It is a place for atheists to preach their faith, be among like minded people, and to try to convert others, as such it does serve the purpose of a church.
With the exception of the Pit, I see most of the subforums here as useful for fighting ignorance in its many forms. Example, the IMHO subforum provides an often fascinating glimpse into other people’s minds; people freely discuss topics here that they often wouldn’t discuss IRL.
Likewise with MPSIMS, where we shed our ignorance about mundane and pointless (but often interesting) stuff.
Café society fights many aspects of artistic ignorance regarding food, music, cinema, and literature.
Seriously, IMHO has been enlightening me for years now about how other people think and understand the world, and what personal struggles they are dealing with. Thanks to all y’all for sharing so freely.
Apart from a few blowhards is anybody really concerned about that fighting ignorance thing? Its a message board, on the internet, its about as shallow as you can get in the grand scale of things so who is running around pretending otherwise?
It’s not like we’re militant ignorance-fighters. I come here because there are interesting things to read about, i.e. I’m fighting my own ignorance, mostly. Occasionally I’ll contribute if I think I have something worthwhile.
I would say GQ and CCC/SR, and Cafe Society to a large extent, are primarily dedicated to fighting ignorance.
The Pit promotes it.
IMHO and MPSIMS are just for general blather, ignorant or otherwise. Elections is just to Pit Republicans, so any ignorance fought is coincidental. ATMB is where the mods make their rulings appear arbitrary. 
Very often people decide what they think, and then look for reasons to think that way. The SDMB is no different, and they have the whole Internet to scour for reasons.
Regards,
Shodan
:rolleyes:
I’m a reasonably well-educated individual with a Master’s degree and am a MENSA member, yet I learn something here every day. I don’t know how new you are to the board, OP, but it does have its own culture and methodology which can be difficult to understand at first.
A lot of what you perceive as “I’m so much smarter than you” is precisely how highly intelligent people advance the cause of knowledge. It’s a form of debate. I throw out an idea, you critique it scathingly, forcing me to re-examine and sharpen my idea and toss it out once again, you insist that I legitimize it (the ‘cite’ you often see demanded), rinse and repeat. Granted it can sometimes sound mean-spirited if you aren’t accustomed to it, but the participants in the dance of the debate understand it and usually don’t take umbrage over it. Sure it sometimes devolves into a rather ugly argument (see The Pit), but that isn’t the goal of the exchange. The goal of the exchange is the advancement of knowledge and the fight against ignorance.
Hugs April R
ETA: OK, that’s enough.
EagainTA: Mods? Little help here?
If you think that is true, and it bothers you, why do you come here?
I’ve been here a bit over twelve years. I am well acquainted with the board culture. The “I’m smarter than you” replies to which I am referring are not a form of debate. Here is a recent example from a GQ thread:
That wasn’t “I’m smarter than you”, that was “I don’t get that you are joking”.
/fighting ignorance
That’s because we were just in race month and sex month. Abortion month is coming up.
Isn’t rape month before abortion month?
Down with Yehweh!
No faith needed.
No. It’s a place where trolls and the severely socially maladjusted talk about life, and the mean girls/guys talk mock them in their faces and behind their backs.
Just kidding!
Yeah, I do think this place is mostly about fighting ignorance. There’s a lot of smart people on here and they do a good job sharing their knowledge.
This is the only board at which I still participate, but I post here much less than I used to. Many interesting people who were a primary draw for me no longer post here at all. Lately, I have, in fact, been questioning whether I need any message boards in my life.
Racism and sexism are two of the most virulent forms of ignorance that exist – they’re well worth fighting, and the fight requires a lot of time and effort.
That said, I agree with what others have said. I’m constantly amazed at how much I learn from this board on a daily basis. I also do my share to fight ignorance, mostly on extremely mundane and pointless topics. But it’s always nice to have someone say thank you for answering a question that was bugging them.
Even Cecil’s columns tend to be one part humor/sarcasm, one part speculation and one part actual ignorance fighting. I’d say the forums just about match.
The other issue with any Internet forum is that you tend to see these kinds of issues:
- easily researched factual items tend to be Googled/Wiki’d and either don’t get asked or get taken care of very easily.
- controversial positions (some alternative theories, and the racism/sexism issues) have no simple factual answer that can be tested in a lab and stamped closed. Ideally, these issues would focus on facts to the extent that they’re available, but a lot is anecdote and opinion and there’s no avoiding that except to ban them altogether
- it only takes a couple of trolls/stubborn members to keep a topic alive, so the bulk of thread titles may not represent more than a minority of members
- we’re on the Internet to have fun, mostly. If Cecil wants to start paying us to do research, I’m all for it.
All analytical people seem to have same problem 
They are either right or wrong :smack:
I sincerely doubt that.