I wouldn’t call the tone back then “conservatives not welcome”. Conservatism is correlated with religiosity, but it’s not the same thing. And I wouldn’t even call the tone “religious people are unwelcome”—people were perfectly civil with religious community members.
The community back then were willing to call irrational beliefs irrational, but they didn’t go beyond that. Filtering out people who are militantly opposed to rational conclusions seems fine.
I wouldn’t call the tone back then “conservatives not welcome”. Conservatism is correlated with religiosity, but it’s not the same thing. And I wouldn’t even call the tone “religious people are unwelcome”—people were perfectly civil with religious community members.
The community back then were willing to call irrational beliefs irrational, but they didn’t go beyond that. Filtering out people who are militantly opposed to rational conclusions seems fine.