bigot is “One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.”

You can read my foray into an attempt at logical discussion here:http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2006/06/truth-about-left-behind-video-game.html

Which is a response to an article on Talk2Action, here:http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/6/1/82458/92817

(Tip: read the T2A article first, then the cadre site… just to keep the logical flow)

In all seriousness, my friend Turtle figures that my rhetorical opponent threw out the word so that any logical argumentation would be stopped. In the parlance of the BITE model (cult awareness), it’s a “thought stopping cliché”. Anyone who dare question his point of view must be intolerant and therefore a bigot. End of discussion.

To be honest though – I am intolerant - - of intolerance!
I have a deep-seated hatred of hatred!

And so I ponder the question – if someone desires to be tolerant, does this mean they must also tolerate intolerance?

This is a question that often trips up those opposed to hatred and hate speech. In specific, the Religious Right has figured out that this is a great way to shut down opposing voices calling them intolerant: No, you’re the one being intolerant – this is our religion. You are denigrating Christianity!

First, this argument is using the fallacy of equivocation– which is using the same word with two different meanings in an argument. In this case, the word Christianity is being used to describe both mainstream Christian theology, and dominionism. It’s a logically unsound argument, and I’m just not going to give it any more time.

I’m more interested in dealing with the morality of intolerance.

In a future post, (working on it at the moment) I will explain the existence of universal moral laws, and how intolerance, such as espoused by the Religious Right, is immoral, because it is based on factual inaccuracies in their arguments.

Stay tuned!

(BTW – I’ve stopped posting on the cadre thread – once someone starts pulling Holocaust rhetoric… That’s a hot button for me – I didn’t feel I could continue.)

-Emily