[Buddha-l] Erasure

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 16:25 -0500, curt wrote:

> We only disagree about whether or not Christianity represents a
> typical, even paradigmatic, example for all Religions with respect to
> the question of tolerance. You hold that it does, whereas I disagree.

No, you still have not got my view straight. Go back and check the
archives. I have never disagreed that the Abrahamic religions are
unusually intolerant. I would not single out Christianity as especially
intolerant among the Abrahamic religions; Judaism and Islam are on at
least on a par with Christianity, and Islam seems to surpass both its
two older siblings.

The question of tolerance has never been under dispute. Where I perceive
our disagreement is that I think that Christianity offers a typical
example of all religions with respect to the tendency to hold views
without evidence. From the beginning I quoted with approval Paul Bloom's
estimate that 90% of the human race has a genetic predisposition to hold
beliefs in the absence of any good evidence. As I understood your
response, you disputed that claim. Or perhaps you never quite understood
what my claim was and therefore were not aware that bringing up the
question of intolerance was changing the subject from irrationality in
general (which I claim all religions have in about equal measure) to the
particular form of irrationality that manifests itself as intolerance
(which I claim all religions have, but perhaps none so much as the
Abrahamic religions and such ugly offspring of those religions as
Marxism and various kinds of Fascism.)


-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico