You know what the "Interfaith"-concept reminds me of? Conspiracy-theorists. [View all]

[DetlefK]

I recently read an article on cracked.com by someone who went to a convention. A convention about UFOs, ghost-hunting, aural photography, magic, mind-reading...

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-i-learned-infiltrating-paranormal-convention/

The point is:
The author was surprised how sane and recollected everybody there seemed.

No weirdos.

Nothing outrageous.

Just people standing around, having discussions, showing off their machines/evidences.

Everbody was outrageously forthcoming and respectful to everybody.

And after a while, the author realized where this tolerance for other people's ideas came from:
Everybody was afraid that their pet-idea would be attacked and dissected and ridiculed and argumented against. Just like all those other cruel people do all the time.

For example:
That's why a ghost-photographer COULDN'T outright dismiss someone's pet-idea that the barn on this photo is really a ghost-barn. Because it's not visible on the other photo. (Because it's out-of-frame, because the second photo was taken from another view-point.) Instead the ghost-photography-guy HAD TO WEASEL HIS WAY OUT OF THIS by saying that he really can't tell whether this is a ghost-barn because the images are so blurry. But it might be.

For example:
Rauni Kilde ... was an elderly woman with vats of charisma and a gaze like a nail driven directly between your eyes. You could have told me she was a professor at Harvard and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. And then, she dropped a page from her lecture notes without noticing it. Upon realizing that a page was missing, and without missing a beat, she declared that this happened to her quite often, and it was because the government was constantly stalking her and disintegrating her notes with their melt-rays when she wasn't looking.
And nobody said a thing.





The concept that various religions could coexist WITHOUT attacking each other seems similar to me: It wouldn't be a friendly, accepting coexistence. It would be a cease-fire: "I won't mention how ridiculous your beliefs are as long as you refrain from calling my beliefs ridiculous."

And in a world where it's not allowed to call out bad ideas, what happens?