Pinpoint,

Naturally I expect you to be skeptical to what I write. If someone else was telling me this story the way I am telling you it would be very hard for me to digest if I had not gone through anything close to this experience.

What is so new about this?

There was a time when the early scientists were burned and tortured by the church for believing in science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

So through out the history of man kind, we have always ridiculed people who think differently than us and who have a different experience than us. There is nothing surprizing or amazing about this. This is how humans are.

This is why understanding what your particular paradigm is so important. Our paradigm shapes how we see the world. And generally, we see our own paradigm as being objective and other people's paradigm as being false. This is what causes us to look down upon and make fun of people whose paradigm is different from our own.

You see this in politics all the time. People who are convinced of the Liberal paradigm think that Conservatives are crazy. Those who are of the Conservative paradigm think that Liberals are lazy and crazy. The ignorant of either paradigm generally become radicals either of the political Left or the Political right. Even a country like the United States with so many educated people, is politically polarized because of people's complete refusal to see the other person's perspective.

That is why they say not to discuss religion/philosophy or politics. Both have very rigid paradigms. We generally pick our paradigm and fight from it rather than choose to study our paradigm to revise it.