Right on the nose

[malenkiyscot]

I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions.

As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?

What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone's an expert.

Comments

[onionsoupmix.livejournal.com]

also by discussing religion, you can show everyone the right way to live and be. By discussing javascript, you can only possibly influence one small aspect of existence, if that.

[malenkiy-scot.livejournal.com]

I do not necessarily agree. I agree more with Graham's view further in the essay: religion is part of one's identity. It's like rooting for the home team: you get instantly inflamed (have you ever seen 'discussions' in sports forums? Oh, my! Religious flames pale in comparison).

[onionsoupmix.livejournal.com]

I think they are both very similar in that for some people either religion or sports can take over their identity almost entirely. Those people are called sports fanatics, for example. Likewise there certainly are people for whom religion is the entire basis of everything they do.