Did any useful communication happen on that second thread?

No, not really.

It wasn't quite as bad as the one time a message board decided I was a fundamentalist nut because I had the audacity to suggest that religion may also have benefits (even if those were possibly outweighed by the harms). But I did get a similar "it doesn't really matter what you say, we've already decided to interpret it in the worst possible way regardless" vibe.