Sunday Food for Thought: Fanatacism

We do not fight a man to uphold a certainty, but only to force him to accept our belief, our conviction, of the truth. No one's life is endagered because he will not accept the fact that two plus two makes four -- that is a truth that requires no champion. No, it is only for our beliefs -- that is, for those things that are not provable -- that we either kill or are willing to be killed. Fanatacism rests not on fact but on psychological projection. It is the correlate of doubt, not of certainty. This illusion is particularly apparent in the religious sphere, where every man is convinced that God is as he sees him and not otherwise -- a conviction so strong, so invincible, that one would die for it, as many have actually done. For the conviction of the persecutor is just as strong as that of the martyr, and he feels himself compelled either to convince one who holds a different opinion or to eliminate him.

- M Esther Harding, The I and the Not-I