Tolerance, Liberty, and Thoughtfulness

Fresno Bee, November 17, 2020

Saturday is the International Day for Tolerance, which the United Nations has recognized since 1995. The United Nations explains that tolerance is “respect, acceptance, and appreciation” of diverse cultures and ways of life.

That’s a lovely idea. But tolerance is tricky. Do we have to tolerate intolerance? Can we censor those who express hateful and intolerant ideas? There are no easy answers here. And it is important to remember that censorship has often been used by churches and states to promote intolerance.

A guiding value for tolerance is liberty. To tolerate others is to leave them alone to pursue their own good in their own way. But harm provides a limit. If someone is harming you or violating your liberty, you need not tolerate them.

Is hateful speech harmful? That depends — on history, context, behavior, and intention. Hate is as complicated as love. And it does not exist in a vacuum. It is connected to anger, greed, impatience, violence and despair.

Nor does tolerance stand alone. It is connected to justice, courage, prudence, honesty and other virtues. These virtues ought to be woven together. But the goal of unifying the virtues is an aspiration that is difficult to achieve in our broken world.

Tolerance requires that we refrain from judging. But honesty requires that we speak our minds. Tolerance encourages us to leave others alone. But love compels us to intervene. And justice requires that we defend the innocent.

Genuine tolerance considers these complications and seeks a delicate balance. Intolerance operates differently. Intolerance simplifies. Intolerance reduces complexity to a binary choice between black and white.

The palette of tolerance includes more colors. Tolerance grows when the imagination expands to see the depth of human diversity. Tolerance is taught through art, literature, history and philosophy. We learn tolerance when we study other languages, when we listen to new music, and when we read the poetry of other cultures.

Hellen Keller understood this. She said, “The highest result of education is tolerance.” She explained that genuine education “teaches us to unfold the natural sympathies of the heart.”

Those natural sympathies must be grounded upon a claim about human rights. Every human person has an equal right to respect. No person or group is inherently better (or worse) than any other. There is a kind of humility associated with tolerance that is quite different from the arrogant pride of racism and ethnocentrism.

Tolerance is also linked to curiosity and compassion. Tolerant people are interested in what other people think, believe, and experience. They put themselves in the place of the other. The Golden Rule of tolerance is to tolerate others as you would have them tolerate you.

Some 350 years ago, John Locke stated that toleration was “agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Intolerant religion demands external conformity. But Locke said that this was of no use in creating genuine religious belief. “All the life and power of true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing.” Each person’s salvation is up to her. As Locke explained, “God will not save men against their will.”

Locke’s thinking had an impact on the American founders. The founders were not perfect. They tolerated slavery. But they also gave us the First Amendment. And Thomas Jefferson boldly stated that he would never “bow to the shrine of intolerance.” He rejected the arrogance of those who would exercise “tyranny over religious faith.”

During the intervening centuries, we have learned to be more tolerant of differences of religion, as well as sexual orientation, ability and race. We have also become more intolerant of racism, sexism and religious intolerance.

We are still figuring out where to draw the line. Some fuzzy issues remain, which require us to think carefully about all of our values. And this is the point: tolerance requires thought. The United Nations Declaration on Tolerance says, we teach tolerance by helping young people “develop capacities for independent judgment, critical thinking and ethical reasoning.”

Tolerance is a virtue of thinking people. We are not born knowing how to be tolerant. Rather, we learn tolerance as we expand our imaginations and understand the complexity of our common humanity.

September 22, 2017November 18, 2017

Welcoming Strangers, Moral Thinking, and Diversity

Want a more peaceful world?
Start by learning about other cultures and languages

Fresno Bee, September 22, 2017

If we want to broaden our thinking, we must enlarge our vocabularies. Recent research shows how learning a foreign language changes the way we think about ethics. Experiments conducted at the University of Chicago indicate that non-native speakers tend be less emotional and more impartial in ethical decision-making.

Researchers confronted people with a typical moral dilemma. Imagine there is a run-away train headed for a group of five people. Is it morally correct to push a bystander in front of the train, slowing it down and saving those five people?

Non-native speakers are more likely to choose to kill the one in order to save the five. People are less likely to reach that conclusion when asked the question in their native language.

One explanation offered is that people who think in a secondary language tend to process information in a more formal and less intuitive way. Thinking in a native language is more deeply rooted in intuitions, emotions and taboos.

SECOND-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION TEACHES HUMILITY. OUR IGNORANCE OF OTHER LANGUAGES SHOULD MAKE US LESS PROUD AND SELF-ASSURED

This research is thought-provoking. Could international negotiations be affected by the choice of language? Or consider what this suggests about debates about immigration and multiculturalism. Immigrants may be thinking in more objective terms, while monolingual nativists are more emotional and driven by intuition.

This research also leads us to imagine that foreign language acquisition could help build a more peaceful world. Learning to communicate in a foreign language opens the door to a more cosmopolitan point of view. A new language helps you see the world differently. It also helps you understand the limits of your own language and worldview.

