I was talking to a couple of my flatmates this morning and the topic of religion came up. Religion's come up before (mostly in the context of people with Bibles in hand ringing the doorbell...), but this morning one of the flatmates started making broad generalizations about a particular religious tradition (for example, that you couldn't talk to any of them because none of them were willing to listen to sense). When I pointed out that he was generalizing, that there were probably people from any religious tradition about whom you could say the same thing, and that I'd had plenty of perfectly reasonable - and interesting - conversations with people from said religious tradition (this was after, by the way, the other flatmate said, "well, have you ever talked to one of them?"), he didn't say anything, but it was clear that he thought that either I was making things up or that I'd been talking to a small minority.
It didn't seem wise to point out that even if he had been talking to people who were completely closed to other beliefs, he didn't exactly sound open himself.
I sort of get the feeling that some of my flatmates think that, because they're not religious/spiritual/whatever, they're automatically more tolerant (or liberal... or something...) than people who are religious/spiritual/whatever. I'm not going to go off on a rant about this - no, really, I'm not - but it doesn't work that way.
...I don't like the real world.
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