In Reply to: I missed that one posted by Acheick on April 04, 2006 at 18:36:01:
I realized you were absent from the board for awhile, but my comment about recent civil discussions was meant to include you too because I felt that things had calmed down and even though we disagreed we were at least able to keep discussing. In another post around the same time I said something about how great it felt to be able to disagree because we could never have had this kind of discussion in TF. In fact, I was punished more than once for having disagreements/arguments with others.
Maybe I'm just a disagreeable, contrary person by nature, but my only interest is in discussing/debating ideas, not in denigrating or disparaging anyone, attacking their faith or purposely trying to offend. Sometimes I play "the devil's advocate", for lack of a better expression, in order to do just that, present a counterpoint or a different perspective, and there are always different perspectives on any issue. Sometimes my written words here don't accurately portray who I really am.
In a post above CB expressed it better than I'm doing here:
"One reason I've made a practice (in the past) of posting under different nicks is that it gives me a way of expressing a particular point of view without personally attaching that perspective to myself."
I admit I can get easily riled up sometimes, and if my words have offended you I apologize as that was never my intention.
Usually, when there is a discussion here on solely Christian or Biblical themes I tend to stay out of it. I have posted articles that might discuss those themes, such as the two recent ones on an atheist joining a Christian church, or the one about the research study on prayer, but I usually don't add much as they speak for themselves. Again, I do that for the ideas they present, not to be deliberately provocative. The whole discussion about Islam was another matter. It's a touchy issue these days and this is not the only chatboard where this subject is hotly debated. I've browsed some of them and compared to them, we are all quite a polite lot.