Re: Religious Freedom

Started by Alex McConahay, 02/05/2003 02:11PM
Posted 02/05/2003 02:11PM Opening Post
Bill,

Your position as I understand it is that people should be free to believe what they will. However, a significant part of some religions is that their adherents should proselytize. Many evangelical Christians, nearly all fundamentalist Christians, and many Moslems, feel that they are not doing their religious duties unless they are trying to convert others. Hence, they use every Forum (or in Herb's world, this forum) to preach their beliefs.

Other religions (notably the more eastern religions like the Hindus and the Buddhists) and some Christian factions focus less on proselytizing, and are willing to accept other religions more easily. They would tend to believe the way you do about accepting religions.

What do you do when you are allowing somebody to believe what they will, and what they believe is that you should be converted?

Alex
Posted 02/05/2003 02:22PM #1
There is an old buddhist parable about blind men in a room trying to describe an elephant. Each one touches a different part of the elephant, tusk, trunk, tail, leg, etc. and arrives at a very different description. They proceed to argue furiously about what sort of animal this is.

It is a parable of the many-sidedness of things and also the foolishness of judging others' perceptions of something you yourself cannot fully understand.

This attitude may explain the higher tolerance of buddhism and some other eastern religions. In this application the blind men represent the world's religions, the elephant represents God. The parable could even be extended to include atheists (a blind man walks through the room, never bumps into the elephant, and concludes the other men are imagining things).