[QUOTE="Whispered, post: 4033738, member: 288111"
]No, Christianity does not embrace tolerance. If Christianity ever embraced tolerance there would be no moral prohibition against sins that are intolerable to God.
Webster's 1806Tolerance, n. the act or power of enduringTolerate, v. to allow, permit, endure, suffer, bear[/QUOTE]
Dictionaries, Tolerance, & Communication Confusion:
Embracing or not embracing tolerance:
You could say Christianity embraces a great number of things, depending entirely on how you define the "things", and even on how you define "embrace".
Christians often can't even communicate with each other, let alone the lost world, because they don't take the time to think about language, and what they're genuinely hearing and saying.
We need to be much more careful.
That's why, in debates with atheists, I completely avoid words like "tolerance" that carry too much baggage into the conversation.
I won't even use that word in a debate; it's far too contentious and confusing.
Living Language:
Living languages are always in a continual flux.
Dictionaries have no magical ability to control how millions of individuals simply choose to use a word in any given week, or month, or year, or election cycle.
Common usage of a word may often have little to do with a dictionary definition.
Dictionaries don't exert any control over words; dictionaries merely observe how the words are commonly used, and they often take a long time to catch up, and sometimes they never catch up at all.
If you cannot recognize that language changes, and words can be used in completely disparate ways, sometimes arbitrarily, then you cannot witness to the lost. They will simply use words differently than you, and nothing you say will make sense to them. You will, essentially, just fail to communicate your message.
Some words are more confusing than others, and sometimes that is intentional.
Words are very commonly just "appropriated" by some movement, and redefined, in order to manipulate or even stifle certain kinds of dialogue.
This happens all the time.
Very recently this has happened to words like "racism" and "tolerance."
Tolerance:
The word tolerance is especially tricky.
It's a bit subjective by nature.
The word "tolerate" can be used to mean a lot of different things.
Why?
The concept of "permit" or "allow" carries with it some confusing presuppositions: WHAT to permit, WHY to permit, HOW FAR to permit, WHAT CATEGORIES to permit, what particular NUANCE or ASPECT of a thing to permit etc. etc. etc.
The word "tolerate" carries with it a vast range of MORAL PRESUPPOSITIONS, which EACH SPEAKER may CHOOSE TO APPLY DIFFERENTLY.
Let's reiterate that just for emphasis:
The word "tolerate" carries with it a vast range of MORAL PRESUPPOSITIONS, which EACH SPEAKER may CHOOSE TO APPLY DIFFERENTLY.
Because of this, I don't allow that word into a debate.
As soon as someone uses that word, I simply rephrase the other person's proposition, and replace the word "tolerate" with something more precise.
Then we're all talking about the same thing.
I simply kick that word out of debates.
Conclusion:
1. The word "tolerance" is inherently confusing by definition, and it's made even more confusing by design, when social movements intentionally redefine it to manipulate dialogue.
2. I think it's best to just avoid words that are so contentious, confusing, and misappropriated.
3. And regardless of how we feel about it, if we are using a contentious word differently than someone else, we have, at that point, ceased from all meaningful communication... so I try not to use contentious and confusing words.
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