Since religious beliefs were mainly invented as a tool to justify death denial, any acceptance that a different/contradictory religious belief might be truth or is a belief as legitimate as any other, means acceptance of death as final. Of course, this provokes serious reactions.
Therefore, empirical research confirms that when reminding of death, most religious people become more intolerant of different religious beliefs or non-beliefs.And that the intensity of the intolerance will be proportional to the intimate insecurity of the beliefs. Which means that people with less psychological faith/security on their beliefs will be much more intolerant.
See inter alia: Terror management and religion: evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16938037A theoretical and empirical review of the death-thought accessibility concept in terror management research:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20804234Some Buddhists monks seem to coupe with different beliefs with easy because they are real convinced that their beliefs are true.
This isn't good. Because it means that to be tolerant a religious person has to be absolutely convinced of the truth of his religious beliefs. On other words, you know... more or less, a fanatic.
Indeed, if that can make a religious person accept with a condescend smile "crazy" different beliefs or no beliefs, it can also make them explode themselves for their beliefs. With or without a simile. Makes little difference.
Throwing stones on my own ceiling, research also suggests that at least some atheists react to the idea of death with more vigorous denials of god and some intolerance to religious beliefs.On first sight, this seems absurd, since the nonexistence of god is irrelevant to death. But perhaps some atheists really believe that god doesn’t exist with the same kind of strong conviction that believers have on his existence.
At least atheist philosophy of life depends on the veracity of the nonexistence of god. Like believers, atheist have something to lose if they are wrong.
Moreover, if they are atheists on the good sense, they should keep an open mind and be always open to any evidence that they are wrong. And so, by principle, an atheist should have some insecurity about the veracity of the nonexistence of god. Or he will be a "fanatic" also.
Thus, maybe deep down some atheists might also be afraid of being wrong and end up "burning in hell". This could explain the strong reaction and more vigorous denial of god after thinking about death.
So an atheist has to be enough convinced that he is right to be tolerant to believers, but he also has to stay open to any evidence that he might be wrong, as the scientific method demands.