The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum - View Single Post

Kalessin · 12-06-2002, 11:18 PM

I tend to agree that toleration should be upheld at the expense of faith, but faith and toleration are perhaps uneasy bedfellows at the best of times. In the end the deconstruction to 'tolerating intolerance' is probably inevitable.

I think that religion is by no means the only culprit in the debate about censorship. Whilst not advocating a simple "creationism vs. evolution" judgement, I have direct experience that some schools, or teachers, treat traditional theories of physical science as holy writ, and insist on a (typically incomplete and flawed) indoctrination of absolute materialism. I undertook a couple of statistically unreliable vox-pops among adult peers and children about what 'evolution' was, and came up with a sort of free-market process that was more like a definition of capitalism, all based on some old fossil records. Just adding the word 'theory' to various sacred technocratic cows would help [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img].

If a school believes that empirical objective truths exist and are fully and irrefutably expressed in the hypotheses of Newton, Einstein and so on, then all mysticism could be censored on the grounds of absurdity. If a school believes that the Bible is the only truth, then what is the point in teaching evolution theory? Both these extremes are examples of, in effect, institutional faith as an inevitable antagonist of toleration.

My personal experience is that censorship works best (if it works at all), when undertaken in a pragmatic way, on a case by case basis, and that each decision is only valid for the time in which it was taken. I think that blanket censorship on the grounds of religion, morality or other tenet, is ultimately destructive and disempowering - and the evidence is that it is often self-defeating. Simply suppressing racist ideology, without ever confronting the issues themselves, creates an adversarial society where racist groups believe themselves 'oppressed' and become a sort of clique for a dispossessed (and dysfunctional) minority. This is how racist political movements have gained electoral power in Europe both in the past and recently.

Yet I still think Bill's earlier rant has some merit, and Cudae has emphasized the point about how insular delusions become institutionalised. I don't know if it has been banned anywhere (yes, probably for its homoereotic undertones), but Lord of the Flies is a potent exploration of freedom, or perhaps anarchy. Alternatively you might try Milius' Conan The Barbarian as libertarian allegory [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. Without any indoctrination (or teaching, if you prefer) freedom itself can be a brutal thing. Ah, Neitzche [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

Peace.

Kalessin

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Kalessin ]

12-06-2002, 11:18 PM	#48
Kalessin Wight Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Earthsea, or London Posts: 175	I tend to agree that toleration should be upheld at the expense of faith, but faith and toleration are perhaps uneasy bedfellows at the best of times. In the end the deconstruction to 'tolerating intolerance' is probably inevitable. I think that religion is by no means the only culprit in the debate about censorship. Whilst not advocating a simple "creationism vs. evolution" judgement, I have direct experience that some schools, or teachers, treat traditional theories of physical science as holy writ, and insist on a (typically incomplete and flawed) indoctrination of absolute materialism. I undertook a couple of statistically unreliable vox-pops among adult peers and children about what 'evolution' was, and came up with a sort of free-market process that was more like a definition of capitalism, all based on some old fossil records. Just adding the word 'theory' to various sacred technocratic cows would help [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. If a school believes that empirical objective truths exist and are fully and irrefutably expressed in the hypotheses of Newton, Einstein and so on, then all mysticism could be censored on the grounds of absurdity. If a school believes that the Bible is the only truth, then what is the point in teaching evolution theory? Both these extremes are examples of, in effect, institutional faith as an inevitable antagonist of toleration. My personal experience is that censorship works best (if it works at all), when undertaken in a pragmatic way, on a case by case basis, and that each decision is only valid for the time in which it was taken. I think that blanket censorship on the grounds of religion, morality or other tenet, is ultimately destructive and disempowering - and the evidence is that it is often self-defeating. Simply suppressing racist ideology, without ever confronting the issues themselves, creates an adversarial society where racist groups believe themselves 'oppressed' and become a sort of clique for a dispossessed (and dysfunctional) minority. This is how racist political movements have gained electoral power in Europe both in the past and recently. Yet I still think Bill's earlier rant has some merit, and Cudae has emphasized the point about how insular delusions become institutionalised. I don't know if it has been banned anywhere (yes, probably for its homoereotic undertones), but Lord of the Flies is a potent exploration of freedom, or perhaps anarchy. Alternatively you might try Milius' Conan The Barbarian as libertarian allegory [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. Without any indoctrination (or teaching, if you prefer) freedom itself can be a brutal thing. Ah, Neitzche [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] Peace. Kalessin [ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Kalessin ]