Unconditional Love or Unconditional Affirmation?

Introduction- Unconditional Love or Unconditional Affirmation?

It is increasingly becoming popular in culture to think that unconditional affirmation of one's thoughts about themselves (identity), whether objectively true or not, is a necessary feature of unconditional love. The idea is that if you claim to unconditionally love someone, you will always affirm their identity and celebrate every action and behavior that reinforces their identity. If you do not affirm and celebrate, then it is impossible for you to unconditionally love that person.

This cultural idea, though, is increasingly showing its intolerance of even the slightest disagreement, even among those who generally agree on a modern view of tolerance. Those who have championed this view for years are now finding themselves splitting from each other along the lines of sexual identity- not just what they prefer but what they are. 

I believe that this newer cultural split and even the foundations of the modern tolerance movement are enabled due to a conflation between the meanings of "love" and "affirmation." Unless and until our culture distinguishes between them again, the modern tolerance movement will continue to splinter along ideological lines until every individual stands alone with neither the love nor affirmation of another. 

Is It Arrogant To Claim That Jesus Is The Only Way?

Is Christianity arrogant to claim that Jesus Christ is the only way to God?

An Arrogant Claim or An Arrogant Christian?

One of the most common concerns about Christianity is its claim of exclusivity. In today's world it is considered evil to not be inclusive of everyone and everything. To show such intolerance is the epitome of arrogance. Many people use the presence of such intolerance and arrogance as a defeater for Christianity, meaning that they reject its truth claims because along with those truth claims comes the claim to be the exclusive way to God. There are a few things to consider when examining this challenge, though.

Whose Morality Should We Legislate? 44 Quotes from Frank Turek and Norman Geisler

"We're living in a society in which people feel no obligation to control their own actions. Instead, we rationalize and justify every aberrant behavior under the umbrella of freedom granted by the First Amendment, never admitting that freedom without reasonable and responsible limits destroys individual lives and ultimately destroys the fabric of a civilized society."

💬45 Quotes About Relativism vs.Truth

1. "When it comes to truth, the outcome affects not only individuals but nations and even civilizations. What starts looking like a small abstract issue ends with titanic, public consequences for all who love freedom and justice."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

2. "Although someone's beliefs and assumptions may not be true and do not describe reality, they will still drive their behavior. So if someone doesn't believe in truth, count on him to lie. If someone says there are no objective facts, expect her to be careless with facts to further her own interests. If someone explains everything by referring to evolution and the 'selfish gene,' be sure that at some point he will be extremely selfish on behalf of the fitness of his own survival."

- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

3. "Our challenge today is not to lament, protest, or simply talk about the crisis of truth in one of a hundred ways. Rather, it is to do something about it by becoming people of truth and learning to live free."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

4. "Far from being a naive and reactionary notion, truth is one of the simplest, most precious gifts without which we would not be able to handle reality or negotiate life."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

5. "When nothing can be judged except judgment itself-- 'judgmentalism'--the barriers between the unthinkable, acceptable, and doable collapse entirely. And then, since life goes on and the sky doesn't fall, people draw the conclusion that the original concern was unfounded. Lighten up, the newly amoral say as they skip forward blithely, complicit in their own corruption."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

6. "If truth is truth, then differences make a difference -- not just between truth and lies but between intimacy and alienation in relationships, between harmony and conflict in neighborhoods, between efficiency and incompetence in business, between reliability and fraud in science and journalism, between trust and suspicion in leadership, between freedom and tyranny in government, and even between life and death."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

7. "While we all may have a sense of what is evil and what is good under the philosophy of cultural tolerance, evil and good can only be relative ideals. Without an objective truth—a set of universal moral values—good and evil are defined by the individual, community, or society. Therefore we have no moral basis by which to judge another person, community, or nation for what they do or don't do."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

8. "Right up to the end of the nineteenth century, the most important course in an American student's college career was moral philosophy, or what we today call ethics."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

9. "Much of today's focus is on 'prevention ethics' rather than on principled ethics. It is more concerned with 'not being caught' (or sued or exposed in the press) than with doing right."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

10. "What is seen as important are issues related to corporations, schools, courts, governments, and the treatment of the environment-- not the individual's virtue and responsibility that underlie these secondary issues."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

11. "The current ethics is often taught with a shallow view of human nature and an even more superficial view of evil in human society."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

