There are few things that annoy me more; well actually it makes my blood boil, then intolerance.
To be fair there are a few things I cannot tolerate, but these tend to be things like cruelty or nastiness in general, but seeing a friends post this morning really pressed too many buttons. One was equating religion with racism and the other inferring that the Bible should be classified as ‘hate speech’.
The latter with the logo “If homosexuals had a book that said Christians should be stoned to death … How long before you called it ‘Hate speech’? was particularly amusing because as far as I recollect Jesus never said anyone should be stoned to death, not even the woman caught in the act of adultery (btw what happened to the man?). Of course that points to the problem of ‘Militant Humanism’ in that it’s factual base against Christianity is shaky to say the least and if scratch the surface of the quote you can topple the argument fairly quickly. To be fair if I was making comments against Formula One racing then I would be on dodgy ground and my comments would be as equally as facile.
The second was more fundamentally wrong “Religion will eventually become as offensive and unacceptable has racism” as it was directed people of faith and smacked of intolerance, and that is what fundamentally scares me about Richard Dawkins and the simplistic nature of his adherents. According to some of the ‘info pics’ I am anti-science, anti-women, worst than Nazis, and naive. I admit I am probably a bit naive, even at 50+ – but so what?
What is wrong is the licence given by “Militant Humanism” to be as intolerant as they accuse as everyone, the irony is painful and it is left to people of faith to start the dialogue, to practice the ‘grace’ that they want.
To me, and I know this is a nightmare scenario, is that this intolerance grows into hatred, to justify an ever increasing militancy, that crystallises into more direct action. The nightmare scenario is Churches being burned, Muslims attacked, and Jews persecuted. Dawkins zeal is almost missionary, and his disciples not shy of a fight, and I left wondering why we need to fight, why can’t all accept each the way we are?