" If their beliefs aren't doing any harm to you or anyone else,"

well, Little Hawk, I see your irritation, but that's a big 'if'. Unfortunately, what some people believe makes a huge difference in how they act (i.e., vote, share, help, condemn, kill, support, allow, respect, hide, notice, ridicule, etc..etc...etc..)

We in the USA are about to get 2 new justices on our Supreme Court, and knowing what they believe can affect the very substance of our lives for generations.

Of course an abstract belief by a private citizen on some arcane metaphysical matter is probably not going to **directly** affect me, and I do not make my posts here with any notion or expectation of changing a mind about God, the nature of the Universe, or how many angels CAN dance on the head of a pin......but there is a certain class of arguments and defenses OF various beliefs that is, in my opinion, inherently weak, misleading and therefore dangerous to rational behavior.

If you believe, abstractly, in a "zealous and strict God", I can shrug, but if you use that belief to vote for a politician who is going attempt to restrict my freedoms based on that type of God, I WILL comment on it! There is a continuum of the 'seriousness' of forms and degrees of belief vectors, and I may at some point note a bad argument, even when the immediate relevance of the issue is not obvious. Just as others have the right to express their opinions, I reserve the right to comment if I think those opinions are poorly expressed and inadequately defended!

There ARE fair and reasonable ways to express opinions that are totally different from mine...and indeed, in many cases, mine may turn out not to be the 'right' ones--- but when ideas and concepts and opinions are simply stated as if they are 'revealed truth' and not to be questioned, I cannot resist replying.

If one reads my posts regularly and carefully, they ought to see that my interest is not so much in "what to believe", but in "how to think ABOUT believing". Some issues, in principle, have no absolute answer that we are likely to arrive at anytime soon. This does not mean we should not speculate, discuss and theorize, as they are interesting and, potentially important.....which is all the more reason for being careful in the process of wondering.