Why do we tolerate religion

Why is a Sikh boy permitted to wear his ceremonial dagger to school while any other boy could be expelled for packing a knife? Why are religious obligations that conflict with the law accorded special toleration while other obligations of conscience are not? In Why Tolerate Religion? With philosophical acuity, legal insight, and wry humor, Leiter shows why our reasons for tolerating religion are not specific to religion but apply to all claims of conscience, and why a government committed to liberty of conscience is not required by the principle of toleration to grant exemptions to laws that promote the general welfare.

Altschuler, Jerusalem Post. The overall effect is a very impressively argued case. At the same time, it provides a fresh and intuitive framework for analyzing conscience-based objections to facially neutral laws that should appeal to legal practitioners, jurists, and philosophers alike.

Readers will find the book engaging and thought-provoking; yet Leiter's discussion is nonetheless philosophically sophisticated, incorporating nuanced considerations from legal theory, meta-ethics, and political philosophy. Most importantly, Leiter's book provides a sound basis for pursuing these crucial matters further. It works very well as a challenge to those who are sympathetic to conceding some exemptions from generally applicable laws because of religious beliefs, because the burden of justifying such exemptions is placed squarely on those who propose them.

Clarke, Jurisprudence. From this point on, my critique will be focused on Leiter's characterization of religion. He speaks of "Defining Religion" p. In practice he seems content with the slightly less burdensome task of identifying distinctive features of religion. Leiter supposes that his argument requires him to identify "features that all and only religious beliefs have" p. Even that may be too demanding. In the case of at least three of his four distinctive features, in fact, Leiter eventually denies rightly, no doubt that only religious beliefs have them.

Indeed those denials are part of the argument for his negative conclusion. It is not entirely clear to me what Leiter's criteria are for classifying a demand as categorical.

He might easily be interpreted on this point as trying to fit all religious moralities into a Kantian framework that some of them would resist. But suppose we seek his criteria in the following statement, which he quotes from Rawls and treats as speaking of "categorical demands.

An individual recognizing religious and moral obligations regards them as binding absolutely in the sense that he cannot qualify his fulfillment of them for the sake of greater means for promoting his other interests p.

That yields an interpretation of 'categorical demand' that dovetails nicely with Leiter's using this quotation in chapter 3 to ground an argument that though a "Rawlsian perspective" may ground reasons for tolerating conscientious belief and action, [4] it "cannot help us evaluate the principled case for toleration of religion qua religion" p. This treatment of Rawls does seem to imply that belief in categorical demands is not an exclusively religious phenomenon.

And Leiter himself says that not all of "those who genuinely conduct their lives in accord with the categoricity of the moral demands they recognize" are religious p. Religious beliefs, in virtue of being based on "faith," are insulated from ordinary standards of evidence and rational justification, the ones we employ in both common sense and in science pp.

This is the feature that Leiter comes closest to treating as unique to religion. It is also the one which seems least likely to ground any plausible claim to specially favorable treatment for religion, and which people who understand what Leiter is saying and see themselves as religious are least likely to agree is definitive of religion or essential to it.

As Leiter acknowledges, of course, believers often give reasons for their religious beliefs, and such reasons have often been given by philosophers. The core of the view expressed in his account of this "feature," as his discussion of it makes clear, is that religion involves beliefs that do not satisfy his strict empiricist standards of justification.

Given that epistemology is a domain of contestable, and contested, theories, his summary, unqualified description of this alleged feature of religion as "insulation from reasons and evidence" p. Leiter claims that "in the intellectualist traditions in religious thought. Unless by 'revised' Leiter means completely abandoned, this claim is simply false. The history of religious thought, in all religious traditions that I know about, is centrally a history of revision of more and less fundamental religious beliefs, in view of new experiences, new situations, new cultural developments, new knowledge about the world.

Modern evolutionary biology, for example, has been rejected by some conservative Christians; but others, many of them quite conservative in other ways, have embraced it, revising their interpretations of Scripture in view of a new intellectual situation. Medieval writers spoke of such a process as "twisting the wax nose of authority. Of all the entire species that has ever walked on Earth, Humans and only humans have violated, Tortured, Murdered our own kind for every peoples definition of their creator and no other animals are known to exhibit this behavior despite the fact that we, As humans are supposedly more "intelligent" than them.

Million years of human social, Cultural and technological evolution has brought us to this type of stupid ideals, Talk about "ego". The more dogmatic a religious tradition, the less the individuals with the group interact with those outside. In support of their beliefs, religious apologists falsely equivocate assertion of their beliefs with scientific facts, and they demonstrate their ignorance of scientific understanting when they attempt to silence accurate criticisms.

I challenge anyone reading this to find one religious apologist anti-science claim, where they actually get the science correct, and don't instead rely upon a logical fallacy. Religions are vehicles for the ignorant that allow them to go through life running people over and keep on going, all the time thinking,' well my vehicle is clearly the best ever made, and if these people really cared for themselves, they would get one just like mine, and if they don't, I'm justified in destroying them cause it says so in my owners manual.

The easiest way for someone to discover where you stand on the argument is to educate yourself. The best way I found to educate myself was to watch formal religious debates held at forums such as universities. Christopher Hitchens. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins would be a great starting point Educate yourself You will see for yourself The easiest way for a believer to at least question their belief, which anyone would agree is healthy, is to educate themselves on the argument.

The best way I found to educate myself was to watch formal religious debates. You will see for yourself. By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Google Search. Post Your Opinion. Create New Poll. Sign In Sign Up. Add a New Topic. Should we tolerate religion? God , Religion. How would you not? Posted by: Ailingalapalap Report Post. Like Reply Challenge.

Maximum words. Report Post. Like Reply. Define "religion". I think the question is should we give faith based community groups special treatment. Posted by: psychicartguy Report Post. Posted by: philochristos Report Post. Posted by: Darricksask Report Post. Posted by: polopolo1 Report Post. Load More Arguments. Comments 0.