About this website
ABOUT THE OCRT*: PART 1
(*Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance)
Sponsored link.
Quotation:
 | "The right to search for truth implies also a duty: one must not
conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true." Albert Einstein |
Topics in this essay:
This OCRT, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, attempts to serve
the people of the United States and Canada in four areas:
- Disseminating accurate religious information: There are many
hundreds of faith
groups in the US and Canada; all are minorities. We believe that:
| There is much good and
some evil in all faiths' practices. No one faith group is all good; none is
all evil. |
| The historical record shows that the beliefs of religious groups change
over time. |
| Within a given faith group, believers hold a range of beliefs that are
not necessarily shared by the leadership of their denomination or tradition. |
|
By informing people about various religions, their range of beliefs, and their
historical development, we hope that people's understanding and tolerance
will increase, while bigotry will decrease. We also hope that our readers will
better understand the good and evil practices in their own faith tradition,
and be motivated to work towards needed reform. They will realize that faith
groups change their religious teachings over time,
and will probably change in the future. With few exceptions, religious
organizations have become less sexist, racist, homophobic and transphobic over time.
Exposing religious fraud, hatred and misinformation: There is an
enormous amount of religious fraud, hatred and misinformation available in
North American seminars, radio and TV programs, lectures, books etc.
Typically, religions with relatively few followers in the US and Canada are
targeted: New Age, Hinduism, Islam,
Judaism, Native American spirituality, Santeria, Satanism, Wicca (Witchcraft), etc. There has been one
lynching, one attempted mass murder by stoning, many fire bombings,
shootings, physical assaults and economic attacks by some very devout, well
meaning, but terribly misinformed people in North America who have
victimized followers of minority religions. Outbreaks of anti-Semitism
continue to plague both the US and Canada and seems to be on the rise around
the world. Muslims are badly misrepresented in many media reports and
attacked by some Christian leaders.
Conservative Christians are often discriminated against in job hiring and
promotion. Children have been seized from families on the basis of a child
care worker's misinformed beliefs about the parent's religion. Parents have
been prohibited from visiting their children because of a judge's religious
bias. All of these injustices need to be exposed to public view and
eradicated.
Disseminating information on dozens of "hot" religious topics: These
are matters over which various religious groups are in conflict with each
other and with secular forces in society. Many topics have been already
largely settled; human slavery and birth control are
two examples. Others, like access to abortion;
the Occult; equal rights for homosexuals and bisexuals,
including the right of same-sex couples to marry; creation science vs. evolution;
human sexuality; and many other topics
are still being hotly debated.
Unfortunately, on most Internet web site devoted to these topics, only a
single point of view is discussed -- that of the webmaster or of the sponsoring
agency. Our goal is to present, compare and
contrast all sides to each issue. We:
| Provide background and historical information; |
| Explain the beliefs of various
religious and secular groups; |
| Cite applicable passages from the Bible and other religious texts. |
| Describe the beliefs of conservative Christians, liberal Christians,
1st and 2nd century Christians, and followers of other religions. |
| Describe statements
by professional organizations, where available. |
|
We often analyze verses from the Bible, and use Christianity as a
reference point, because about 75% of adults in North America regard
themselves as Christian. The next largest organized religions, Islam, Judaism,
Hinduism, Neopaganism and Buddhism are each followed by fewer than 2% of American adults.
Promoting religious tolerance:
Bruce Buursma of the Chicago Tribune
once said: "Almost every story around the world has a religion sub-plot."
In recent decades, there have been a few largely inter-tribal mass murders and
genocides. Consider Rwanda and Kenya. But most conflicts have involved
inter-religion and intra-religion differences. Consider Bosnia Herzegovina,
Cyprus, India, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Philippines, Sri Lanka and other hot
spots. We feel that it is important to help people understand how the misuse of
religion can result in profound evil, even in those countries like the U.S. and
Canada that have traditionally experienced relative religious peace.
Sponsored link:
Our core beliefs and biases:
Every person and group has basic beliefs. They can lead to bias and lack
of objectivity. These are some of ours:
| We believe in freedom of speech, within limits. We do not believe
that a person has the right to falsely yell "fire" in a crowded
theatre. We do not believe that a Baptist minister in TX has the
right to publicly agitate that the government round up and exterminate
religious minorities in his state with napalm. But short of these types of extremes, we
feel that people should not be prevented from freely saying what they
believe. We have great respect for freedom of speech. We feel that
promoters of hatred, whether based on race, religion, gender, sexual
orientation or other grounds, will be largely discredited and rejected if all
are allowed to speak freely. |
| We are firm supporters of the principle of separation
of church and state. Lack of religious freedom, oppression, and
even mass crimes against humanity and genocide are much more common in countries which lack such separation. |
| We believe in freedom of religion, which includes the rights of
freedom of belief, speech, expression, assembly, and advocacy. We feel that people should have the right to
freely change their religion. However, we recognize that there are
limits that must be placed on such freedoms. For example, we do not
feel that, in most cases, parents should be allowed to let their children die if
conventional medical treatment has a good chance of curing the child. |
| We believe that some absolute religious truths exist. For example,
the statement "There is only one God," is either
absolutely right or wrong -- at least it is if the term
"God" is carefully predefined. However, there may be no way for us to know the
correct answer. |
| We believe that moral absolutes exist, at least within a given world
view. Many people have a set of moral beliefs that are based on their
own basic, foundational assumptions about deity, humanity and the rest of
the universe. They often assert that these beliefs are absolutely true
-- and they are -- to them. However, the absolute beliefs of a typical
conservative Christian
will often differ from the absolute beliefs of an average religious liberal.