12. "The emphasis now is on surface, not depth; on possibilities, not equalities; on glamour, not convictions; on what can be altered endlessly; not achieved for good; and on what can be bought and won, not gained by education and formation."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

13. "The present preoccupation with ethics in elite intellectual centers has an element of absurdity because they have no moral content left to teach. The fruit of the Western universities in the last two hundred years has been to destroy the possibility of any moral knowledge on which to pursue moral formation."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

14. "If truth is contingent upon the society in which we live...there is nothing intuitive or universally or absolutely true about freedom from torture or freedom from slavery; our society just happens to have come up with these values over time."
- Stephen McAndrew, Why It Doesn't Matter What YOU Believe If Its Not True

15. "If moral truths do not exist as a foundation for law, then law itself becomes merely a system of raw political power accountable to no one."
- Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life

16. "Just as iron filings are drawn to the strongest magnet, so minds weakened by a loss of truth are drawn to the most powerful positions."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

17. "What happens when we succeed in cutting away truth-claims to expose the web of power games only to find we have less power than the players we face? If truth is dead, right and wrong are neither, and all that remains is the will to power, then the conclusion is simple: Might makes right. Logic is only a power conspiracy. Victory goes to the strong, and the weak go to the wall."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

18. "Just as the Greeks entered Troy concealed in the hollow wooden statue of a horse, so post-modernism is providing the cover for all sorts of ideas and practices to enter American life--ideas that on their own would have difficulty gaining entrance."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

19 "Short of total isolation, the American society you live in today is going to influence how your children make moral choices in one way or another. Stop and think about it. What are the voices of society telling your children about the choices they are about to make? What is the central theme that today's culture emphasizes over and over again? If you were to reduce it to a single sentence, it might look like this: You have the right to choose for yourself what is right for you and what is wrong for you--and no one should judge that choice."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

20. "When nothing can be judged except judgment itself— 'judgmentalism'—the barriers between the unthinkable, acceptable, and doable collapse entirely.
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

21. "If everything is endlessly open to question and change, then everything is permitted, nothing is forbidden, and literally nothing is unthinkable."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

22. "Applying to the skeptics the skepticism they apply to others [pushes] them out toward the negative consequences of their own beliefs."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

23. "While all beliefs appear consistent to those who believe them, they always have one of two problems. They are either constricting or contradictory. In the first case the beliefs are more consistent but are incomplete in the sense that they are too small for the fullness of life...And in the second case the beliefs are more comprehensive but are inconsistent—which in the worst cases makes them self-refuting- a problem Chesterton calls 'the suicide of thought.'"
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

24. "Inevitably, moral choices based on our own moral compass will often be wrong choices. And wrong moral choices can result in consequences ranging from minor disappointments to major disasters emotionally, relationally, physically, and spiritually."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

25. "Truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

26. "It is that truth, like meaning as a whole, is not for to us to create but for us to discover. Each of us may be small, our lives short, and our influence puny. But if truth is there—objective, absolute, independent of minds that know it— then we may count on it."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

27. "In order to discover truth it is necessary to coldly dissect and examine all of our prejudices and inherent biases to ensure we receive unbiased answers. This takes effort. It is always easier to simply accept the ideas presented to us than to question the status quo."
- Stephen McAndrew, Why It Doesn't Matter What YOU Believe If Its Not True

28. "While we all may have a sense of what is evil and what is good under the philosophy of cultural tolerance, evil and good can only be relative ideals. Without an objective truth—a set of universal moral values—good and evil are defined by the individual, community, or society. Therefore we have no moral basis by which to judge another person, community, or nation for what they do or don't do."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

29 "We are all entitled to our own beliefs, but this doesn't mean each of us has our own truths. Our beliefs describe the way we think the world is. Truth describes the objective state of the world regardless of how we take it to be. Beliefs can be relative, but truth cannot. So when we consider the nature of truth—that it is an objective description of reality—it makes no sense to say that something is true for you and not for me."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

30. "Without truth, a belief may be only speculation plus sincerity."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

31. "While we all may have a sense of what is evil and what is good under the philosophy of cultural tolerance, evil and good can only be relative ideals. Without an objective truth—a set of universal moral values—good and evil are defined by the individual, community, or society. Therefore we have no moral basis by which to judge another person, community, or nation for what they do or don't do."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

32. "It is often said that to have a fulfilling life, three essentials are required: a clear sense of personal identity, a deep sense of faith and meaning, and a strong sense of purpose and mission."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

