Do you respect others’ beliefs?
This is an interesting question because it’s one of those difficult situations where everyone wants others to respect their beliefs but don’t necessarily want to respect others’ beliefs. It’s a tough situation because even the most open-minded people have to draw a line somewhere: you can’t respect all beliefs because all it would take is for someone to believe that another person deserves to die and society falls if you accept that belief at scale. Strangely, however, society has had all kinds of beliefs be socially acceptable, such as slavery being common, some people having more rights than others, and mandatory church attendance. Most societies frown upon these kinds of ethics today, but centuries ago they were common.
Accepting others’ beliefs, ethics, and behaviors is a fascinating concept. It starts with the original of social animals, as two separate organisms cooperating required both parties to believe that the other would not hurt them. This was the beginning of beliefs shifting from simply assumptions about the world around you to survive to agreed-upon assumptions about how to behave so that cooperation wouldn’t devolve back into ruthless competition. The first rule ever set (either implicitly or explicitly) was that the two cooperating parties would not hurt each other. All trust in a relationship between two living organisms is based on the belief that neither party will hurt the other. Therefore, if you believe that the other person believes that it’s okay to harm you, that cannot be allowed in cooperative relationships. That is why there are certain beliefs that you cannot respect: if you believe that harm to the cooperating party is okay, you cannot cooperate. As a result, there can be no functioning society without a set of rules that everyone agrees to that minimizes harm to the cooperating parties (known as the “in group” in psychology). This is the foundation for why differing beliefs lead to divided groups and war: if you can’t agree on foundational beliefs, you can’t live together in peace.
Now, there are two problems even if you can agree to that: what risk of harm is tolerated and what harm to intangible things like emotions, ideas, or reputations is tolerated. This is where things get tricky even if you get over the questions of what constitutes harm and to whom the rules apply (which are hard enough on their own to figure out, as second-class citizens and victims of revenge porn can attest to). Yes, crashing into someone with a vehicle is a crime, but what about driving recklessly as long as no one is physically hurt? What about infidelity, insulting a religion, or desecrating a memorial? One would argue that no harm was done if you draw a comic involving Mohammad, for example, but a large number of Muslims will want to kill you for doing so. So while undeserved harm can be agreed to, now there are slights and perceived slights to someone that many would say justify physical punishment in retaliation.
There are so many examples of this in modern times, as societies pushed for more libertarian (i.e., no physical harm, no taking property are the only two sets of laws that are needed to constrain people) rules, there arose a few sets of rules on top of those that various groups push for. The far political left, for example, want to be able to tax people’s income, property, and transactions to spend that money however they see fit. They also don’t see fetuses as humans with rights nor do they think that people should have a right to do many things (e.g., start a business, modify their house, give certain speeches) without community approval. The far political right, on the other hand, wants to be able to mandate where certain demographics live, the roles of the two sexes, and the nature of sexual relationships. Then there are extreme religious individuals who want their practicing beliefs and behaviors to be codified into law. Finally, there are moderates who want (as the name suggests) moderate amounts of rules for all of that until it reaches a point where it encroaches too much on individual liberty.
So, the question is, which beliefs can you respect without risk to yourself, and where do you draw the line? Well, as mentioned, the minimum line is unprovoked physical harm. That clearly cannot be tolerated, as society is over if you tolerate that. The problem is that more and more groups know this but want to use force to coerce others to comply, and so they always find new reasons. Usually, they say it’s because they’re oppressed or were harmed in some way first, so their actions are justified. After all, who can keep accurate score as to who was right or wrong in the Middle East, for example, after years of back and forth attacks (such as the most recent ones between Israel and Iran)? The truth is that respecting others’ beliefs is more complicated than simply, “As long as it doesn’t hurt me,” when the lines are hard to draw and so everyone draws them in different places.
