Why don’t you save “giving up hope” for after you start a thread on a specific topic and view the responses, not before?
Then start a thread in GQ or GD asking “Why do X do or believe Y” you will get many responses, informed and otherwise. If you want to hear it from the horses mouth though you will have to go to the horse. I cannot do anything about the fact that the kind of people you want to talk to do not post here. If they wanted to and they could abide by the same rules we all do they are certainly welcome. Just don’t expect those of us who think they are batshit crazy or full of shit to refrain from saying so.
On the contrary, I think “rationalize” is all they’ll do, but I think we’re maybe using the word differently. When I use “rationalize”, I mean someone who arrives at a conclusion god only knows how, and then constructs arguments to support it, instead of following arguments to arrive at the best most logical conclusion. Definition 2 in thefreedictionary.com: “2. To devise self-satisfying but incorrect reasons for one’s behavior.”
Not all, but enough to motivate the Moderators. Maybe one of them will share the discussions they’ve undoubtedly had behind the scenes when such issue arise
I’m not saying it’s impossible that an extremist in a controversial area of thought could really want to increase our understanding and not merely rationalize his behavior, but I will say I haven’t seen it yet.
Individual people. IMHO, these discussions are much more fruitful one on one. And lots of this stuff, the religious stuff especially, I think is only really comprehendable from the inside*. An outside observer will always make errors in interpretation that a participant won’t. Witness the change in the last 30 years on the role of the researcher in anthropology and the “_______ Studies” group of education and research. Where once the writer was urged to stay on the outside, “impartial” and observatory, now we encourage them to join the group, tribe, church or social group they’re studying, and maintain a dual awareness - as observer and as participant, to get a fuller and richer understanding of what’s really going on.
Maybe. You’re also just young enough to be of a peer group raised to revere Cultural Relativism, and the idea that when viewed in cultural context, everything is justifiable. I don’t know about large scale, but I can say that among people I know personally, that view is going out of style, and we’re once again free to condemn certain behaviors we find morally repugnant across cultural and religious lines.
*I mean, “Well, we believe our god becomes physically present in bread and wine when the priest says some magic words, so we eat him - um, the god, not the priest - and then we go cut down a tree and bring it inside our house to drape in lights and plastic figurines of children’s movie heroes.” WTF?
The writer was urged to be a place or building equipped and used for making observations of astronomical, meteorological, or other natural phenomena, esp. a place equipped with a powerful telescope for observing the planets and stars? 
I guess that makes me observant.
I haven’t *given *up hope: I said I was *losing *hope. I have waited 20ish responses to discover that it seems that the consensus is that it’s not going to happen - and it wouldn’t be welcome.
I am equally interested in what Dopers think are extremists’ reasoning. Can that be included here, or is that for another thread.
I think I see the problem.
That is not at all the consensus. Did you not read the penultimate sentence in post #22?
You think you are going to reason with these people? You cannot reason a man out of a position he didn’t use reason to get to in the first place.
Bless you - that’s the first time in many a long year that anyone has called me ‘young enough’. 
But you’re right. Equally I do not believe ‘everything is justifiable’ - far from it. But I do want to try to understand before I condemn. Just to make sure I am making a considered judgement rather than a knee jerk reaction - which is not what I am suggesting you are doing!
I certainly did. You said ‘If they wanted to and they could abide by the same rules we all do they are certainly welcome.’
But the consensus is that they are not capable of reason - therefore they are not welcome. You yourself go on to say that despite saying that if they abided by the same rules ‘Just don’t expect those of us who think they are batshit crazy or full of shit to refrain from saying so.’
There is, unfortunately, more truth in this observation than a lot of Dopers would care to admit.
There are certainly Dopers who would be sufficiently curious and civil that they would conduct themselves in a way to challenge and explore the ideas, regardless how off-putting. However, there will always also be a number of Dopers whose hackles rise at the very suggestion of such topics, who would rather attack the belief than challenge it, even when they (just barely) refrained from attacking the poster. We have difficulty discussing the war in Iraq, partisan politics, Christian beliefs, or anthropogenic global warning without that sort of effect. How likely is it that we could discuss an issue such as pedophilia or Whahbbism?
One reason we ban trolls, here, is that there are sufficient Dopers who lack the self control to refrain from feeding them and the resulting brouhaha tends to drag down the enjoyment of all the members.
Cecil is not known for suffering fools lightly either. You expect us to be better than him?
ETA: Reply to Tom (or maybe Deb, I am never sure which).
Didn’t we have a kinda-sorta pedophile show up a few years back? IIRC, the gods of the board called the cops on him or something like that and generally made him wish he hadn’t come here openly. I didn’t really follow the thread(s) so feel free to correct me if I’m not remembering that correctly.
As far as the terrorists and the mad mullahs/imams, why should they debate with us or anyone else? They have no desire to debate you as they know very well that you aren’t going to come around to their POV. Cries for “cite?” tends to really screw these guys up so all that’s left is either getting themselves into a position to control your actions or just flat-out kill you. Logical debate is pointless for them and a waste of time.