33. "For those who find themselves without faith in God and who conclude that the world they desire does not fit with the world they discover, life is fundamentally deaf to their aspirations."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

34. "For all the fragile precariousness of our human existence on our tiny earth in the vastness of space, we may throw the whole weight of our existence on God, including our truth-seeking desires, because he is wholly true."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

35. "Those who put their faith in God do so for all sorts of good reasons, but the very best reason is that they are finally, utterly, and incontrovertibly convinced that the faith which they put their confidence in is true."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

36. "All truth is God's truth and is true everywhere, for everyone, under all conditions. Truth is true in the sense that it is objective and independent of the mind of any human knower. Being true, it cannot contradict itself."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

37. "The beauty of intolerance is its opposition to wrong and evil in the world—in alignment with God's righteous and perfect standard of justice, equality, human rights, and caring for others. Intolerance of evil is not mean-spirited and condemnatory; it is actually the only way to be loving and caring."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

38. "What is more beautiful than God's intolerance expressed in his moral outrage toward the tragedies of poverty, racism, sexual abuse, slavery, AIDS, bigotry, and other such evils?"
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

39. "Human beings are truth-seekers by nature, and truth persuades by the forces of its own reality."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

40. "It is impossible to experience love without being truthful, and it is impossible to discover truth without loving it."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

41. "Truth is our best friend, and it is an inseparable part of what real love is. While cultural tolerance may disguise itself as caring, understanding, and loving, it lacks the moral authority of an authentic love that looks out for the best interest of others. That is another quality of authentic, real love—it is always other-focused."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

42. "As human beings we are by nature truth-seekers; as fallen human beings we are also by nature truth-twisters. And a proper account of truth in the human project must do justice to both."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

43. "Conforming our desires to the truth is harder in the short term but easier in the long. We give up our need for control and submit to truth outside us which, if we were wrong about truth before, requires repentance rather than rationalization. We have to face up to reality rather than trying to fit reality into our schemes. But the long-term outcome is freedom because...truth is freedom and we are engaging with reality at it truly is."
- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

44. "What distinguishes God's unconditional acceptance from that of our culture is authentic love. His love is intended to make the security, happiness, and welfare of another as important as his own. It is other-focused, not performance-focused. God knows the real truth about us—that we were created in his image—and that truth allows him to separate the person from performance. God unconditionally values us for who we are without always approving of what we do, because he separates the value of the person from the acts of the person."
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, The Beauty of Intolerance

45. "The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true. It is not true because we experience it; we experience it—deeply and gloriously—because it is true. It is not simply 'true for us'; it is true for any who seek in order to find."

- Os Guinness, Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin

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All these quotes can be found in the following books by the cited authors:

• Time For Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin- Os Guinness
• The Beauty of Intolerance: Setting A Generation Free to Know Truth and Love- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell
• Why It Doesn't Matter What YOU Believe If Its Not True- Stephen McAndrew
• The Case For Life- Scott Klusendorf

Book Review: The Beauty of Intolerance

Introduction

A few years ago, Sean McDowell gave a talk at the AMP Conference called "The Beauty of Intolerance." In the talk, he spoke of two different views on tolerance that seem to be clashing in today's society. He explained how the differences explain much of the political rhetoric of "hate" and "phobias" and "intolerance." He focused specifically on the Church's speaking truth in love and how this view is actually the most tolerant. This talk has been one of my favorites for a while. I discovered shortly after I first saw the talk that Sean and his father, Josh McDowell, coauthored a book, "The Beauty of Intolerance," that went into the topic much deeper and focused on how Christian parents can effectively communicate moral truth to a morally relativistic generation. As a parent and one who defends the objectivity of morality (and, thus, the existence of God), this book was one I dare not pass on reading, which turns out was an excellent decision. Now, before I get to my usual chapter-by-chapter summary review and the remainder of my thoughts, here is the talk by Dr. Sean McDowell that originally caught my attention.

Norm Geisler and Frank Turek: Legislating Tolerance

Introduction

As a defender of the Christian worldview, I often defend the rightness or wrongness of certain acts, and with that, whether they should be made legal or illegal. I will usually appeal science and logic in these discussions. If the person is a Christian, then I will also appeal to the Bible, if it speaks specifically or general to the topic at hand. When it is clear that all the evidence stands against their view, in a "last-ditch" effort to undermine my arguments the challenger often resorts to appealing to "tolerance." This comes in the form of the person who wants to legalize some particular act saying that by not permitting the act (legalizing it), those in opposition to the legalization (conservatives, usually) are being intolerant and trying to force their morality on the world.

