Good News » Arrogant
Why debating religious truth is arrogant?
Rule number one: it's arrogant to suggest that someone's religious beliefs might be wrong. By arrogant, most people mean intolerant--a term that has come to have a whole new meaning in recent years. Intolerance used to refer to bigotry or prejudice. That is, judging someone or excluding them because of who they are. In this sense, intolerance is offensive. But now, intolerance means that simply disagreeing about beliefs is wrong.The movie "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" illustrates this point. In a conversation between an Amazonian Indian and a Christian missionary, the Indian says, "If the Lord made Indians the way they are, who are you people to make them different?" This is one of the defining sentiments of our day. Attempting to convert is unacceptable because it implies standing in judgment over others' beliefs.
The only exception clause to today's code of tolerance is criticizing what is pejoratively labeled "fundamentalism." Fundamentalism doesn't mean what it did in the early decades of this century. Nor does it refer to religious extremism, like the Shiites' holy war against the West. Today, fundamentalists are those who believe that religious truths are objective and therefore subject to rational investigation.