“If you insult my religion, you’re literally insulting me!”

I think one of the most pernicious elements in society is the degree to which people identify with their conclusions.

Because none of us is omniscient, all of our conclusions are tentative. I insist that unicorns do not exist, but if you were to show me a breeding population of unicorns (and get some respected zoologists to study them and confirm their legitimacy) then I’d be compelled to change my mind.

Now if you accept that all conclusions are tentative (and if you care about being correct) then you must also concede that identifying very strongly with your conclusions is bad. It’s bad because building your identity around an idea makes you far less likely to change your mind about it. Fundamentalist religious people are a good example of this — in many cases they simply cannot change their minds because doing so would involve dismantling their entire selves. But this problem is certainly not limited to religion.

This is one reason I value being brazen and forthright. Treating ideas as delicate things worthy of the greatest admiration encourages or at least enables people to identify more strongly with them. I want to live in a society that treats ideas as transitive things that might change at any moment, so I can’t abide the undue value we’re supposed to afford bad ones.

This is not an excuse to be an asshole. We all need to have enough empathy and tact to recognise that some people really can be greatly hurt by the wrong idea at the wrong time. Part of my goal is to reduce this problem by discouraging people from getting so attached to their ideas in the first place, but once the parasite has taken hold, care is needed in its removal. Whenever I get into a religious discussion, my first question is “How much do you have riding on this?”. I’ve no interest in making people miserable.