Why is tolerance so difficult?

[jeff47]

8. Because faith is fleeting.

And every single person who questions the tenants of your faith may cause the foundation to crumble.

This is especially true of literalists - prove something in their book wrong, and suddenly they have a problem. This is not as much of an issue for those that view their holy book as allegorical, since something being "wrong" is OK when you're just telling a story.

So the fundamentalist whackjobs want no one to question their faith, and force their faith on others, because the alternative is a very large risk to losing their faith.