And the beliefs of a Humanist may differ from both. |
| We firmly believe in the concept of "liberty and justice for
some." We believe that convicted murderers and other
criminals should have their freedoms restricted. We do not believe
that children should have the same full range of freedoms as do adults.
But we feel that adults at least should have the maximum degree of freedom
without impinging seriously on the freedom of others. We are
particularly distressed at discrimination which victimizes people
because of their genetic makeup -- e.g. reducing their rights because
of their race, gender or sexual orientation. |
| We believe that a person is not truly educated unless they have
studied religion and its effect on society. Students need to learn
about all religions. They need to understand the
religious sources that inspired Gandhi,
Albert Schweitzer, and Mother Teresa. They also need to learn how religious
beliefs have contributed to mass
murders and genocides in Nazi Germany, Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo,
Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Sudan and countless other countries. |
| We enjoy living in a religiously diverse culture in which the rights
of people to hold different religious beliefs and to engage in
different cultural practices are valued. |
| We believe that most religions have a generally positive influence on their
followers and on society. Of all of the faith groups that we have
studied, only a handful of destructive cults
have had an overall negative effect. We do not believe that all religions and spiritual paths are the same,
or that all are equally good, or that all are equally valid. |
We will attempt to describe each point of view carefully, respectfully and
objectively. To this end, we have many of our essays reviewed by
persons familiar with the issues who represent all sides of each topic. We
encourage readers to Email
us about any errors that they find. We do not regard any essay as fixed or
complete.
Promotion of religious belief: Unlike almost all other
religious WWW sites, we do not advocate any one religion. We are a group whose
members follow five different theological beliefs (Agnosticism, Atheism,
Christianity, Wicca, and Zen Buddhism). It would be difficult for us to promote any one belief
system, even if we wanted to.
Criticism and Opposition: We do not criticize any person or
any organized religion for their theological beliefs. However
we do censure individuals and groups for any actions which
harm people, limit their personal freedoms, or restrict their spiritual, mental,
emotional, or physical growth. Thus, we are opposed to racist, sexist, and homophobic activities
by individuals and groups.
In short, we are tolerant of the great diversity of
religious ideas. However, we are generally intolerant of such practices
as discrimination and hatred based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Our
specific policies are outlined in detail elsewhere on
this site.
Judging from our Email, this is a difficult concept for some readers to
understand: how can we be tolerant and non-critical, even as we are being
intolerant and critical. Perhaps an example from one Christian denomination will
help:
The Mormons once taught that blacks had been "less
valiant' in their preexistence support of Jesus in a great battle against Lucifer."
They were cursed by God with the "Mark of Ham"
-- interpreted by the church to be black skin.
This was the belief of the church; it was, by definition, a racist belief. We
do not condemn it. It was simply a piece of doctrine which we attempt to
accurately report.
One of the denomination's leaders described blacks "uncouth,
uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild and seemingly without the blessings
of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind."
Again, this is a statement which demonstrates racist beliefs. Again,
we simply report the opinion; we do not criticize it. It is simply a matter of
the historical record.
However, the church went further. It applied this concept in practice. The
denomination prohibited blacks from being ordained as its
ministers; they also made persons with one or more distant black ancestors
ineligible for ordination. This is a serious restriction; unlike other
denominations, all male members of this denomination are expected to be
ordained into the priesthood. Their racist belief had become a racist practice.
We are critical of racist actions. We condemn all actions which negate the
concept of equal "liberty and justice for all."
Fortunately, Mormons believe that their leadership received a revelation from God in 1978.
This terminated both the racist
belief and action in the Mormon church.
Respecting privacy: We respect the privacy of various
religious organizations. Many faith groups including The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, the Church of Scientology, and
some groups within Ceremonial Magick, Wicca, etc. attempt to keep some information about their
beliefs and rituals secret from the public. They only release knowledge
gradually to their members, as they advance in training. Although some of this
information has been published (often by violating copyright) we do not
contribute to its dissemination.
