this one came up at dinner...

[gumpzilla]

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It's fair to infer character from beliefs. To believe its fair to infer character from race is to be racist.

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Pithy, but pretty incomplete. While I agree with your earlier statement, do you think that you can really infer beliefs entirely from religion (or, more accurately, beliefs that are outside the spiritual context of the religion itself)? Within any given religion I think there is an incredibly wide range of behaviors and character. So to infer beliefs from religion seems quite narrow minded.

Furthermore, do you think there is zero correlation between race and beliefs? I think this is pretty obviously untrue. For example, there's a high correlation between being ethnically Jewish (we can debate whether or not this is a race, but for the purposes of this argument I think it's close enough) and being a practicing Jew. This kind of leaves you in the position of having to either accept that there can be racial correlations, or that the religious correlations need not be that significant.

There is clearly more basis for the religious intolerance than the racial one, but I think people are being a little smug about how high-minded they are here.