The Truth Behind Tolerance

Tolerance
Many people think that tolerance means never saying someone else is wrong. But notice that the concept of tolerance contains the notion of disagreement. If there is no disagreement, then there is nothing to tolerate. Thinking or even stating that another view is false is not intolerance. True tolerance allows differing views to have an equal right to exist without the threat of violence. You can be truly tolerant without accepting another person's beliefs.

Furthermore, truth should take priority over tolerance. There is nothing intolerant about telling the truth. No one should suppress the truth just because it may hurt someone's feelings or may go against their beliefs.

Is it intolerant to claim the Earth is round because others might think it is flat? Scholars are not considered intolerant if they believe one hypothesis to be true and another false. One may need to communicate truth with gentleness and respect, but it is clearly not intolerant to claim that one religious hypothesis is true and another false.

Many people reject Christianity as intolerant for one reason only, that it claims to be exclusively true. But this is absurd. When tolerance is valued at the expense of truth and a position is rejected only for claiming to be true, then the necessity of valuing truth above tolerance becomes obvious. Should we believe views that claim to be false? Tolerance must be valued but never above truth. There is nothing intolerant about making exclusive claims to truth.

Continue