philechat

It appears that among the Buddhists and the Hindus there are much more interfaith tolerance than what I saw in Christianity. The ancient Greek and Roman Pagans were also much more able to admit the possible truths of other religious beliefs and practices. What is it that drove certain religions to embrace an exclusive worldview, given that there exists many religions that are indeed tolerant of other faiths?

As I wrote in another post, the East Asian Buddhists happily incorperate the gods of other religions in their worship and accepts difference of religion among family members. When could such a system ever be accomplished in a society such as ours? Could people start seeing the wisdom in every beliefs and stop judging those who believe otherwise as evil?

Ernest Sparks

It's history--- and culturally-inherited memory.

yguy

What one values little is more easily shared.

philechat

This is not true. Many devout Buddhist monks who spent their lives in Buddhist temples also accept that there are truths and wisdom in other religious systems. We may value one religion over another but that does not mean we must consider the other religions wrong.

lpetrich

Tell that to some Linux fans some time. Tell them about how Linux being open-source means that Linux users place very little value on it.

I suggest that yguy check out some Linux distribution some time; he will conclude that Linux fans place little value on:

Kernel
Many device drivers
Command-line shells
Many command-line utilities and apps
GUI shells
Many GUI utilities and apps

All because they are open-source.

Yet I've seen estimates that the cost for commercially developing all the software in some Linux distributions is something like a few billion dollars.

Ernest Sparks

Linux being open-source

That is totally understandable, and the same thing happened back in the "joy" years of Unix, the 1970s. [note the pun!] Having a large and free fan base is far more effective than paying for teams of unimaginative in-house testers. And the real money is in software service and system management, not software itself (, unless you get nickels from each box, like Microsoft). The open-source stuff is copied and re-copied; it is not, strictly-speaking, shared [broken into parts, with parts given up entirely to others].

yguy

Allow me to rephrase: What one values little is more easily compromised.

philechat

Alright. My opinion goes like this: Suppose I am madly in love with the music of Debussy (which I am). It does not follow that everyone else in my family or my spouse to be another Debussy nut. I happily discuss these things with other Debussy nuts and do not care what other members of my family like about music (they can listen to Asian pops as much as they want to). It's none of my business to pronounce them wrong--they may find wisdom in what they like, but simply not in a field I take interests in. Nor do I require them to like Debussy the way I do.

That is, a given passion is good "for the person passionate about it". It does not follow that everyone else is bad or deficient in any ways because they do not share a given passion.

yguy

I don't think it's a good comparison. Preference for Debussy over Wagner or Schönberg is purely subjective, and frankly not very significant. That can't be said for the question of God and how we should relate to him. If the Judaeo-Christian paradigm is substantially correct, Christians would be irresponsible to acknowledge the validity of Hindu gods. Of course, self-righteous condemnation of other religions is at the very least a tactical error and arguably a sin; but one need not have that attitude to say that Hindu gods are satan in disguise, if that is the truth.

Bree

Well, considering the fact that the majority of people here are atheists, I would venture that the "question of God and how we should relate to Him" isn't very significant, either.

Please define "truth" and how you would be 100% sure that what you believe IS the truth.