Religious Intolerance

I was walking from my lab to RCH the other day, mentally reviewing my latest tutorial that I was about to deliver. Around campus, there's a bunch of "Is Jesus Relevant" posters for an event a while back, hosted by mCCF. On several of these posters in E2/E3, someone took a black Sharpie and wrote NO across the poster. I was shocked about the poster for a few reasons.

1) Walking around campus, I've rarely noticed poster defacement. I can probably count all the cases on my hand. I figure most people don't even pay attention to the posters (when I did NSR, only a tiny handful of people came due to poster advertisements). Even in terms of general grafftti, I don't notice that often (other than bathroom stalls, anyway). Either Plants Ops are very good at cleaning those up, or Waterloo students are generally well-behaving. Or maybe I'm not very attentive. Either works.

2) I was reading about how there are many Christian-based laws/events being repelled these days in the name of religious tolerance. I remember getting frustrated at that, since Canada was really originally found on Christian principles, by Christian settlers. You don't expect the Middle East or parts of southern Asia to suddenly repel their religious laws as well, do you? But okay. Democracy is built on freedom of speech (well. to a degree. hate propaganda will get you arrested pretty quickly).

I feel that society is more and more pendulum-like. A few decades ago, it was for women and minority rights and suffrage. Nowadays, I've had Caucasian male friends tell me that they're most marginalized. I noticed RIM job applications asks me if I was a visible minority (Are Chinese actually visible minority? Certainly not on Waterloo campus...). I've see other companies boast that they are equal opportunities employers and etc. But I'm not going to get into gener roles and if fair = equal here...

3) I'm don't think I'm being superly biased here. A few weeks back, a Florida pastor publically announced that his church was going to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11. He later canceled his plans. I've never read the Koran, but I'd be pretty unhappy if I found out some Muslim groups were out burning Bibles. Lets stick with the Golden rule here. If you don't want other people to tell you what to believe, don't tell them what to believe. I'm in the business of sharing my faith, thoughts and ideas, not shoving it down someone's throat.

It took a while for Joge and I to hammer out, but I'm happy with NNC/BBW/Apologetics' mandate. We research ideas and questions. Present the different point of views. We add a bit to what we believe in ourselves and why we do so. That's it. You decide what you want to believe in. If I just tell you what to believe, then your beliefs are mine, and that will crumble when push comes to shove. If you decide for it on your own, then your belief becomes yours, and you learn to take a stand, and that is much more important. Haha. Sounds like that Inception movie.