Leaving aside your claim that Atran's analogy is idiotic, the evidence seems to point away from your claim that this idiocy is self-evident to this audience. The Atran quote stands at 7 votes, while your comment stands at –2 votes.
That isn't proof, of course. Upvoting doesn't necessarily imply agreement, though the upvoters—and I am one—probably consider the quote to be at least non-idiotic. And your comment's downvotes (none of which are mine) may be due more to its strong language than to disagreement. But still, isn't this strong evidence that the quote's idiocy is not self-evident to the rest of this audience?
That quote is valued for more than its objectively shoddy analogy. Its larger point is plausible and potentially useful. However, I'd like to see some experimental evidence that shows how well mocking+shaming people with dumb beliefs works; polite persuasion is definitely pretty ineffective.
Also, on average, more people read and vote on a parent comment than its reply. Without seeing the number of total (approximate) views and downvotes, you can't be sure what people think of it.
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This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.