I suppose it is a fact of human nature that faith is inevitably highly individualistic. James Fowler proposed his Stages of Faith derived at least in part on Jean Piaget's Theory of cognitive development and perhaps more directly on Kohlberg's stages of moral development. While Fowler's work focused on Christian faith development a careful reading reveals his work is equally valid not only for spiritual faith development, but any faith development. Whether that faith is lodged in political viewpoints, scientific theory or in spirituality there is little, if any, significant difference.
There is reason to believe an examination of the distribution of the population would find the mean somewhere in the third stage which is characterized by conformity. Conformity implies rejection of any other faith that differs from your own. Therefore we arrive at what you describe as
Originally Posted By: flmiller
...and [sic.] all-to-common slide into the emotional morass we seem to find in discourse today involving controversial issues
I share your sadness and disappointment but as a person of faith (Calvinist) and a person of scientific bent, I can only view it as an artifact of the human condition.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
