Religion

most often I think they are simply due to conflation of the concept of a deity and belief with one's actual identity. That can lead to considering dismissal of such a deity to be an attack on oneself. If one can't distinguish between oneself and belief in a deity, then that's an unfortunate disconnect from reality.

I suppose it's not uncommon to identify with a deity, but such a mistaken identification can lead to odd situations, I think. It can also lead to illogical thinking, since it is illogical and obviously false to consider oneself to be identified with a deity, since deities are imagined to have supernatural attributes, whereas humans clearly do not.

So, for an individual to consider it to be intolerant of that individual to question the validity of some deity is rather strange. That implies that the person who disbelieves in that deity is somehow deficient, rather than simply thinking differently. Such an inflation of one's own perception of identity can lead to all sorts of strange results.

Of course, it's very difficult to know how another person truly thinks, based only on words on a display. People have been known to dissemble on discussion forums and attempt to appear to be someone other than they really are. So, several large crystals of salt are required when attempting to assess anonymous internet users.

Still, it's amusing to consider.