5stringJeff
Senior Member
There's a real difference between tolerance and validation, and I think the line is confused in many cases, but especially when talking about religion.
Tolerance is definied as :the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others. (www.dictionary.com) In America, the government is instructed to tolerate the religious beliefs of all its citizens. As Americans, we regularly practice toleration of different religious beliefs; we understand that not everyone believes the same as we do, but we are under obligation to allow them to believe that way.
Not all countries are like this. Saudi Arabia, for example, regularly jails people for speaking about Christianity, or even for possessing Bibles. North Korea jails people for just about everything, but on their list of official no-nos is professing faith in religion. Sri Lanka and Myanmar are two other countries that come to mind in which toleration is not practiced. In essence, toleration is the freedom of religion that Americans enjoy because of the First Amendment.
Validation, on the other hand, is something different. It is defined as: the act of validating; finding or testing the truth of something. But many today confuse the meaning of these two words. Many people say that we should "tolerate" all religions, when what they mean is that we should validate all religions. We can - and do - tolerate all religions; however, because different religions have mutually exclusive tenets, we cannot validate the truth of all of them equally. For example, either there is one personal Creator God, as Judaism, Chrsitianity, and Islam teach, or there is not, as Hinduism, Buddhism, and humanism teach. Either it is right to kill in the name of your faith, as Islam teaches, or it is wrong, as Christianity teaches. By testing religions in this way, we can get to a point where we can validate the truth about each religion and ascertain which (if any) is correct.
Tolerance is definied as :the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others. (www.dictionary.com) In America, the government is instructed to tolerate the religious beliefs of all its citizens. As Americans, we regularly practice toleration of different religious beliefs; we understand that not everyone believes the same as we do, but we are under obligation to allow them to believe that way.
Not all countries are like this. Saudi Arabia, for example, regularly jails people for speaking about Christianity, or even for possessing Bibles. North Korea jails people for just about everything, but on their list of official no-nos is professing faith in religion. Sri Lanka and Myanmar are two other countries that come to mind in which toleration is not practiced. In essence, toleration is the freedom of religion that Americans enjoy because of the First Amendment.
Validation, on the other hand, is something different. It is defined as: the act of validating; finding or testing the truth of something. But many today confuse the meaning of these two words. Many people say that we should "tolerate" all religions, when what they mean is that we should validate all religions. We can - and do - tolerate all religions; however, because different religions have mutually exclusive tenets, we cannot validate the truth of all of them equally. For example, either there is one personal Creator God, as Judaism, Chrsitianity, and Islam teach, or there is not, as Hinduism, Buddhism, and humanism teach. Either it is right to kill in the name of your faith, as Islam teaches, or it is wrong, as Christianity teaches. By testing religions in this way, we can get to a point where we can validate the truth about each religion and ascertain which (if any) is correct.