They might show up on other message boards where their opinion carries more weight as they stand a chance of getting a convert or two.
Regards
Testy
FWIW, the OP’s objection is pretty much my only quibble with this message board. That is, the willingness to shout down most non-dogmatic ideas, and the love of related pile-ons. (Also, the use of the “roll-eyes” emote. Infuriating. But that’s another can-o-beans.)
See my post #68 here, where one poster says that his professor teaches unpopular ideology X, and another poster comes in and says that anyone who teaches X should be banned from acadamia. I chimed in and said that, um, if X is really such a bad idea, shouldn’t it be allowed to die of its own merits? But no, the consensus was that anyone who believes X doesn’t deserve to have his ideas challenged. I dropped it and the thread quickly moved on.
Now I can understand that we do anthropogenic global warming and atheism roughly ten times a day, so it’s easy to blow those off. But if this board were true to its mantra, posters would either refrain from posting in those threads, or would spit on their palms and tackle the objectionable ideologies head-on.
FTR: X = moan landing hoax, and no, I’m not a hoax nutjob.
Randy, Tuckerfan was right in that thread and still is.
Moon Hoaxers fall in the category of no need to listen to the loony. Having an open mind is one thing but if it is so open your brain falls out there is a problem.
Who gets to judge what ideas are good? Who gets to judge what ideas fall into the “no need to listen to the looney” category?
The loudest majority on a message board?
I agree that moon hoaxers are wrong, but I think that in an intellectual forum (such as acadamia or the SDMB,) everyone’s ideas deserve to be met on their merits, unless their ideas are actively causing someone else harm.
We did have a semi-civil ask the Wahhabi thread, I think, but not of the raving jihadist variety, more just the very conservative pious. A rather poorly informed young woman who didn’t fare too well, as I recall. In the end it was disappeared over…issues of identity, was it?
But yes tom’s probably right. We have had a few contentious issues brought up by alleged practicers - most have ended poorly. Probably the closest we came to civil discussion was maybe a couple of the race supremacism/white nationalism threads, but even those disintregrated after a little while if I’m recalling correctly ( it was long ago and I may not be ).
By allowing a Moon Hoax Nutjob to spread his ideas at a publicly funded university we grant them a veneer of acceptability. How can you meet an idea on its merits when it has none. If somebody posted that they just pooped a talking turd and it said that the moon was made of green cheese do you really think they are entitled to w well thought out rebuttal? As for who gets to decide, I guess we each individually make that choice about who is a loony and who deserves a reasoned response. This is a message board we are all entitled to post within the rules. Some nut wants to post his nutty glurge those who think its nutty can post how they feel about it. No one is suggesting that they not be allowed to post. But that we are all judged on what we post. No board can be all things to all people that’s why there are many message boards.
I’m not sure a paedophile would be able to give a rational account of why he felt that way or where his impulses came from. I think for most of us there are large aspects of our sexuality that are a mystery. For an opbjective account you’d probably want a psychologist or sociologist who studies paedophiles. I don’t think that person would have a hard time on the board. I think most people here would be fascinated by what he/she had to say.
The only thing a paedophile would bring is a subjective account of their experience. The problem is that there are a lot of people who would be deeply affected by this and wouldn’t–for perfectly understandable reasons–be able to keep their cool in such a thread: Parents and child abuse survivors, for example. I don’t think an “ask the paedophile” thread would go over very well. Also, I think a lot of paedos wouldn’t be so stupid as to out themselves like that. And furthermore it’s against board rules to promote illegal activity.
I’m fascinated by human evil and would be interested in first person accounts of paedophilia. I don’t think this board is the best place for them.
As far as militant Islam goes, I don’t think most Jihadis are interested in rational discussion with infidels. I don’t think a real hard-core al-qaeda member would have much to say to us. So it’s kind of a silly proposition. Why worry about being intolerant to someone who isn’t going to come here in the first place? Might as well worry about being intolerant towards klingons.
In general I don’t think fighting ignorance involves entertaining every loony idea that comes down the pike. We don’t even have to get to offensive “ideas” like paedophilia and militant islam. What is gained by taking the inoffensive but ludicrous idea of a flat earth seriously? How would ignorance be fought? Is it really helpful or edifying to pretend that the hypothesis “The earth is flat” is one about which reasonable people can disagree?
Really most actual ignorance gets fought in GQ. GD is for political and religious debates that change no minds but allow people to vent their frustrations.
Actually, weird ideas do get debated on at least a semi-regular basis. There is the out-of-the-body-experience guy who is in any thread that even remotely concerns that kind of thing. I also remember the guy who claimed to see all kinds of crap in moon pics, cities and machine tracks and whatnot.
Odd ideas get debated fairly frequently. Unfortunately, the holders of such ideas are generally not open to reason and this gets frustrating and then tempers rise. Well, if someone persists in being obstinately wrong, then they get piled onto. Why is this such an issue?
Regards
Testy
I’m here to fight my own ignorance, at least as much as anyone else’s. But I don’t have the stamina or stomach for fighting abject insanity.