Has General Discussion Been Hostile to Religious Believers recently?

[Prophet 451]

269. M father is a Taoist :)

His beliefs have probably influenced, if not my faith, then the way I approach my faith.

No-one should ask that you tolerate intolerance. I have had loud screaming matches with the fundies who complain that we don't tolerate their homophobia or racism and "aren't liberals supposed to be tolerant?". Asking anyone to be tolerant of intolerance is just playing word games, just trying to smuggle the unacceptable in through a loophole. We should never tolerate bigotry of any sort, whether it's based in religion, tradition, ethnocentrism or whatever. Father Lucifer is gay and straight, male and female, black and white and both and neither, as the whim strikes him.

To give us the gift of moral self-determination, the capacity to make our own moral decisions, to go from "thou shalt not" to "I will not" (the apple in teh garden granted us knowledge of good and evil, which lets us determine our own morality), Lucifer sacrificed his good name. Worshiping a being who has been the subject of such hatred over the centuries, you learn to be accepting of the victimized, to consider each person as an individual quite apart from what is said about them.