Two classes followed directly one by one

I had a political class from 10am to 1pm, and then had an English class from 1pm to 3 pm with a dinner between them for 20 minutes. After finishing the second one, I felt really tired and my head hurts stiffly. Then I had a nap in graduate room.

The tutor reviewed the true belief argument in Locke's a letter concerning toleration. Today he reviewed another three arguments. The first one is what is called universalization argument or golden rule argument. It is similar to Confucian golden rule, which teaches: do not do things you dislike to others.Concerned with religious toleration, Locke uses it to argue that when a Christian magistrate wants to extend his authentic belief to other non-Christian subjects he should examine his inclination by the rule, that is to say, when he authentically holds his own religious conviction he should also recognize that non-Christian are also firm to their own beliefs.

The second argument is the fallibility argument which argues that magistrate are fallible therefore their decision are not firmly right. Hence magistrate should not promote one kind of religion that he thinks right by force. However, Prof. Ten thinks that he argument is not sufficient because when individual are left alone to shape their own religious view, they will be more possible to make wrong choice because they are also fallible and do not has the intelligent support like a magistrate gets from his bureau. But we may add some additional argument to refine it. This argument is similar to the argument for free market. No central control could operate a market more efficient than a free market where each individual customer acts according to their own biggest interest. The different between economy and religion here is that the economy does not care individual fallibility because the weak parts in market will be ruled out naturally in the process like the Darwinian evolution. But religion concerns individual salvation. But we can argue that each individual do their best to find the truth and the combined effort will produce a bigger possibility of being right.

The third argument is concerned with Locke's definition of Church society. Locke defines Church as a voluntary society which is constituted by voluntary members who get together to promote their salvation. Church is based on the limited common interests shared by its members and therefore they cannot extend its limited common interests to others outside the church.

At the last stage of the class, Prof. Ten examined the theory of toleration and asserts that we should go beyond toleration to show our respect to other religions and even endorse some common parts shared by both of us. He raised the example of Singapore. The government makes each community constituted with different races or ethnics and avoid to form communities by a singular race in order to weaken the strength of religious belief. This regulation is efficient to make different races to know each other and develop their mutual respect because this can develop the cross cultural interest between different cultures or religions. But we should also note that what one religion can endorse is very limited and can not endorse everything. But going beyond toleration is certainly necessary which is a more positive view.