Toleration

It's summer again, my mind is following water. But I did have a chance to hear Obama's speech – quite heartening to hear some truth spoken.

I'm glad he mentioned religious tolerance, but I would have liked to have heard him say that all three religions believe in the same fundamental God: the one mysterious all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-loving being (Haiku God, no less). The religions just see It through different cultural lenses, believing in different conceptions of the inconceivable. So it seems on the surface that there are irreconcilable differences between the religions. But as Obama pointed out, the three religions all agree on the one basic Rule: Love, as in “Do unto others...”

I think the majority of people intuitively know this, and are therefore tolerant. It is those who have invested their egos in the belief that their religion is the only true one who are the intolerants, causing many of the problems in the region, such as the settlement problem in the West Bank. After all, God gave the Jews the land of Israel (including the West Bank), so of course they have the right to settle there. Well, maybe it's time for the tolerant majority to be intolerant towards intoleration and not allow this one religious belief to doom the Middle East to unending conflict.
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