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Monday, 25 July 2016

THE PRETENSE OF A TOLERANT MIND

There has been a creeping trend for growth in the sphere of Christian-bashing. I say 'bashing' rather than some more intellectually acceptable adjective because my problem lies not with those who have a healthy suspicion of all believers in 'imaginary friends', as they would call it, but those who preach tolerance on one Facebook or Twitter entry, and then practice exactly the opposite. The atheist who believes that all people of any faith in anything unseen are a bunch of idiots is no threat to the believer. He is a worthy opponent, uniform in his prejudices and not in the least discriminatory.

However, I have found the majority (though by no means all) of those people proudly re-tweeting and sharing posters that make fun of various aspects of what they erroneously believe is the unified faith of Christianity, are also those who are proudly 'tolerant' of all other ideologies. Perhaps it is felt that as the West was formerly the Christian West, this is acceptable.

A few points: when you ridicule the virgin birth, you also insult Islam, with the Qu'ran using an entire chapter to detail the life of Mary and the conception of her son without the aid of a human father.

When you refer to the idiocy of the creation story you firstly make the mistake of lumping one or two small denominations of Christianity in with the larger majority who view the first chapter of Genesis as not literally about naked people being conned by a snake. You are also interestingly unconcerned with the other myriad religions, modern and ancient, which make outlandish claims for how we came to be here. Ancient Greece and Egypt have a few eye-popping theories no one dares take the Mick out of because it's fashionable to follow the ancient ways again.

Homophobia was bequeathed to Christianity by traditional Judaism. Opposition to abortion and Euthanasia/assisted dying, is actually a strongly held belief by some modern pagans.

Religious beliefs on this earth of ours are as diverse as are the people who hold them. Sharing a witty meme on Facebook that sounds about right but which you haven't actually checked the truth of does not make you Richard Dawkins. It makes you the religious equivalent of those who only voted Brexit because they believed the Daily Mail when they told them 'it was them foreigners what took our jobs.'

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