In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the hero discovers the source of the conflict between the citizens of Lilliput and those of Blefuscu. It turns out that the Lilliputians eat their boiled eggs by cracking them open at the little end; while the inhabitants of Blefuscu crack them open at the big end. This difference in religious practice has quite understandably led to a permanent state of war.

Ironically, the terms big-endian and little-endian have passed into the computer world. Here's the issue: If a word has to be represented in two bytes, and I need to send that word to you over a computer network, which byte do I send to you first?

As long as we're both big-endians or little-endians, it obviously doesn't matter. But what if I don't know what you are? Well, I have two choices. I can send the bytes to you, and if you can't make head or tail of them I treat that as your problem -- it serves you right for being a big-endian (or a little-endian). But there is another approach -- that of tolerance. I can ask you which you are before we begin to talk to one another. In fact, that's the only possibility if we're going to communicate rather than fall out.

The practices enjoined upon us in Steps 10, 11 and 12 represent a universal way of behaving -- there is no religion that doesn't promote that conduct as a desirable way of life. Given this, our actual religious faiths matter little when it comes to interacting with one another. The only reason that I need to know which end of the egg you crack open in your particular religion is so that you and I can work together -- not so that we can fight about the matter.