I recently finished reading the book "Legislating Morality: Is It Wise, Is It Legal, Is It Possible" by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. Here is their response to such a challenge:

"When libertarians or liberals seek to give people more freedom (i.e., by passing a law that legalizes a formerly illegal activity), they do exactly what they condemn conservatives for doing. They impose their morals (and thereby the associated effects) on people who do not agree with those morals."

Who's Legislating Their Morality, Again?

The problem with any law is that it affirms that something is right and its violation is wrong. Laws often include penalties for violating the right that has been provided by the law. What is right and what is wrong is morality. If we truly want to avoid legalizing morality then no law should ever be created. So, if someone is successful in getting their particular behavior legalized, they have just legalized their morality and have successfully forced it on the masses. This means that the complaint of the person trying to get their act to be made legal has just violated their own moral standard of "tolerance."

Conclusion

The next time that someone complains that you just want to force your morality on them, remind them that they are in the same position- they are, in fact, attempting to force their morality on you. Ask them to explain how their doing so is right and your doing so is wrong. This is not something that can be logically defended without affirming the right of the other to do the same. This results in a "stale-mate" and requires that both sides go back to the evidence. This will (hopefully) keep the discussion focused on actual reasons and not go down the "rabbit hole" is emotive rhetoric.

To Investigate Further, I recommend:

• How Should Christians Vote In Political Elections?
• Book Review: Legislating Morality: Is It Wise, Is It Legal, Is It Possible? 
• Book Review: Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions
• Book Review: Relativism: Feet Planted In Mid-Air

Don't Force Your Beliefs on Others

Introduction

An interesting meme came across my Facebook feed the other day. It states, "It is okay for you to believe what you believe. It is not okay for you to insist that everyone else believe the same as you." I shared it with a short explanation of the fact that the claim self-destructs. This meme self-destructs because it violates its own claim. It insists that the readers believe what is included in the meme (the idea that we should not insist others believe what we believe). It was not long before my comments were challenged. The conversation included a few different challenges that I addressed. I have included those challenges and my responses below (with a few edits for clarity).

Challenge #1: This is a religion thing!

Response: This is actually a belief that someone is affirming is right and affirming that its opposite is wrong. "Right" and "wrong" are terms of morality. It is logically impossible to not affirm someone's morality with the statement in the meme because it is affirming a moral belief. If someone affirms that the belief (that you should not force your beliefs on others) is right, then they affirm that its opposite (that you should force your beliefs on others) is wrong. If they insist that others hold to that same belief, then they have violated their own belief. That is why it is self-defeating. This has nothing to do with religion; rather it has everything to do with logic.

Challenge #2: There is no morality in this meme.

Response: morality is found in the meme in the implied "should" or "ought" in the affirmative phrase "is not okay." These are terms of obligation that are independent of a person (this is called "objective"). The moral claim is that someone should not force their beliefs on someone else. However, for something like morality to exist, it must have an ontological/metaphysical grounding. If your worldview does not contain such an object (such as God), then objective morality does not exist in your worldview, and nothing can be said to be truly "right" or "wrong;" it is all just a matter of opinion (and enforceable by who's in power). Now, if the person posting this meme is merely offering an opinion, then that is fine. It is their opinion that beliefs should not be forced on someone else, but it cannot go beyond an opinion to be an actual moral obligation. If morality is not objective, then any obligations end at the person asserting them; they do not apply beyond that person (this is called "subjective"). And that is exactly what this meme is denouncing and violating simultaneously. There is morality in this meme; there is not sound logic in this meme.

Challenge #3: We can be good without God. You are saying that I'm immoral because I don't believe the way you do.

Response: That is not my claim. I'm saying that it is only with an ontological foundation that morality (in any objective sense, which is what the meme seems to want to enforce) even exists. It is only if God exists that someone can be either moral or immoral. If there is no ontological grounding for morality, then we are all amoral because the world is amoral. This is not the same as "immoral." "Amoral" indicates the absence of a standard by which to conclude someone or something is moral or immoral. None of what I have said even implies someone's moral status; I've only made claims about the existence of morality that would allow statements about someone's moral status.

