I once posted that there exist two kinds of Christians (indeed, the division exists in ANY religion). There are those who...
- Sincerely believe in and live up to the tenets of their faith;
- hold to their beliefs because they have enriched their lives and made thenm better people;
- Nonetheless, they do not take leave of reason.
On the other side, however, there are those who...
- Hold to their faith as a means to aggrandize themselves;
- Use their "superior" faith to give themselves a feeling of granduer;
- Pick and choose which parts to believe and follow;
- Consider it a responsibility not only to proclaim their own faith, bu tto trash that of others.
The difference is stark...the first group uses religion as an enhancement to their already-good lives, the second uses it as a weapon to beat down others.
I think the inferiority complex comes in here. I think many of those in group 2 (and all this is just MHO, of course) lead lives that they are not, for whatever reason, satisfied with in some way. They feel "inferior" most of the time. However, one of the ways they CAN feel superior and more righteous than everyone else is to claim that they are "more devout/righteous/holy" than the rest of us. Kind of, "Well, maybe I'm really nobody in this world, but at least I BELIEVE...".
We've seen it throughout the Terri threads...people, no matter how well cornered on logic, reason, and evidence ALWAYS retreated behind the "It's All For LIFE!" shield. This somehow washed away th efact that they had been wrong on many things.