I am in total agreement with you. I first became acquainted with Free Republic and the Religion Forum almost 10 years ago when a friend directed me to an "interesting" discussion concerning something like "Baptist End Talks With The Catholic Church".
This thread evolved into "The Neverending Thread" with more than 50,000 posts.
I learned more from that experience than from any other on-line "discussion" before or since.
Hey I posted on that thread for a while.. those were the days my friend