Lindy Mayfield wrote:

> Here I tread lightly, but I'm sure you know exactly what I mean.  

I don't know for sure, but I think so :)

> We could debate in a friendly way how each of us has decided to make our
> lives better, and learn some things along the way.  That's a Good
> Thing(tm).  

Yes, exactly.

> No, it is the other stuff that worries me.  And not in a paranoid way,
> but in a very real and "fear for my life" way.  This one wants to cut
> off my head because I don't believe in flying horses, and that one wants
> to beat me to death over a disagreement about a cracker.

I take this as some kind of sport (not sure that's the right way to put it,
but I think it comes close). A sport in the sense that if I get into such
an unpleasant fight, there was something along the way that brought me
there that I did "wrong". Not wrong in an absolute sense, but wrong in the
sense that I had a chance (usually several) to turn where I didn't turn (or
had a chance not to turn where I did) -- and this took me somewhere I
didn't want to be.

> On the other hand, there are too many places in this world (including the
> southern state where I grew up) where if I said, "Sorry, I don't happen
> to believe your fairy tales to be literally true", then I would fear for
> my safety and my life.

But if that is so, why would you say something like that? I guess I see the
point (or a point): it should be possible to say what you want, to disagree
how much you want, without fear. But that's one of the conditions here:
nothing is perfect :)  So we have to accept that things we say have
consequences, and they are not always easy to predict. From one angle, I
see this as a sport (discovering what are the right turns), from another
angle, it doesn't really matter (because we don't know what's better
anyway).

Gerhard

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