Ring of Tolerance

Richard Dawkins (renowned atheist apologist) gives an example in The Ancestor's Tale of a particular kind of lizard that has migrated in a circle around the rim of a volcano. This migration has taken so long, the lizard has speciated along the way: Although each lizard community can mate with the adjacent one, the first and last communities (the one at the beginning of the circle and the one at the end completing the circle) cannot.

I listened to The Ancestor's Tale audio book and don't know if the print edition included an illustration. I illustrated it myself with the circular arrow accompanying this post. If you can imagine lizard communities occupying the length the arrow, the lizards at the blunt end of the arrow cannot mate with the lizards at the pointy end, even though they are adjacent and all other adjacent lizard communities can mate.[1]

Dawkins added a comment about racism after discussing this phenomena, which makes sense to me: If we know how closely we're related to each other, it might make a difference how we treat each other.

(He also included a comment about abortion, without clarification, which made no sense to me at all. It's interesting that two things so utterly unrelated (abortion and racism) would be lumped together for reconsideration based on this example. Maybe I just was to dense to make the connection.)

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It occurred to me that ideas are this way too. They evolve over time or areas so that there is an unbroken connection at each stage, but the further you get from the beginning, the less likely the stages will be able to communicate. (Language works this way.)

If Christian theology is a spectrum, Baptists and Catholics are at opposite ends. You can trace the development of ideas that led from one to the other, but the two often think of themselves as unrelated, even dangerously wrong. Catholics are a bit more charitable in their opinions of Baptists than the reverse, akin to a sad resignation, like that experienced by the father in the parable of the prodigal's son.

Sentiments like this are sadly all too common. Good things like ecumenism and reconciliation are couched in paranoia and fear.

Fear is a strong motivator. It fuels extremism of all sorts, from the gun rights lobby to religious fundamentalism.

Power brokers know this and exploit it, and the paranoid never know they are being manipulated.

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[1]
I may not agree with Mr Dawkins on much, but I've given him a fair hearing, and I like him. He's easy on the ears and the intellect, but ultimately unsatisfying, like a rich pastry. I think I could enjoy his company very much. I don't know that he'd feel the same about me.

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Started: 2013-01-21