The so Called "Melting Pot"

"The Challenge of Cultural Relativism" by James Rachels reminds me a lot of the saying "we agree to disagree". Throughout the article Rachels made strong points about the different beliefs and morals throughout different cultures in the world. Like he said, there is no right or wrong in our world. Everybody has their own reasoning as to why they act they way they do, or why they do what they do. I personally found the example about eating the cows striking. Rachels tells us to think about a culture where they don't eat cows even though they may be starving. He says this is because they believe that humans get reincarnate into the body's of animals. So for them, they could be eating someone else's grandmother which makes everything sound perfectly logical, after all I wouldn't want anyone to be eating my nana. This article greatly relates to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Throughout the story, Christians came in and tried to present to  the natives about their religion. Rather, they tried to FORCE their religion onto them which I feel was the most unjust way to do it. But then again, there was those Christians who came and tried to teach the natives about the religion, rather than forcing it upon them. This approach seemed to be better, and I think that this is what we need to do in our own world. We need to teach others, not force them. I agree with Rachels statement that there is never a right or wrong answer to some things. I think that everybody is entitled to their own beliefs especially here in America where we are the so called "melting pot" of different cultures. Rachels made a statement that some cultures believe that the world is still flat, but that belief is outdated and can be proven wrong because of science. Science is a crazy, amazing thing that somehow can prove answers to questions that people have been asking for as long as humans have been around. But somethings science will never be able to prove, maybe because simply there doesn't need to be an answer. Like why is the sky blue? Who knows, but then again who really needs to know? As humans we are born with this thirst for knowledge and to understand the unknown. But we also believe in something greater than ourselves. For most cultures, this is a God figure. For some people, this is science and only science. They won't believe in something until there is a proven reason as to why something had to happen. But like Rachels said, there's never a right or wrong answer. We can try all we want to change other people's beliefs, but like we saw in Things Fall Apart, that doesn't always go over well. Faith and beliefs, and morals and customs all come in different ways and sure, it's in our nature to question how or why, but we cannot judge. Like this time of year people are fighting over wither they should be called "Christmas trees" or "holiday trees". I personally think that this is ridiculous. I went to catholic school for ten years and was raised to say Merry Christmas and I personally do not think that there is any harm in saying that to someone. If you know that someone is Jewish and doesn't celebrate Christmas then saying "Happy Holidays" is perfectly acceptable but if you don't know the person and you say "merry Christmas" I do not believe that there is any harm in that and that person should not feel violated, because your trying to spread holiday cheer. This holiday season is supposed to be a season of joy and people need to learn how to respect and honor that. We all need to realize that we live in a culturally diverse world and if we do not learn how to accept and embrace other cultures then its not going to be peaceful.  We don't always understand why they believe what they do, but maybe that's because we don't try and learn about it. As humans I think we all need to take a step back and stop comparing ourselves so much, and rather learn about each other and fix the things about ourselves that truly need fixing.