[JohnBooty]

     I hate when people feel that harsh criticism isn't nice

Kind of a bad-faith strawman objection, TBH. I don't see anybody saying the issue is that the post wasn't sufficiently "nice."

I'm extrapolating here, but it sounds like you may often have this misconception w.r.t. metacriticism?

IME the issue people typically have with unnecessarily "harsh" criticism -- at least in engineering circles -- is that such unnecessarily harsh criticism is often counterproductive or at least wildly unproductive. I mean, what was the desired outcome here? Is criticizing some rando's spiritual practice supposed to benefit somebody, somehow?

I'm 1,000% in favor of speaking out or better yet, acting out when folks' religious beliefs interfere with others' freedoms. But I think that pretty clearly is not what was happening here.