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What is truth? What is the voice of culture?
more to come... wanting to develop a page that challenges learners to examine the question of Truth, how their culture speaks to that, how humanism speaks to it, and how other voices answer the question: What is Truth? I would like it to go in the direction of comparative analysis. We'll see how it goes.
Let's examine the value of tolerance...
Traditional tolerance is understood as accepting that others may hold a different belief, value or lifestyle without necessarily giving your approval of the belief, value or lifestyle. The new, postmodern definition of tolerance is based on the belief that "truth is relative to the community in which a person participates" (Stanley J. Grenz, in his book Primer to Postmodernism), and therefore posits that "since there are many different communities there are many different truths." The new definition of tolerance says, in effect, "Everyone has an equal right to believe or say what he things is right" (Josh McDowell, The New Tolerance, 1998, p. 19).
"In order to be tolerant (according to the new tolerance), you must agree that another person's position is just as valid as your own. In order to be truly tolerant... you must give your approval, your endorsement, your sincere support to their beliefs and behaviors" (McDowell, 1998, 22).
APPROVE, ENDORSE, LEGITIMIZE
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Tolerance as traditionally understood:
Respecting and protecting the legitimate rights of others, even those with whom you disagree and those who are different from you. Cliche` form: "Everyone has a right to his own opinion." Listening to and learning from other perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds. Living peaceably alongside others, in spite of differences.
Valuing, respecting, and accepting others without necessarily approving of or participating in his or her beliefs or behavior. Attending a religous event, for instance, without having to participate in the event. Being an observer of a cultural event without having to convert to the beliefs and values of that culture.
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New tolerance:
"The definition of new... tolerance is that every individual's beliefs, values, lifestyle, and perception of truth claims are equal.... There is no hierarchy of truth. Your beliefs and my beliefs are equal, and all truth is relative," writes Thomas A. Helmbock, executive vice president of the national Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. A ruling of Judge Danny Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit: Not only do "adherents of all faiths deserve equal rights as citizens," but "all faiths are equally valid as religions." Meaning, "what every individual believes or says is equally right, equally valid. So not only does everyone have an equal right to his beliefs, but all beliefs are equal. All values are equal. All lifestyles are equal. All truth claims are equal." (McDowell, 1998, p. 20).
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Counter-Point to New Tolerance:
All values, beliefs, lifestyles and truth claims are not equal: "(All values, beliefs, lifestyles, and truth claims do) not deserve to be respected for (their) own sake without regard to.. content.... The values of the Ku Klux Klan do not deserve respect; nor of any other racial, gender, or ethnic supremacist group. Neither do we own respect to the values and beliefs of the organized crime cartels operating in the United States. We do not owe respect to the values of countless other individuals and groups you can think of as well as I, that are ambitious for power and use it without regard to considerations of moralilty." -- Edwin J. Delattre, writing for the Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute (in McDowell, 1998, p. 20). If all values, beliefs, lifestyles and truth claims deserve to be respected, then we must appologize for having condemned the two young killers of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, because their behavior and values must be accepted fully, regardless of the murderous outcome of that hateful day. The idea that a virtuous citizen is "one who toerates everything except intolerance" (Leslie Armour) is itself intolerance. This viewpoint has within itself the basis of its own destruction. To say that "all things are relative" must itself be included in the claim, which makes it a relative statement.
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What Have We Gained?
President James Madison wrote,
``We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves....``
The question arises:
Have we as a society gained a CAPACITY TO GOVERN OURSELVES... or are we losing it?
A deeper question is:
Has secular humanism given us an increased ability to govern ourselves, to control ourselves... or not?
Humanism, at its core, elevates the ability of humans to better themselves by their own means and ways. Has humanism kept its promise?
When an individual becomes supremely educated, for instance, does that education give them a greater capacity to govern themselves, or a greater control over themselves? What do we see when we look at the evidence?
Are the well-educated in the US the more moral, more ethical as compared with the less educated?
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