Because people are emotionally invested in their religion. After all, if you choose the wrong one bad things will happen to your soul. wooowwoooo
i haven't read the full discussion so far, but this is closest to my opinion of the issue. and it indeed isn't just religion: issues of politics and nationalism are equally prone to causing flame wars. heck, you look at younger groups and they're get into flame wars about whether a particular song is emo or melodic hardcore.
as far as my own perspective on things, it's very much influence by my academic studies. i majored in sociology with an emphasis on social psychology, and one of my main foci was identity. in Modernity and Self-Identity,
Anthony Giddens does, in my opinion, a very good job of describing what identity is and how it works. he says, "A person's identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor - important though this is - in the reactions of others, but in
the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual's biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing 'story' about the self" (pg. 54, my emphasis). he's thinking like a sociologist: as a group of scholars, we don't pay much attention to who you think you are; we're more interested in the processes that allow you to think you're someone in the first place.
in my own work on identity, i tied in the psychological concept of
cognitive dissonance. basically, cognitive dissonance happens when a person experiences two contradictory thoughts or pieces of thought (cognitions). people have three general responses to cognitive dissonance: ignore, attack or integrate. the particulars of when and how each one occur is what interested me as a sociologist.
this might sound like very wordy techincal jargon without much meaning to you or me, so here's how it applies to the situation at hand. religious beliefs are obivously a very central part of identity. they provide a sense of self-confidence, a belief in right living, a indullible connection to other people, and answers to some of life's Big Questions (what does it mean to be human?, what happens when we die?, how did we come to be?, etc.). when an idea challenges a person's beliefs (religious or otherwise), it isn't simply an abstract philosophical exercise for most people. if this contradictory idea is true, it could mean the individuals notions about his or her past actions or self-worth are invalidated. naturally, no one wants that to happen. so the methods of resolving cognitive dissonance come into play.
"flame wars" are an obvious example of attack in most case. in my observation, they're full of ad hominems, vulgar words, teleological reasoning and appeals to sentimentality. but i think ignoring such arguments is just as common - the people who get disgusted by such arguments, those who'd want to ban public "debate" (flaming) on the issues, those who respond, "whatever you're selling, take it somewhere else."
integration is, in my experience, perhaps the most difficult, or at least uncommon, of responses to cognitive dissonance. i think some of the methods include the idea that every religion has at least some truth to it, for example.
of course, as a sociologist, i think the reasons one occurs and not the other - those reasons are rooted in culture. my mom raised me to believe that every human life has value, that every voice deserves to be heard, and that no matter what my emotional reaction to a person might be, he or she deserves my respect. she wasn't raised like this at all; she had a very difficult childhood for many, many reasons. but she made her own sense of it, and passed the things she learned on to my brother and me.
there isn't much in terms of practical application value in these ideas, though, at least nothing beyond common sense. when discussing such topics, i've learned that it's best not to offer my own points of view unless (at least implicitly) asked. and it's better to ask questions (not the loaded kind!), than simply to pontificate and opine at great length (as i'm doing now - hey, no one's perfect!).
so, i apologize if my post is absurdly long, and i hope at least a few people find it interesting. normally, i love discussing religion, but i learn more and more every time that i should be careful how i do it and with whom.
cheers,
dystopic
