The examples of religious intolerance I mentioned were extreme; I picked them precisely because everyone has heard of them and I think everyone agrees they demonstrate absolute religious intolerance.

But I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say it’s cult like behavior. After all, The Roman Catholic Church was the majority religion that held sway over a very wide geographic area. While some may say the church deviated Christian ideals, I think few would call the Roman Catholic Church “a cult”. (Of if they call it a cult, I need to read their definition of cult so I can figure out what sort of religion is *not* a cult!)

In any case, even eliminating the extreme cases, I think examples are religious intolerance are frequent enough. After all, the Puritans arrived in the Americas to escape religious intolerance, as did many other groups. After they arrived here, many religious groups proceeded to inflict their own intolerance on people who held alternate views.

Both the Puritans and their European oppressors were religious. Their intolerance went well beyond simply not accepting the idea that “all views are valid”. They enacted laws to force their views on others and/or to restrict the rights of those who didn’t share their religious views. Where all these groups cults?

American’s were well aware of the fact this sort of religious intolerance existed, and they were well aware that it presented a danger. That’s our constitution has provisions to prevent states from establishing state religions.

I have no idea how all this interacts with the whole “who accepts or denies AGW” theory you are developing. But let me assure you, there are religious people who are very, very intolerant of rival religions. These people would move to disfavor rival groups using the arm of the law. And if all these people belong to “cults,” then your theory better account for how people in cults respond to the theory of AGW, because there are an awful lot of people in “cults”!

My original premise relative to religious bias was based on the fact(?) there is really no such thing as absolute tolerance because as soon as you say, “all views are valid”, you have stated that the view that “my view is true and others are false” is invalid! The only way to move forward from this is to hold all views up to testing for truth – while still recognizing that sometimes (most times?) we have to work with “probably true” as the best we can do (enter global warming and the pursuit of the probability of certain outcomes).

Note: your European examples are clearly aberrations of classic Christianity and I think could be characterized as cult-like behavior.

One short observation: There has been tons of religious intolerance througout history. Naming episodes I can think of off hand from European history, I can think of The Crusades, The Inquisition, various persecusions during the reformation etc. The Puritans came the the American’s to escape persecution (and then were intolerant themselves.)

So, I don’t think we can relegate the idea of religious intolerance to those in cults!

I was visiting a Alternet and noticed an ad for a Draft Gore campaign now underway.( http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/algore2008/ )

Then, I thought to google “gore president” on google news: ( http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200702/POL20070221a.html )

(My response to Phil seems to still be lost in the spam filter. )

Thanks for the challenge. I am not a sociologist or political scientist – just an atmospheric physicist trying to understand why this science question seems to be so divisive along cultural fault lines the are generally drawn on economic, political, and religious grounds.

So, I start from the question, why is this problem so polarizing? As I describe above, the complexity of the science and diversity of the available observations makes for easy vindication of any side you want to choose. And you tend to choose the side that placates your preexisting bias.

There may be categories other than economic, political and religious, but these are the strongest I have observed – not scientifically but through many conversations with a diversity of acquaintances that cover a pretty broad range of views in these categories. (Given my profession everyone wants to know what I think about AGW and I usually turn the question on them to get their take on it first.)

I admit that the conclusions regarding the religious category are the most tenuous. But I often hear from people who are religiously conservative a tone that implies, “don’t tell me what I should do to solve the problem…if there even is one”. And I hear from religious liberals a tone that implies, “Because this is potentially so terrible, we ALL have to (fill in the blank).”

To your point, I haven’t run across anyone who holds to idealistic intolerance (sounds like a cult to me), but I guess your suggestion could result in that case.

Anyway, wouldn’t a religious perspective that stands on idealistic *intolerance* lean toward a group centered solution? People in that group might tend to say their particular group will decide what the solution is and impose it on others.

Might not a religiously tolerant group lean toward letting each group decide what to do for itself? This would be a sort of “federalist” solution?

Wouldn’t people who avoid organized religion be the one’s who want to emphasize personal responsibility and resist centralized contraints? Let people join the group if they want to, otherwise, not?

I guess if I saw supporting data, I’d be willing to believe the types of correlations you suggest exist, but otherwise, I’m dubious!

Understood. Of course, holding a view of how the world works best, and living it is a problem for us all. The point I’m making in #3 is that a religious perspective that stands on idealistic tolerance will lean toward a group-centered solution (i.e., we can fix this if we all just…), where a religious view that emphasizes personal responsibility to do the right thing will lean away from centralized constraints (e.g., emission caps). And if you recoil from the proposed solution to a problem you may tend to dismiss the basis of the problem rather than propose an alternate solution.

I also think, more to your point, that absolute tolerance (all views are valid) leaves you without a basis to persuade someone to your point of view and you are left with coersion.