Did you read the word "snipe?" Lots of things are said in conversations which if youy take only the word, you get an insult out of it. There is repartee, you know. And in the context I was not calling you dumb. We do have a problem on a message board where we can't see faces and hear tones of voices. Things said lightly are perceived differently if we can see the person. That is one of the reasons why I lobbied for the use of smilies. Smilies do to a written message what facial expression and tone of voice can do to an oral one.
beastie, I did not mean you were dumb, an idiot or a moron. Good grief, you have your own website! I think you are probably very intelligent. Okay now?
Just to be clear, if I were serious when I told a person I would dumb down or use shorter syllables, that would be insulting. I was not serious.
I thought your original justification was that if it's the truth, it's not an insult??
And yes, you were calling me dumb. And no, I never took it seriously because I'm obviously not dumb, and have never thought I was dumb. The reality is that you were angry and you insulted me out anger. The subsequent reality is that you can't bring yourself to admit it. That's the only thing I want you to admit, Charity. That you, like others here, sometimes get piqued and say insulting, rude things, and sometimes attack the person. Your justifications for doing so are no more valid or less valid than the justifications any of the rest of us have.
You know there is only one reason I refer to this - because you repeatedly keep setting yourself up as some sort of "holier than thou" poster on the board. Now, I have no problem with people who ask for polite behavior and criticize rudeness
as long as they are not hypocritically ignoring their own rude behavior and insults. There are a couple of posters here who almost never insult or attack (runtu immediately comes to mind). No one is going to attack them for hypocrisy when they ask for better behavior. But you are a different matter. You criticize people for insulting others and attacking others, and even insinuate this means that they've lost the argument and know it. Yet you repeatedly engage in the behavior yourself - here and on MAD. Yet I'm betting each time you insulted or attacked someone, you didn't think you had lost the argument.
Posting on the internet, particularly about religion, always has the potential to bring out strong feelings and less inhibition to express those feelings. And yes, it's hard to always accurately "read" a person from type alone. These are some of the costs of this type of communication. My point is that you, Charity, are just as susceptible to this as any of the rest of us, and you better remember that the next time you preach to the board about bad behavior. And remember, cloaking your insults in religious theology does not make it any less of an insult - in fact, it makes it worse, because you're also claiming GOD would agree with the insult.