One CCM group's criticism of this web site

In many ways, the Religious Tolerance web site and the Apologetics Index are direct opposites:

	On this web site, we generally explain all views as objectively as we can and let the reader make up their own mind.
	When the Apologetics Index explains a topic, they generally accept only what they regard as the historical conservative Protestant view as true. They attempt to disprove all other beliefs.

We wrote this essay because Apologetics Index criticized this web site, and we want to give an alternate opinion.

One important factor that they missed is that we attempt to explain all religious beliefs, 'hot' topics, etc. from all points of view. For example, we explain beliefs about:

	Abortion access from various pro-life and pro-choice viewpoints.
	Origins of the universe and evolution from a new earth creationist, old earth creationist, theistic evolutionary and naturalistic evolutionary point of view,
	Homosexuality from a conservative Christian, liberal Christian, homosexual, bisexual, and mental health professional point of view.

This is one of our most important policies. The vast majority of religious web sites present only a single viewpoint: that of the webmaster or sponsoring agency. We challenge our visitors to consider a range of belief systems.

They state:

"Unfortunately, while you'll find an extensive collection of documented, cross-referenced information, many articles are not as balanced as advertised. The site promotes pluralism ..." 3

We feel that "Pluralism" is a poor term to use, because in a religious sense, the word has two quite different meanings. It is often not clear to which an author, theologian, or clergyperson is referring:

The belief that all religions and secular world views are legitimate and valid. Each is "true" when viewed from within its own culture. The fact that religious diversity exists.

We definitely do not believe that all views are legitimate and valid. There have been a handful of destructive faith groups whose beliefs have led to the deaths of their members. We frequently criticize faith groups when they harm people, limit their personal freedoms, or restrict their spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical growth. We criticize faith groups that have have taken actions based on their sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, theocratic, and/or racist teachings.

On the other hand, we do acknowledge that the second definition is an established fact for North America. The U.S. is generally regarded as the most religiously diverse country in the world. Southern Ontario Canada, where our main office is located, has been referred to as the most religiously diverse region of any country in the world.

"... has a decidedly dim view of the anti-cult and counter-cult movements. It prefers to believe cult-apologists, and promotes many of their arguments. ..." 3

"In public and private messages, staff and supporters of the Scientology-backed CAN, refer people to the site rather than their own." 3

The new Cult Awareness Network (CAN), which advocates religious tolerance, was made possible as the result of the purchase of the former CAN's assets by a Scientologist. This occurred after the old CAN was unable to pay a fine for their involvement in an abduction. According to the new CAN's "who we are" essay, their:

"... Board has consisted of from 5-9 people since the beginning of the organization. The Chairman of the Board is a Baptist minister named George Robertson. The Secretary of the Corporation was originally Mark Lurie a member of the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness. It is now Stan Koehler a Buddhist. The Treasurer of the Corporation is Nancy O. Meara, a Scientologist. Other Board members include a woman with a degree in psychology and man who is Jewish."

On the other hand, an episode of 60 Minutes claimed that Scientologists do have a major influence in the new CAN. We don't have the resources to determine where the truth lies.

The new CAN may well refer individuals who are seeking objective explanations of different religions to our web site. However, their "helpful list of Factual Religious Sites" does not include a link to this site.

Lots of authors and other groups do link to us:

The Amazon.com web site lists 79 books with citations to essays on our web site; we suspect that this is a small fraction of the total. TrustGage.com claims that there are about 116,000 links from other web sites to this one, and that we have a traffic rating of 6,462 out of about 100 million web sites on the Internet. That is, our traffic level places this site in the top 0.006% of all websites Google gives our home page a page ranking of seven out of ten -- a difficult rank to attain.

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