An exercise in futility.

*Sigh*
I think ED/M&R is getting boring nowadays. As you can see, the topics are mostly angstheist threads about how God does'nt exist and Christianity/ all religion is a lie. That's fun sometimes, because most of these people barely have a grasp of what any religion teaches, so it's not hard to slam them, but it get's boring when you spend most of the day pointing out the obvious and slamming the same logical fallacies. We used to have fun topics: We once had a 15 page thread on the difference between secular humanism and Christian humanism.Nowadays, a lot of the regulars are'nt on Gaia anymore, and the noobs who have taken their place most likely would not know what humanism in any of it's forms is. And some of the regulars have gotten bitter and annoying.

For example,our last really good thread was a thread on women's ordination. We've done those before, and most of the regulars are pretty open-minded (In the good sense of that term, in that, they understood what the church taught about it, and politely disagreed.) But, there is one person who's increasingly annoying in her crusade to save poor,defenceless women from the Big Bad Evil Catholic Churchtm. I made all my arguments, (some of which are my own)Because know her very well, and she's quite a radical feminist, I knew I had to step lightly or she'd start an off-topic rant with lots of fallacious, disconnected arguments and vulgar profanity. Despite the fact that I never appealed to any of the increasingly weak,badly-worded or sometimes actually misogynistic arguments usually touted, she refused to beleive that the church's inability to ordain women was based on anything other than support of gender roles and hatred of women. No amount of reasoning could dispell it. And then, people started to back her up. I was suprised, because she was'nt even offering any rebuttals to my or anyone else's arguments. She just said in so many words "Misogyny! Stereotypes! They want all the power! They hate women!"
I ended up just quitting the thread than argue with a brick wall.

Then, a week or so ago, we had the monthly "Christianity stole from paganism" thread. Usually, we all deal with this well because it's already been done to death. But this time, whenever I or my four good Gaia friends presented the usual arguments that: a) There are things in Christianity that are uniue in western thought b) It's unlikely that religions of the far east, such as Brahmanism or any of the historic Vedic religions could have had a great deal of influence on early Christian thought. c) People can't steal their own traditions d) We don't know a lot about many pagan sects of the time, and some of what we know is certain to be an appropriation of Christain doctrine to paganism.
Those on the other side chose to call everone who disagreed with them blind liars who know that we're wrong, but refuse to give up because we've invested too much effort and money in Christianity. Nevermind the fact that at least three of the people arguing against them were various kinds of pagan themselves (One Asatru, another Theistic Satanic, another Wiccan). They could not be budge. Most of us bowed out of it because it was turning into a big " YOR RONG! NO U!" fest.
There seems to be something in the water, because our usually civil, intelligent,organised clique of regulars is turning a biting,angry illogical group of ranters and ravers.