Second-language acquisition teaches humility. The easy conversations of children babbling in a foreign tongue are mind-blowing when you do not know the language. Our ignorance of their languages should make us less proud and self-assured.

Philosophers have long been interested in the language question. In the 17th century, the philosopher Leibniz—one of the inventors of calculus—hatched a plan to construct a universal language. This language would be used to transmit science. It would facilitate global commerce. And it would help create world peace.

In the 19th century, philosophers abandoned this cosmopolitan project in favor of an emphasis on national identity and the rich worldviews found in the depths of culture. The philosopher Hegel once said that we only truly possess ideas that are expressed in our mother tongue.

Romantics like Hegel celebrated the deep poetic resonances of life, language and thought. It is true that the overtones and connotations of the mother tongue run deep. But Romanticism can breed ethnolinguistic nationalism, which is divisive and undermines the cosmopolitan ideal.

These days the dream of a universal language has given way to the need for linguistic sensitivity and cultural pluralism. Instead of advocating a universal language, we need more and better understanding of other people’s languages and worldviews.

The philosopher Wittgenstein once said, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” This implies that we can only think what we can say. If our vocabulary and grammar are limited, so too is our thinking.

WHILE SOME PEOPLE REMAIN WEDDED TO CLOSED-MINDED NATIVISM, THE FUTURE IS COSMOPOLITAN, MULTICULTURAL, AND POLYLINGUISTIC

This sounds abstract, so an example might help. Consider how the introduction of foreign words into English helps us think more clearly. In English, for example, we have one word for love. But there are three words for love in Greek: eros (sexual love), philia (the love of friendship), and agape (brotherly or universal love). Understanding these words can help us think more carefully about love.

Or consider how much the American vocabulary (and diet) has been enriched by the inclusion of foreign words for food, from burritos and croissants to samosas and tofu.

While some people remain wedded to closed-minded nativism, the future is cosmopolitan, multicultural, and polylinguistic. We benefit from being uprooted. Change causes us to grow. It is good to be forced to think about things in new ways – and in a new language.

If you want to broaden your mind, travel, eat new foods and learn a new language. This can affect the way you think about ethics. It can make you more humble. And it can also help you develop agape, the kind of love that is hospitable and welcoming to strangers.

http://www.fresnobee.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/andrew-fiala/article174830841.html

February 21, 2016March 10, 2016

Religious Pluralism

Today, It’s Impossible to Ignore Religious Diversity

Shreveport Times, Sunday Feb. 21, 2016

It may have once been possible to ignore religious diversity. But globalization, immigration, and the Internet have ended the illusion of homogeneity. We disagree about religion. In fact, people have always disagreed about religion. The best solution for living well in the midst of radical religious disagreement is an open-mind, a compassionate heart, and a political system that provides for extensive religious liberty.

While the candidates slug it out on campaign trail, President Obama has been actively reaching out to diverse religious communities. He has offered insight into the problem of religious diversity—and created an opportunity for philosophical reflection on this crucial topic.

Obama spoke as the Israeli embassy in January. He visited a mosque in early February. Two days later, he spoke to a multi-faith assembly at the National Prayer Breakfast. Obama is spreading a message of inclusion, tolerance, and hospitality.

At the Prayer Breakfast, Obama said we should pray, “that our differences ultimately are bridged; that the God that is in each of us comes together, and we don’t divide.” That’s an important idea at a time when religious violence is on the rise and mainstream parties are flirting with intolerance.

We certainly need more tolerance and hospitality. But we also need to understand that behind these important values there are deep and substantial disagreements. And we need to see the value of secular systems of government, which protect religious liberty, while permitting substantial disagreement about fundamental things.

Some people affirm a light and breezy kind of pluralism, which holds that all religions point in the same direction. That’s a nice idea. But it is not true. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and atheists disagree about fundamental truths.

We should admit these disagreements. Indeed, the fun of studying religion lies in discovering new and interesting ideas about fundamental reality. Our differences are important. But we can agree to disagree and thereby avoid violence, hatred, and bigotry.

Tolerance is a value for mature people, who are brave enough to acknowledge that disagreement is not a threat. Hospitality is a value for people who are curious about the wild and wonderful ideas that strangers have. Inclusion is a value for those who feel compassion for the excluded and abused.

The way forward is to cultivate courage, curiosity, and compassion. We need to understand the depth of religious diversity, while affirming the importance of toleration, inclusion, and hospitality.

At the Israeli embassy Obama stated, “An attack on any faith is an attack on all of our faiths. It is an attack on that Golden Rule at the heart of so many faiths…” He is right. We need to imagine ourselves as “the other”—as a stranger in a strange land, where people believe strange things—and imagine how we would like to be treated.

This is a deceptively simple solution to intolerance. The Golden Rule is part of a common ethical core found in the world’s religious traditions. That ethical core is shared despite radical disagreement about other things.

