Fine I guess... But at least to me as a none dnd player, alignments seems stupid and restrictive.
In general I would agree with you. However, D&D is a game system, and a pretty vast one at that. And within that system you are going to need to have some guidelines for stories and characters and lore where you're not having to repeat descriptions again and again. What I mean, for example, is let's say you are going to print a book on all the gods of D&D. To repeat detailed descriptions again and again for each entry about what kind of a god each one is would be very cumbersome. Much easier and more easily understood to be able to say: X is LN, Y is CE, Z is NG, etc., where people have some understanding of what each of those labels means.
