What makes fantastic ...

What makes fantastic declarations believable is, in part, the vehemence with which they're proffered. Again, in the world of spirituality as well as of pop psychology, intensity of personal belief is evidence of truth. It is considered very bad form - even abuse - to challenge the veracity of any personal testimony that might be offered in a twelve-step group or on a talk show, unless the testimony itself is equivocal... Whatever sells, whatever many people believe strongly, must be true.
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 Wendy Kaminer

Quotes from the same author

Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.
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 Wendy Kaminer
As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.
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 Wendy Kaminer
What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.
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 Wendy Kaminer
Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.
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 Wendy Kaminer
Secularists are often wrongly accused of trying to purge religious ideals from public discourse. We simply want to deny them public sponsorship.
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 Wendy Kaminer