Several people have asked me why I dont embrace the pop philosophy of Live and let live and instead espouse stamping out all religion as poison! Well, Its simply because Im intolerant of intolerance! And religions, all of them are mutually exclusive and intolerant of others who dont believe as they do to the point of killing those who in their view are heretics. And this killing is going on as I write these words all around the world, all over who believes in the right version of an imaginarye, because ultimately in order to stop killing you have to stop the killers, many of whom have to be killed to stop them. For any of you who may remain unconvinced of the validity of my argument, here is the eminent philosopher Karl Popper to dissolve the seeming paradox of intolerance of intolerance! Popper realized that even a tolerant person cannot always accept anothers intolerance. For, if tolerance allowed intolerance to succeed completely, tolerance itself would be threatened. In The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato, he argued that: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. The utterence of intolerant philosophies should not always be suppressed, as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion. However, we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive , and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. And We must always take sides, because neutrality always favors the Oppressor. - Elie Wiesel “You cant be neutral on a moving train.” ― Howard Zinn The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality - John F. Kennedy In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends - Martin Luther King, Jr. First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me Martin Niemoller atheist-meme/why-do-you-atheists-hate-religion.php#.Ux2Vc_fyqEk.facebook
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 09:37:44 +0000
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