Define Tolerance?

Who is more tolerant?  An individual who believes that one view is correct but allows others to hold their own opinion or someone who does not hold any strong views but thinks everyone is right?

I first heard this question over this past weekend during my church’s fellowship.  Rather than taking my time to think about the question deeply, I immediately answered that it is one who has strong views but accepts the fact that other will have different views.  I was surprised that a survey of this question resulted in the majority answering the opposite. 

Instead of trying to reason why the majority would say being tolerant is thinking that everyone is right, I focused more on how I felt so strongly that I was right.  At first I was thinking how it was because the first option closely resembled my world view on life so I wanted it to be true.  I didn’t want my “life-philosophy” to be non-tolerant.  I didn’t want to put myself down as the non-tolerant.  But I wanted to move past this selfish conclusion.

Being that the speaker didn’t really put forth any real reason I thought that way, and this was in the beginning of the message, the opener so to speak, I quickly pushed the question back into my mind so as to keep up with the onslaught of history and philosophy that ensued.  Note: I don’t want to give the impression of a bad message that night since I thoroughly enjoyed the analysis of the progression of thought through the human eras.

After the night was over and I got back to my dorm room, I began to think again about the question of tolerance.  I’m sorry if you thought that I had a sure-fire conclusion to this conundrum but I’m afraid that even now I still lack a definitive answer.  For now, I am rather content on standing on the first option but conceding that someone can still make the argument for the second.  For those who read this far, you might notice that this answer is rather biased being that I want to tolerant and therefore allow others to hold their own views, but still believing that I am right.

Please comment on what you think might be tolerance.