It provides an outlet for folks, who, for whatever reason, feel they’ve just gotta harangue somebody, and, along with the Pit, serves some purpose in preventing the mucking up of threads in other forums.
Aside from that, I feel it’s helped me hone my skills at detecting logical fallacies somewhat. Otherwise, I don’t post much there, unless I happen to see a factual misstatement on a subject I know enough about to correct without a lot of time spent on research.