Reply #3: More interesting questions [View All]

But again, difficult to answer. You are trying to apply logic and reason to something that totally rejects logic and reason.
Let me try though. I think a lot of fanaticism comes in response to very bad things happening to one..In my family for instance, I have members who are very suspicious and distrustful of any German/Catholic because of having large amounts of our relatives killed by Nazi's in WW2. My dad, for instance refuses to by ANYTHING of German manufacture, or to have anything to do with ANYTHING of German origin, even though most modern Germans are quite ashamed of that chapter of history. But it also can be perceptions of bad things happening, not even to the individual but to people similar in history..Lets put it this way, without giving the truly offensive specific comments,many of my relatives are quite fanatic about Israel and indeed at least one of them voted for Bush because he was "the only one who can protect Israel"..and they have nasty things to say about Arabs in general.
People I would get together to discuss this? No one in politics for sure, since they would never be completely honest about this, since I believe that politicians actually benefit from fanaticism quite a bit.
Maybe some moderates in a religion (like the Islamic Imams who try to battle the well known extremism of their faith) some people who have never been indoctinated into a religon (sort of like me, I suppose) some people who have rejected the religion due to bad experiences with fundies/fanatics). I would like it to be people from all walks of life as well, because that is also important..I really do believe that socioeconomics have a strong influence on faith and fanaticism.
The thing is, I'm not sure how willing the general population would be to listen to findings from such a group, because as I said, alot of people, even if not fanatics themselves, benefit in some way from it and therefore would go out of their way to make sure said conclusions and studies were "spun" in a way that they prefer.