Responses to Ignorance

Here's some interesting news articles (click the links to follow);

A girl is killed because she's a goth.

An atheist soldier is harassed for being an atheist.

Responses to the atheist soldier article on a website which is predominantly atheist.

What do they have in common?

For me, they're a snapshot of how mixed up and messed up things are right now. It shows how people respond to what they don't understand.

But you know what, nobody looks at goths and says "I hate goths because I don't understand them' or 'I hate atheists because I don't know what they're about' or even 'I hate Christians because I don't get their faith'. Not at all, because I believe that what people actually think (if they think at all in these situations) is "I hate what they stand for" - in other words, the full body of ignorance is shown in that people think they know when in fact they don't.

People think that what they know about 'others' is what informs their actions, but the truth is that it's the gaps in their knowledge that really shows us what they're like.

There are three primary areas of responses to ignorance; positive, neutral and negative.

Let's look at the church's attitude to the belief that the world is round as an example and how those three would be manifest;

Positive

The world is round? Well, I never would have thought that. You learn something new every day eh? Well, thank you for that.

Neutral

So the world is round. What do I care?

Negative

Heretic! Burn him before he manages to spread his satanic lies!

I know, this is an incredibly naive post, but can we see the reflection our our own faces in the reactions of others around us?