Who Do You Want To Be?

Tonight I went to a talk by Dallas Willard that is a part of the University Religious Center's series, "Who Do You Want to Be?" Willard's talk was one of the best I've ever heard him give and I've definitely heard my share. (I've had him as a professor for two philosophy courses and am taking two more philosophy courses with him this semester).

In brief, he spoke a little bit about himself (which was such a joy because he so rarely does it). This set the backdrop for the focus of his talk, which was his two cents on how to discover who we want to be. As an added bonus, he talked about his two favorite things (and mine), truth and beauty. I've provided a link that you can click on to listen to the lecture and question and answer session that followed. It's an audio clip that is well worth your time.

Tolerance rejects knowledge?

I'm reading through Dallas Willard's "Personal Religion, Public Reality?" and came across this thought on the supposed relationship between tolerance and knowledge. The context of the excerpt is that in the Western world today, people seem to want to deny that religion and morals can be arenas of knowledge. And here it is:

"If we can just treat religion and morals as areas in which there is no knowledge, the proposal is, we will have pulled the rug out from dogmatism, intolerance and persecution. They will then disappear. Well, one can only say that that is a pretty shallow analysis of the problem of intolerance. Intolerant people often claim 'absolute' knowledge, but that does not mean you can get rid of intolerance by disallowing knowledge."