so I'm coming up against the problem of 
differing notions of epistemology again. I tell
 you that's at the root of these discussions 
really, not religion at all.

The problem with relativism is that you can 
apply it to all arguments, and then you 
discover that nothing is apparently true and 
that you no longer have a point of view. What 
appears to be true "for a person" is not the 
question; I'm trying to establish (as best I 
can) what is true, because I'm an 
objectivist and believe in a single (unknown) 
objective truth. The fact that other people's 
belief in opinions is just as strong as 
my belief in the opposite is irrelevant; what 
matters is how strong their arguments 
are.

I don't know where you got "clinically insane" 
from, but "insane" only appears three times in 
The God Delusion, and twice he is quoting other
 people, and the other time he is talking about
 Stalin and Hitler.

or what you think it involves.
I suppose the main point is not to bother 
saying "you might be right" when the person has
 presented no argument (even implicitly) any 
stronger that "I feel it in my bones". Saying 
"you might be right, it's a valid point of 
view" in such circumstances just encourages 
poor argument style, I think - because they 
aren't being rigourous, and you're letting them
 get away with it.

What I disagree with is the implication 
that it is at all likely that there is a God, 
or that "plenty of people have been compelled" 
makes it significantly more likely. We agree, 
surely, that it's very easy for plenty of 
people to believe in a thing which is not 
remotely true.

I'm even prepared to accept that a large number
 of people believing in a thing has some
 effect on the probability that they were 
convinced for valid reasons. It's not true to 
say "X number of people can't be wrong," 
because they always can, but it should 
certainly give you pause for thought if a large
 number of people believe in a thing.

I did this pausing for thought already, though,
 quite a large number of years ago.

I'm not sure what we mean by "ridicule", I
 think the problem might be that we have 
different ideas  of what it means. I just mean 
telling people "you're wrong" when I think 
they're extremely unlikely to be right and have
 weak arguments. I could point out that I'm 
replying to a post which begins "no, you are 
wrong". Oh, and continuing with "your arguments
 are extremely weak" and perhaps comparing them
 to other weak arguments, e.g. "you might as 
well say you believe in fairies," is also part 
of ridicule. There's nothing dogmatic in this, 
you understand. I don't see why you shouldn't 
say that sort of thing too.

it's possible to be mistaken about one's own
 experiences. Every opinion is subject to 
fallibility, even my own opinions about what I 
myself think (and actually I quite often misjudge
 my own mental processes when I try to describe 
them, e.g. try describing retrospectively how you
 arrived at a preference, and see how watertight 
your description is - probably not very).