>>>>You enjoy not having a choice, because you implicitly choose to do what you're told.
>>
>>I enjoy a bit of rebellion and chaos as much as anybody, but in the end I honor the social compact because I've seen the alternative... in parts of Africa where people truly do have the luxury of doing whatever they please, at least until they run into somebody else also doing as they please with a better weapon.
>
>
>Two ridiculously different contexts.
>
>I bet Tamar's head would explode before she could admit that the terms and conditions were changed in order to ban Rick and that the rest of us can actually mention religion and religious things from time to time without worrying about getting a spanking.

One section of http://www.levelextreme.com/term.aspx reads:

***
Nothing in the Terms & Conditions of the site interferes with, restricts, or prohibits the free expression of opinions upon any subject; however, the following are not allowed and are not tolerated:

Inappropriate behaviour online
Blasting of other members or any similar behaviour
Personal attacks based on race, colour, national origin, ancestry, place of origin, age, physical disability, mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation or sex
Political attacks
Malicious use of expletives or obscenities
Any use of profanity
Spamming
Flaming
Any use of false or double identity
Internet trolling
Internet flooding
Religious content, postings, discussions
***

The last sentence is new. However the "Blasting" and "Flaming" clauses have been there for a long time. Maybe too long; the meanings may have evolved since they were put in place. There are probably better ways to express a requirement to maintain a certain decorum and avoid gratuitous ad hominem attacks.

You and others have pointed out that religion has been discussed here previous to Rick's involvement, as I recall reasonably respectfully with no-one getting too bent out of shape.

After a little while I didn't read too many of Rick's non-technical posts. But I do recall reading some where he implicitly or explicitly dismissed the entire value systems and beliefs of anyone who didn't share his. I view that as an ad hominem attack.

I think that's the real reason he was banned. In a way it's incidental that his beliefs caused him to make these attacks. There are regular participants here who are as, or nearly as religious as Rick, but they don't make these implicit or explicit attacks.

If this were my site I'd look into updating the "blasting" and "flaming" rules. I imagine other forums or social media have boilerplate that covers this sort of situation. Then there would be no need to ban discussion of religion entirely, there would be a mechanism in place to deal with some of the excesses of religious evangelism or extremism.