Yeah, I don't think "consensus" is a reasonable expectation.
Personally, I have no problem with looser, easy-going varieties of faith (say, Methodist, to the limited extent of my knowledge), but strong faith in a specific dogma is a deeply ingrained delusion to the point where arguing about it is probably a waste of time. Generally, it's not a problem, though. But that does assume that faith is in check to the point where people live in this world (value their lives here on earth), and that the particular dogma is not overly.. uh, problematic. That's only a problem in the minority.
There are those who'll tell you "You're going to hell," but that's just another way of saying "screw you," and is annoying rather than harmful. Telling someone else that they can't do something (that doesn't cause harm to someone else) because it's against your personal religion has crossed some line, though. E.g., a state referendum passed here that banned gay marriage (personally I don't care what it's called, "marriage" is arguably a religious term), but it was bundled together with a ban on anything sufficiently similar to gay marriage. I'd like to hope that would have flopped on its own, but it still pisses me off that so many people will meddle with someone else's life, or accept such meddling just to get the marriage ban in place. Yes, general intolerance played a role, but I suspect it would have been rejected had it not been for dogma, which in this case is institutionalized prejudice.
Personally, I have no problem with looser, easy-going varieties of faith (say, Methodist, to the limited extent of my knowledge), but strong faith in a specific dogma is a deeply ingrained delusion to the point where arguing about it is probably a waste of time. Generally, it's not a problem, though. But that does assume that faith is in check to the point where people live in this world (value their lives here on earth), and that the particular dogma is not overly.. uh, problematic. That's only a problem in the minority.
There are those who'll tell you "You're going to hell," but that's just another way of saying "screw you," and is annoying rather than harmful. Telling someone else that they can't do something (that doesn't cause harm to someone else) because it's against your personal religion has crossed some line, though. E.g., a state referendum passed here that banned gay marriage (personally I don't care what it's called, "marriage" is arguably a religious term), but it was bundled together with a ban on anything sufficiently similar to gay marriage. I'd like to hope that would have flopped on its own, but it still pisses me off that so many people will meddle with someone else's life, or accept such meddling just to get the marriage ban in place. Yes, general intolerance played a role, but I suspect it would have been rejected had it not been for dogma, which in this case is institutionalized prejudice.
