[Serious] Over the top

[brewer]

Maybe people have different ways to use an Internet forum. Some people want to discuss what's true. Other sites encourage a kind of unthinking consensus -- e.g. "immigrants bad!"

Sometimes I see statements that are over the top. Surely no thinking person can agree with the sentence as made? I mean, we can and should argue against falsehoods, but not by making new overgeneralized falsehoods.

Here is an example of what I'm thinking about. I've resisted the urge to clean up the English.

For religious view to be able to inform who a person is, that person must be very little and has scant hope of ever being much more.

Does anybody here really believe this? 

There have been many many people in history whose religious view is an important part of what he or she is, who is more than "very little" and has in fact developed very well, into a good and important person -- while staying religious. e.g. Isaac Newton 

Anyway, I called this statement out when it was first made, but nobody else did, and I found that a little disappointing.

Really,.......... Isaac Newton. Would you like to go back a bit farther into history to prop up your position? But then, his religious ideas are not exactly why most people consider him memorable to society.  

I think the issue for me is that if religion/philosophy is all that the individual has to contribute to society (especially if the person only regurgitates and is pompous about it) then I won't have much of an opinion about the individual.