Bill Moyers Journal: Tolerance and Democracy

Bill Moyers Journal asks some salient questions about Tolerance and Democracy. Here is my response:

The conflict we are having in the world right now is not a conflict between religions. Islam and Christianity have the same source, being variations of the Abrahamist belief. They are no more different than Christianity and Mormonism, which also has a book of revelation that succeeded the teachings attributed to Jesus, while building upon that foundation.

The problem is Fundamentalism, which is a thought process rather than a belief system. Anyone can be a fundamentalist - even an atheist. People go through roughly 3 stages of moral development. Reward and punishment drives a young child. Around 8-10, morality is derived from an external source: "It's the LAW!" "Those are the RULES!" "It's in the Bible/Koran/Torah." This stage is typified by concrete thinking and loves absolutes and clear dichotomies - white/black, love/hate, good/evil. Most people never outgrow this stage, though we theoretically have the capacity to do so in our late teens.

The third stage involves the capacity for abstract thought. That ability allows the individual to consider that either they, or their external authority, might be mistaken. People in the second stage are extremely threatened by the suggestion that their source of authority might be fallable. Their entire world concept depends on concrete rules, even when those rules are not actually in the sacred book of their choosing. They'll defend their misconceptions with their lives.

There is no basis in the Bible for discrimination against gays nor any prohibition of abortion, but many Christians don't know that. There is nothing in the Koran that allows or encourages women to wear the hijab or the burka. The Koran states that women should be educated as men are, so why is the Taliban tearing down girls' schools? Why is Richard Gere in trouble for kissing an Indian woman when nothing in any scripture anywhere prohibits kissing? They assume that these prohibitions, which are really only based on someone's opinion, are justified in their external authority, but they aren't.

People in the second stage often don't actually read their religious texts, or if they do, they don't have the education or the context to understand them. Notice that the Christian fundamentalists hate Liberals for their "moral relativism" - that's just another way of saying that Liberals can question authority, and entertain the thought that they might be wrong.

The last thing we need in this world right now is faith. We need doubt, and lots of it. A person with enough distance from an idea that they can allow that it might be wrong doesn't go to extremes. You aren't going to strap a bomb to yourself, kill a filmmaker, or even pass a draconian law if you know that you might be mistaken in your beliefs.

The whole concept of our government is that none of us can claim to have absolute moral authority. You can believe you do, but as an American, you agree to act from a rational base that assumes equality for all in the public sphere. Can we ever be too tolerant? Of belief, no. Of behavior, yes. A politician who tries to undermine the Constitution they took an oath to defend is not fit for office and should be removed. It doesn't matter if he took that action based on his religion - it matters that he has violated the social contract that holds America together. That's not discrimination - it's justice.

Right now, we have people violating their oaths and their responsibilities as Americans in droves. The military is supposed to protect the Constitution, not George Bush. So why, when he breaks the law, have they not stepped in to stop him? Why has Congress not acted on his numerous illegal actions? Why are we allowing him to seize unprecedented powers with virtually no opposition?

Christians are now complaining that they are being oppressed, but the truth is that they have been oppressive for 2,000 years. No one is trying to give them less freedom than anyone else. They have had an unfair advantage that we are now trying to eliminate so that everyone has equal treatment. They are pitching a fit - no one with special privileges wants to lose their advantage - because the playing field is becoming more fair.

The question we are faced with is how to move a majority of people into a higher level of cognitive and moral functioning. How do you give an entire nation, or religious sect, critical thinking skills? How do you convince a zealot that they might be wrong? I don't know how to do that, but I do know that until it happens, we need to get those people out of positions of power and away from weapons they can use against people who don't agree with them. Civilization depends on it.