Excluvisism is the practice of being exclusive

Exclusive

Exclusive typically means not with other things or not including other things.The terms inclusive and exclusive are contrasting terms, and often appear in the same context to describe contrasting things.Exclusive may refer to:...

; mentality characterized by the disregard for opinions and ideas

Idea

In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...

 other than one's own, or the practice of organizing entities into groups by excluding those entities which possess certain traits like Christopher Columbus.(for an opposite example, see essentialism

Essentialism

In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...

).

Religious exclusivism

Religious exclusivism asserts that one religion is true and that all others are in error.

It has two forms:

• Absolute exclusivism asserts that one must be born into the religion to be a true adherent. Historical examples are the religion of Athens
  Athens
  Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
  
   during the golden age and some forms of Hinduism
  Hinduism
  Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
  
  .

• Relative exclusivism asserts that conversion is mandatory. One such example is Christianity. Cf Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus
  Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus
  The Latin phrase Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means: "Outside the Church there is no salvation". The most recent Catholic Catechism interpreted this to mean that "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body."...
  
  .

Religious Exclusivism in Ancient Greece

The Decree of Diopithes 430 bc forbid the worship of and belief in Gods other than those of the Olympian pantheon recognised by the Athenian Polis. The introduction of other Gods was treated as "asebia," or impiety, and was punishable by death. The Philosophers Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than...

, Protagoras

Protagoras

Protagoras was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue...

, Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

, Stilpo

Stilpo

Stilpo was a Greek philosopher of the Megarian school. He was a contemporary of Theophrastus, Diodorus Cronus, and Crates of Thebes. None of his writings survive, he was interested in logic and dialectic, and he argued that the universal is fundamentally separated from the individual and concrete...

, Theodorus of Cyrene

Theodorus the Atheist

Theodorus the Atheist, of Cyrene, was a philosopher of the Cyrenaic school. He lived in both Greece and Alexandria, before ending his days in his native city of Cyrene. As a Cyrenaic philosopher, he taught that the goal of life was to obtain joy and avoid grief, and that the former resulted from...

, Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, and Theophrastus

Theophrastus

Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He came to Athens at a young age, and initially studied in Plato's school. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle. Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus his writings, and...

 were accused of impiety under this decree. Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

 was found guilty of the charge of introducing new Gods and condemned to death by drinking hemlock

Conium

Conium is a genus of two species of highly poisonous perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the family Apiaceae, native to Europe and the Mediterranean region as Conium maculatum, and to southern Africa as Conium chaerophylloides....

.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes

Antiochus IV Epiphanes

Antiochus IV Epiphanes ruled the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC. He was a son of King Antiochus III the Great. His original name was Mithridates; he assumed the name Antiochus after he ascended the throne....

 Selucid ruler of Israel born ca.215; died 164 bce. Antiochus decided to Hellenize the Jews by ordering the worship of Zeus, when they refused Antiochus sent an army to enforce his decree.

According to Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

 the Caunians a Greek people who claimed to have originated in Crete and settled in Asia Minor worshipped the Olympian Gods exclusively. "They determined that they would no longer make use of the foreign temples which had been established among them, but would worship their own old ancestral Gods alone. Then their whole youth took arms, and striking the air with their spears, marched to the Calyndic frontier, declaring that they were driving out the foreign Gods."

Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 in his Laws advocates that the state should punish those who deny the existence of the Olympian Gods or believe that the Gods exist but think they are indifferent to mankind or can be easily bought by bribes.

Interpretatio graeca

Interpretatio graeca

Interpretatio graeca is a Latin term for the common tendency of ancient Greek writers to equate foreign divinities to members of their own pantheon. Herodotus, for example, refers to the ancient Egyptian gods Amon, Osiris and Ptah as "Zeus", "Dionysus" and "Hephaestus", respectively.-Roman...

 the common tendency of ancient Greek writers to identify foreign divinities with members of their own pantheon, can be seen as a kind of exclusivism. The Syncretism

Syncretism

Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...

 of the Hellenistic period whereby aspects of the cults of foreign Gods such as iconography and epithets, can also be seen as a kind of exclusivism.