Honestly I think culture has a lot to do with this. Most of the things I notice huge disagreements on come down to where the person is coming from and what they were or weren’t taught.
Take some of my work for example, I never mean to start an argument, but I will absolutely disagree that anyone needs a human initiation to work with any spirit.
I’m not saying those can’t be valid, truly life changing experiences- but I have expressed many times the spirits come to us, and just because we don’t have the right heritage this time, doesn’t mean we don’t have it in a past life or a preexisting arrangement or relationship with these entities.
I also think that as we become stronger and more self empowered that it gets noticed, and that will bring in some of these situations where entities outside of our purview wish to work with us.
Back to the topic, a lot of these people believe these things because that’s what they’ve been taught, so thusly what they will experience and often don’t even realize they’ve taken their magic so deep down the religion hole, that the very spirits they think are helping them, just kinda use them like meat bags. Easy meal when you believe you have to do certain religious things all the time to avoid the wrath or gain the favor of some entity.
It’s not much different than a Christian struggling with the good and evil thing imop, just different subject matter.
The other thing I think we forget is that a lot of this is subjective. I’ve built my personal beliefs about the source and all other entities based largely upon personal experience, which can be dangerous so I try to keep those things to myself. But I have come across authors and others alike that have come to a similar conclusion, despite the fact I hadn’t read or seen it until well after I decided I figured it out.
In this way, magic is more like our best friend, our lover, our child- whoever that one person is that you’d defend with your life- whether or not we comprehend what’s really going on or just think we do. (For example, the things you’d think your kids will never do…reality may astound you).
I don’t know if I make sense, but when we make things ours and begin to feel confident in what we do, we also have a tendency to limit what we are willing to consider that falls outside of how we think things should work.
For example our housemate told me he thought it felt like cheating on the source to go to lesser entities.
I explained that I view all those lesser gods as being the sources offspring- all the different pantheons of gods- all siblings, and then I explained my view in that.
My siblings and I live in different regions, we are better at different things. If you want to build an animated game, talk my brother. Want a knit sweater? That’s me. Someone to have a good time with, that doesn’t care about appearances? That’s my sister. We all have different strengths and weakness’s and these things differ betwixt us and even are different from our parents, even those of us with both the same parents. There are things I am better at than my parents were and visa Versa.
Doesn’t this mean, (in the discussion with our housemate) that if you belief it all came from the same origin, (he does) that going to the one whose developed a skill beyond that of the origins effort to that skill… actually makes sense?
At any rate sorry for the long story, the point was he walked away mind blown at what he’d never considered and wondering if he was missing something- because of a similar type discussion/debate/disagreement.
These things are not bad in my open if we are able to keep an open mind and remember where the person we are debating with is coming from (sometimes that’s the arm chair and that should be accounted for too…) because we can grow, learn and sometimes see a new perspective, or even an old one, with fresh eyes.
Knowing someone else did something different than you that worked, doesn’t invalidate your work. That’s another reason people get emotional over these discussions, the differences can make us feel like the other person is ripping us apart, even if they are only like nah man, it doesn’t have to be that complicated…
It means there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and even if it challenges your beliefs, is it really so awful to realize that you personally might not have it all right, particularly when you know what you believed or were taught before- that surely wasn’t right either…
I hadn’t noticed anyone being particularly disagreeable, more than some sites, and not as much as others. But disagreeing doesn’t have to mean being disagreeable, so maybe that’s not what you meant.
But we’re not usually rude about it.
) is if they (1) let slip some (usually political-ish) opinion I find personally distasteful or abhorrent, (2) if it’s someone who comes to BALG expecting this to be a safe space where everyone enthusiastically agrees with everything they say, and they feel personally attacked by neutral or constructive criticism, or (3) someone who comes to BALG acting as though their praxis is the One True Way 
and everyone else’s paradigm is garbage.
