Hello, Less Wrong world. (Hi, ibidem.)

I'm pretty new here. I heard about this site a few months ago and now I've read a few sequences, many posts, and all of HP:MoR.

About a week ago I created an account and introduced myself on the Open Thread along with a difficult question. Some people answered my question helpfully and honestly, but most of them mostly just wanted to argue. The discussion, which now includes over two hundred comments, was very interesting, but at the end it appeared we just disagreed about a lot of things.

It began to be clear that I don't fully accept some important tenets of the thinking on this site—I warned I might fundamentally disagree—but a few community members became upset and decided to make me feel unwelcome on the site. My Karma dropped from 6 (+13, -7) to -25 in just a couple hours, and someone actually came out and told me I'd better leave the site for good. (Don't let this person's status influence your opinion of the appropriateness of such a comment, in either direction.)

Don't worry, I'm not offended. I knew there might be a bit of backlash (though one can always hope not, because there doesn't have to be) and I'm certainly not going to be scared away by one openly hostile user.

Now, before everyone reads the comments and takes sides because of the nature of the issue, I'd like to think about how and why this all happened. I have several different ways of thinking about it ("hypotheses"):

1. The easy justification for those opposing me is to blame my discourse: my opinions are not a problem as long as I present them reasonably. However, I have consistently been "incoherent" etc. and that's why I got downvoted. Never mind that I managed to keep up hundreds of comments' worth of intelligent discussion in the meantime.

2. The "contrarian" hypothesis: I am a troll. I never had anything helpful or constructive to say, and in fact everyone who participated in my discussion (e.g. shminux, TheOtherDave, Qiaochu_Yuan) ought to be downvoted for engaging with me.

3. The "enforcer" hypothesis: I came in here as a newbie, unaware that actually substantive disagreement is highly discouraged. The experienced community members were just trying to tell me that, and decided that being militant and aggressive would be the best way to do so.

4. The "militant atheist" hypothesis: my opinions are mostly fine, but I managed to really touch a nerve with a few people, who started unnecessarily attacking me (calling me irrational) and making the entire LW community look unreasonable and intolerant.

5. The "martyr" hypothesis: The LW community as a whole is not open to alternate ways of thinking, and can't even say so honestly. They should have been nicer to me.

What do you think? Which of these are most accurate? Other explanations?

Here is a link to my original comment.

These are the most honest and helpful responses I received,

and this is the most hostile one.

My generally impression has been—trying not to offend anyone—that the thinking here is sometimes pretty rigid.

I have found that there is a general consensus here that belief in God (and even a possibility that there could be a God) is fundamentally incompatible with fully rational thinking. (Though people have been reluctant to admit it because I personally think it's unhealthy and reflects poorly on the site.)

But in any case, I've enjoyed the discussion and I'd guess that some other people have too. I'm definitely not going to leave as some have tried to coerce me to do; I like the way of thinking on this site, and it's the best place I know of to find smart people who are willing to talk about things like this. I'll keep reading at the very least.

I'm still undecided as to what I think generally of the people here.

Yours truly,

ibid.

(Oh, and I'm a Mormon. And intend to remain that way in the near future.)