@livelaughlove21 – I’ll go with what you said and address this question based on how you define intolerance:
“I don’t believe the OP would label discussion “intolerance” until it gets to the point where the person in question is being attacked, mocked, or belittled based on their religious beliefs.”
I’ve been here long enough to be involved in more than a handful of discussions of religious ideas. Invariably, we will deal with hurt feelings and it comes down to someone feeling that their beliefs are being ridiculed, mocked, or belittled. Sometimes this happens in the absence of any real ridicule, mocking, or belittling. But there are times in which this does happen.
I will get this out of the way immediately – I don’t think this type of intolerance is a bad thing. Some people have described this as “conversational intolerance”. All of us practice this when it comes to ideas or beliefs that are without evidence, absurd, or harmful. But ideas tagged as religious have always received a free pass. That is, nobody is going to say that you can’t inspect and criticize beliefs about economics, science, race, or health care. But as soon as it is labeled as a “religious belief”, we’re all supposed to respect it. I can respect the people who hold religious beliefs without respecting those beliefs. There is a difference.
But fluther is a site where we discuss ideas. Everything is on the table, and we should all feel free to dig in. Ideas and beliefs do not have feelings, so if you are serious about open discussion, you have to temporarily distance yourself from those ideas so we can discuss them without having to worry that an attack on the idea or belief is interpreted as an attack on the person holding that belief.
I don’t believe that tolerance of ideas or beliefs is something that any of us – theists, nontheists, capitalists, socialists, conservative, liberal, feminist, anti-feminist, etc – practice. We just don’t. For fun, try saying that you “believe” that women are just not as intelligent as men. Then try to hide behind that belief. Claim that attacks on that belief are attacks on you.
If people feel that religious belief is off limits, we might want to consider why that is?