The Golden Rule provides a basis for hospitality and inclusion. But political toleration rests on slightly different grounds. The First Amendment to the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Behind this idea is an entire philosophy of politics and religion. The political philosophy of secular states holds that government should stay out of the religion business and that each person should be free to find their own answers to questions of ultimate concern. Related to this is a conception of religion, which holds that religion is something private and internal to persons.

External conformity has little to do with sincerity of belief. And religious faith cannot be subject to coercive force. I could torture you and force you to make a confession of faith. But a coerced confession does not indicate what you truly believe.

If the state uses its power to enforce religious conformity, all we end up with is violence and misery—but no increase in faith. Indeed, coercion often backfires in the realm of ideas, since it discredits the ideas of those who resort to force.

At the National Prayer Breakfast Obama pointed out that “fear does funny things.” Fear, he said, can lead us to lash out against people who are different. And it can erode the bonds of community. When we are fearful we resort to coercion. We want to destroy the thing we fear and we learn to hate.

The solution is an education that creates curiosity and compassion. Martin Luther King, Jr. once explained that “Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.”

King is right. The more you know, the less you hate. The foundation for a better world rests upon toleration, hospitality, and inclusion. Our ongoing task is to strengthen that foundation and build upon it—in our schools and institutions, and in our hearts and minds.

March 24, 2012September 18, 2014

Religious intolerance: Politics is the problem

Fresno Bee, March 24, 2012

Is there one true religion or any reason to tolerate people from another religion? I discussed this question with Professor Yehuda Gellman the other day in Jerusalem. Gellman is a Jewish philosopher who defends the idea of “religious exclusivism.”

If you believe that your religion possesses the true and only path to salvation, then you are an exclusivist. The opposite of exclusivism is “pluralism.” Pluralists think that the world’s religions are each aiming in the same direction. Pluralists want to include diverse religions rather than exclude them.

One of pluralism’s greatest defenders was John Hick, a theologian who died just last month. Hick thought that the world’s religions had common “spiritual and moral fruits.” He denied that any single religion had an exclusive claim upon truth or salvation. Instead he thought that each religion approached God in way that is colored by local culture and tradition.

Hick quoted the Sufi poet Rumi to make his point: “The lamps are different but the Light is the same; it comes from beyond.” In Hick’s own words, there is a “rainbow” of faiths, with each religion refracting God’s divine light in its own way.

Professor Gellman understands Hick’s pluralist ideal; he knew Hick personally. But Gellman believes that the Jews have an exclusive relation with God as the chosen people. Gellman surprised me, however, by arguing that exclusivists can be tolerant.

He argued that there is no necessary connection between exclusivism and intolerance. An exclusive commitment to a loving and gentle religion can lead to peaceful interfaith relations. If you believe that your religion is the one true religion, but you also believe that your religion commands you to tolerate others, then you should be tolerant.

Gellman embodies this tolerant and loving spirit. He is a kind and thoughtful man, who is involved in interfaith work in Jerusalem.

Within hours of speaking with Professor Gellman, I was reminded that many exclusivists are not so generous or reflective, as I saw the video of Pastor Dennis Terry introducing Rick Santorum in Louisiana. How disappointing that religious intolerance is rearing its ugly head back home, while I am studying it here in Israel.

In case you didn’t see it, Pastor Terry said: “This nation was founded as a Christian nation… there’s only one God and his name is Jesus… Listen to me, if you don’t love America, and you don’t like the way we do things, I have one thing to say: Get Out! We don’t worship Buddha, we don’t worship Mohammed, we don’t worship Allah, we worship God, we worship God’s son Jesus Christ.”

Terry’s rant shows us the danger of religious exclusivism. If you believe that your God is the only God, then it makes sense to lash out against religious believers who do not love your God or your idealize image of a Christian nation.

The problem here is not Christianity itself. There is a tolerant and loving message in Christianity. Jesus taught: “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not and you will not be condemned.” The problem is not Christianity but politics. Politicians have used Christian ideas to suppress unpopular minorities since the time of Constantine, the first Christian political leader.

History shows us the danger of mixing exclusivist religious belief with political power, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust. Politics and religion must be kept apart. We should be outraged when a Presidential candidate nods in agreement with a preacher who says to the Buddhist and Muslim citizens of the United States: “Get Out!”

Gellman’s solution to this problem would be to remind us that even Christian exclusivists can find reasons within their tradition to be tolerant. Hick’s solution is to ask us to remember that there is a common source behind the rainbow of faiths.

I’m not convinced that there is anything beyond the rainbow. And I worry that even tolerant religions easily become intolerant, when they become political.

The solution, then, is not religious. It is political. Despite Terry’s rhetoric, the real reason to love America is that it is not a Christian nation. The reason to love America is precisely that you don’t have to “get out” if you don’t like the way other religious people think.