In religious discussions, people go around in circles arguing within the narrow space of each person's belief system. When even simple terms like "objective" are used in radically different ways, the conversation is doomed from the beginning.

This happens in politics too. And cross gender arguments. I don't think it's particular to religion, although I suspect the tendencies of religions to have a lingo makes it worse.

I agree. In any discussion where you have a great deal of difference between positions, you have this problem. The more emotionally charged or wound up in groupthink a person is, the worse it gets because the very language that could be used to bridge the gap provides less useful traction. It's not about higher-level concepts, it's about basic building blocks of communication.

I didn't have much time for posting yesterday, so I was a bit too terse - but my intent in making the point that I did was to try to get the original poster to think about the very words that he was using.

Often when I join in on heated discussions, I find that people are talking past each other. They throw out words that mean something to them that I don't think mean the same thing to other participants in the conversation. I normally encourage participants to slow down and either pick different words or settle on a common definition for some words that are causing the confusion. It's amazing how quickly some disagreements can effectively evaporate, or at least get whittled down to essentials, when everyone is communicating more effectively.