Conclusion

This meme and many of its type are quite common on social media these days. It is imperative that we logically evaluate their claims for soundness. If we find that they are not, we need to show how that is so. It is important that people be able to recognize bad logic when they see it, so they can learn to think clearly as other issues and claims arise.

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Recommended Books for Further Investigation:

• Time For Truth: Living Free In A World Of Lies, Hype, and Spin by Os Guinness
• The Beauty of Intolerance: Setting A Generation Free to Know Truth And Love by Josh and Sean McDowell
• Relativism: Feet Planted in Mid-Air by Greg Koukl and Frank Beckwith
• Legislating Morality: Is It Wise, Is It Legal, Is It Possible by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek

Book Review: Legislating Morality- Is It Wise, Is It Legal, Is It Possible

Introduction

Legislating Morality: Is It Wise, Is It Legal, Is It Possible by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek has been on my reading list for quite some time. It is often brought up by skeptics that Christians do not have a consistent view of morality, especially when it comes to government. This is often used as evidence of internal inconsistency within the Christian worldview and often leads to the conclusion that Christianity is false. And with the political season upon us yet again, I have been involved in many discussions about morality and politics. When defending the existence of God by using the moral argument, it is important to recognize the difference between moral ontology and moral epistemology (does objective morality exist vs. which objective morality exists) to address the claim of an internal inconsistency; however, we cannot stop there. Often the challenge comes from a genuine concern about the consistency of the moral code that Christians say is objectively established by the God of the Bible. So, it is important that defenders of the Christian worldview educate themselves on views of morality, and in political seasons, the morality of legislating morality.

A few weeks ago I decided to put reading two other books on hold and go through this one to better prepare myself as these discussions become more and more common with the season. Was I disappointed with that decision? I will give this book my usual chapter-by-chapter summary treatment then provide my recommendations at the end.

Homosexuality, Intolerance, and Mozilla

"Inclusivism" In The Tech Industry
The last couple of weeks have seen some interesting controversy in the technology industry. Its not over technical standards or best practices, but rather over politics and worldviews. Recently Brendan Eich (former CTO of Mozilla- the creators of the Firefox web browser) was promoted to the position of CEO. Shortly after that it became known that he made a donation a few years ago to support the passing of Proposition 8 (a proposal to ban gay marriage) in California. This, of course, stirred much controversy around Eich and his political views. He and Stephen Shankland (CNET) discussed the potential effects this controversy could have on the Mozilla company here.

Eich was careful to hold his ground while explaining that Mozilla has historically held inclusivism in high value. He pointed to the fact that Mozilla has international offices in parts of the world that generally disagree with the pro-homosexual position. Throughout the conversation Eich implied that Mozilla's inclusivism included those who dissented from the pro-gay lobby. He even said:

Dangers of Consistent "Tolerance"

The new tolerance has plenty of philosophical and pragmatic problems. Last year I discussed the intolerance of the new tolerance. I showed how the new tolerance is actually self-defeating. However today I want to talk about the effects if the new tolerance was the philosophy and practice of the earliest humans.

Traditionally tolerance has been described as being able to civilly live alongside a person if they hold contrary beliefs. The person being tolerant could still be considered "tolerant" if they questioned and debated the other person. However, today tolerance eliminates that last bit. In order to be considered "tolerant" we not only must be able to civilly live alongside those who hold contrary beliefs, but we cannot question or debate the other person. Some would even take it as far as to say that one person must celebrate or even accept the contrary view as containing the same level of truth as their own belief.

The Intolerance of "Tolerance"

It is really quite amazing how much I hear about being "tolerant." In today's "politically correct"/"don't offend anyone" culture, it really is not surprising.

Someone told me the other day that I was being intolerant by voicing a certain opinion. I had to do the equivalent of a "double-take" with what I had just heard.

I asked her if she really valued "tolerance." Of course, she said yes. My next question was not met pleasantly. I asked, "Do you realize that you are being intolerant of my view by telling me that?"

It then occurred to me that "tolerance" can only be performed, but never voiced. When "tolerance" is articulated, it is hypocritical. The "tolerant" person is being intolerant of the person he is claiming is "intolerant". It can be easily demonstrated by showing that the intolerance is actually implicit in the accusation. The "tolerant" person may defend his statement by claiming that it is an observation- making it okay. At that point, I would agree that an observation by itself does not completely destroy his tolerance. However, if he mentions it, he is demonstrating that he is being intolerant of the other person's intolerance. The articulation of "tolerance" defeats its own definition.