The inspiration for the OCRT came from the evening news during the spring of
1995. It seemed that every broadcast revealed some further atrocity from the
Bosnia in the former Yugoslavia. One of us felt the media was in error. The
disturbances in that country were not fundamentally ethnic in origin, as was
being reported. A main root cause was religious intolerance. Yugoslavia is
located between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox spheres of influence. It
was also between countries where the main religion is Islam and Christianity.
So, although the people of the country were of one ethnic origin, they followed
three different faith groups: Islam, Roman Catholicism and Serbian
Orthodox Christianity. The
resulting religious friction was fueled by the nationalist aims of various
political leaders. And so, the world watched the most atrocious attempts at
religiously motivated genocide. We felt that more should be done to promote
religious tolerance.
We searched the Web for entries on religious tolerance and found very little:
one sermon by a Baptist minister, two essays by members of the
Baha'i
Faith, and one essay on religious tolerance in ancient Egypt. It seemed
strange that the Internet would be so lacking in information on religious
tolerance...particularly since intolerance has been such a common cause of civil disturbance
and war. Religious intolerance remains a main contributing factor to
the troubles in Bosnia, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Middle East, Northern
Ireland, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tibet, etc.
A small group of four volunteers was organized to create a Web site that
promoted religious tolerance. We started up about 1995-MAY-15, when there were
only about 20,000th site to be established on the World Wide Web; As of
2004-SEP, there are over 41 million domain names on the World Wide Web. At the
time, the percentage of the world's population who had access to the Internet --
rounded to the nearest integer -- was 0%!
Although the
original aims were small, the site has continually grown. Some figures:
| Date |
Essays on Site |
Hits* |
Traffic
GB/day |
Rating by Hitbox.com ** |
Visitors *** |
Visitor Countries |
| 1997-NOV |
520 |
0.15 |
? |
unknown |
25,000 |
50 |
| 1998-NOV |
~700 |
0.5 |
? |
~11 |
~40,000 |
75 |
| 1999-NOV |
850 |
1.7 |
1.28 |
1 |
58,000 |
> 75 |
| 2000-NOV |
1,047 |
3.4 |
2.57 |
1 |
108,000 |
> 75 |
| 2001-NOV |
1,384 |
4.3 |
3.05 |
1 |
134,000 |
> 75 |
| 2002-NOV |
2,015 |
4.8 |
3.50 |
1 |
145,000 |
> 75 |
| 2003-NOV |
2,385 |
6.8 |
5.27 |
Discontinued |
216,000 |
> 75 |
| Date |
Essays on Site |
Hits* |
Traffic
GB/day |
Traffic ranking from Ranking.com ^ |
Visitors *** |
| 2004-NOV |
2,700 |
7.2 |
5.7 |
6,776 |
285,000 |
| 2005-NOV |
3,130 |
10.2 |
7.6 |
6,263 |
501,000 |
| 2006-NOV |
3,526 |
10.6 |
12.5 |
6,448 |
|
| 2007-NOV |
4,052 |
10.2 |
14.7 |
- |
|
* Million hits per week
** In Hitbox.com's listing of top 1,000 religious web sites. We
discontinued this service in late 2003.
*** Distinct hosts served per week.
^ Ranking.com ranks the busiest 1 million web sites on the Internet.
Other OCRTs in the world:
Here, it refers to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, an
agency that promotes the freedom of individuals to follow the religious path of
their choosing, without discrimination or oppression.
Unfortunately, there are only 17,576 three letter acronyms and 456,976 four
letter acronyms possible in the English alphabet. It turns out that "OCRT" is an acronym that is
shared by quite a number of groups:
| The Otago Central Rail Trail in New Zealand. See:
http://www.otagocentralrailtrail.co.nz/ |
| The Office of the Commissioner of Review Tribunals, an agency
of the Canadian government. See:
http://www.ocrt-bctr.gc.ca/ |
| The Office of Clinical Research and Training at Northwestern
University in Chicago IL. See:
http://www.nccr.northwestern.edu/ |
| Orange County Riding and Touring, a motorcycle riding club in
Laguna Nibuel, CA. See:
http://www.missionyamaha.com/ |
| Oneida County Rural Telephone, a private telephone company
now called Northland Communications in northern New York State.
They recently celebrated a full century of service. |
| Ohio Crisis Response Team, an agency of the Ohio Attorney
General which provides services to communities in crisis. |
| Cncware Free Pascal Library for a computer command. See:
http://www.cncware.com |
| The Optimistic Case Running Time, a measure of computer
performance. See:
http://ais.gmd.de/ |
Related essay:
Who are our authors and what are
their credentials?
Reference:
-
"Web Growth Summary" at:
http://www.mit.edu/. They state that there were 10,022 web sites in
1994-DEC and 23,500 in 1995-JUN.
Copyright 1996 to 2008, by Ontario
Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2008-FEB-05
Author: B.A. Robinson
|
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