system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are religious freedom and toleration good or bad for religious belief and practice? In both the domains of belief and practice, how does liberalism transform religion?
gpt
After reading The Social Construction of Reality by Berger and Luckman I'd say religious tolerance and its enforcement does weaken religious faith over time.

I'll provide a simplified argument. Any religion is usually legitimated within its own community and doesn't need to compete with alternative ideologies. It's ideology and way of life are enforced and reasoned with in the community and socialized into individuals. this means that those beliefs will remain relatively stable. The religion can of change over time, but it is in a sense the only choice the ability to change it radically won't exist.

Religious Freedom and Religious Tolerance assume a few different scenarios.

The first is that Religion A now has to compete with Religion B and reconcile the differences between the ideologies and legitimize itself. The first reaction will be to show how the other religion is false, even possibly using violence to regain its hegemonic place in society. The community of Religion A can still remain insular in a sense but it will now have to interact with people of differing beliefs, interactions will have to change and possibly the enforcement of their own beliefs be weakened to allow space for Religion B. (E.G. Religion A bans a certain food and punishes those who eat it. Religion B believes the same food is sacred and uses it for medicine. In the first scenario if anybody ate the food they would be punished. Now with a new group, Religion A can't punish Religion B without possible reprisal, they also now need to justify why the food is bad. Especially if others in Religion A community see the health benefits of the food for people in religion B.)

The enforcement of tolerance upon others weakens a religious communities ability to enact its beleifs that infringe upon others and also shows individuals in their community alternative belief structures that they can take on if their original community. A religion existing in a diverse community will be suspect to change much easier than before.

So ultimately I'd say its bad for the preservation of belief overtime, but good for enforcement of peace and competition between religions. We can use a real world example, if Catholics don't believe contraception is evil, they will use it, even if it is against their dogma. In a religiously tolerant society, the Catholic Church is limited in its avenues of reprisals. They can't enforce a new inquisition as done in the past for example. They can exclude them from the community and punish them in some way, but if those individuals simply leave the faith and go on to another one, then who cares really, the Catholic Church has no real power over their lives anymore unless they give it the power.

Religious Tolerance breaks down an religious community's capabilities to enforce its beliefs. Individual belief is what matters now.