As usual, it’s not my place to tell you which ethics to hold or who is right or wrong morally in any given situation. But what I can tell you is this: the starting point that everyone can agree on is, “Don’t hurt or steal from others.” Any belief that doesn’t lead to that should be tolerated. This applies to all sorts of beliefs, from God to aliens to the Earth being flat to Elvis still being alive. In this context, we don’t mean that you have to agree or to speak positively of them. The main way that you respect others’ beliefs is that you don’t try to tear them down and you don’t insult the person or otherwise discriminate against them in irrelevant areas like business transactions or community services. It is only when those beliefs become actions that harm or risk harm that you have to take action. If they believe in God but then also believe that heathens must be beaten, it’s the act of beating someone else that cannot be respected. They can decide not associate with you due to their beliefs, and you can decide not associate with them (outside of legally required non-discrimination laws for business operations). But you have to respect their right to have their own thoughts, opinions, and beliefs that you might not agree with because they, in turn, will have to respect yours in a free society. Yes, you might think Astrology is woo-woo and knocking on wood is a stupid superstition, but people have a right to believe that.
Unfortunately, there will be lines that will never be agreed upon. Because abortion, however, pits a human’s right to exist against another human’s right to bodily autonomy, that issue is just a matter of drawing a line where the majority can agree. It’s areas like this where it’s hardest to respect others’ beliefs because there is harm (to the fetus) on one side and preventing a person from controlling what they can do with their body on the other. As such, you either have harm or reduced bodily autonomy—there’s no magical solution where neither outcome occurs (well, until there becomes a 0%-failure-rate way to prevent unwanted pregnancies, that is).
It’s these kinds of areas where respecting others’ beliefs becomes difficult to do. Can you respect someone’s right to think that trans people are mentally ill, for example, as long as they don’t try to stop them from using the restroom or participating in the sport they want? Or do you have to try to shame everyone into compliance out of fear that they might ban those activities? That’s why many people don’t respect others’ beliefs: they think it will come back and harm them. I will admit that I face this conundrum: can I respect the beliefs of people who want to take half or more of my income (Japan and Denmark, for example, tax over half, which seemingly makes you more of an indentured servant than a free individual) and give it mostly to politicians, special interests, and people who knowingly have six children so they can collect enough money where they don’t have to work for the rest of their lives? If that is morally wrong to do so, then how/why do I tolerate it? I’m sure there is something that you can identify that similarly gives you pause: whether someone can take the Lord’s name in vain, commit adultery, burn a flag, insult Mohammed, have premarital sex, think LGBT people are deviants, kill a fetus, prevent abortions, deport illegal immigrants, prevent you from doing drugs, or possess dangerous drugs and you just sit back and let them hold those beliefs that might lead to behaviors that you don’t like.
This is one of the hardest posts to write because I have to tell people what they already know: in a representative system of government, all you can do is try to get everyone to agree to a set of rules that works best for as many people as possible and then follow the ones that are set to avoid punishment. If you feel that the rules are unfair or oppressive, you can try to change them, ignore them, or even rebel against them. But, as you can tell, all that does is lead to more segregation, more conflict, and more harm and death. So you have to decide how much of others’ beliefs to tolerate where you can live in a peaceful, cooperative society and at which point you will need to stop tolerating it, which will possibly require force, conflict, disassociation, and even restricting others’ freedoms.
Ending with a focus on more daily tasks, however, this conundrum applies to your everyday life regarding others’ beliefs about you and whether you let them influence your behavior (and vice versa). Other people might think that you will fail at life if you go in a direction. All you can do is decide whether you let that influence you or not. You can try to convince others, but you have to decide whether that’s worth your time or not. So here, when we’re not talking about harm or societal rules but just about individual life decisions, you should generally respect the right of others to hold different beliefs than you and go about your life in the best way that you can. It could be that you choose to listen to them and change your behavior or choose to not listen to them and do what you think is best. That is your decision. But once you leave the realm of physical harm to others, you have to more and more respect others’ beliefs so that you can live in harmony with them and not be a miserable jerk.
Ultimately the degree to which you respect others’ beliefs is up to you. However, my one recommendation is remember that the three near-universal ethics of humans are fairness, reciprocity, and minimal harm. Once harm has been eliminated as a reason for disagreeing with someone, you’re down to the fact that if you want to be fair and reciprocal regarding them respecting your right to believe whatever you want, you have to respect their right to believe whatever they want. Hypocrisy is one of the biggest human ethical concerns, and so if you want them to respect you then you have to respect them at some point. Therefore, respect others’ beliefs as much as you can and focus on preventing harmful behaviors as close to the act itself as possible so you don’t restrict others’ freedom or cause them to retaliate by trying to control you.