In the first part of "Everyone Agrees", I describe one of the central
problems in communication today: the dispective. "Dispective" is a
term I coined for an instance in which one word is used to represent
two distinct ideas (or two distinct aspects of the same idea). In the
religion debate, "God" is used to represent two completely different
concepts; to believers, the term "God" means love, mercy, and justice
and to atheists, "God" represents a selfish, hateful, and unjust
being. To the objective viewpoint, it's clear that between believers
and atheists, "God" represents two separate ideas, yet if the debaters
fail to define their terms, arguments are inevitable.

When Dinesh D'Souza debated Christopher Hitchens on the validity of
Christianity, D'Souza used the term to reflect the anti-slavery, equal-
rights, and moral aspects of the church and Hitchens used the same
term to represent the people who used the church to coerce and torture
other people. An analogy of this is Mauna Kea (the tallest mountain in
Hawaii), which consists of a desert on one side and a rain forest on
the other. If Christianity is Mauna Kea, D'Souza and Hitchens are on
opposite sides of the mountain and suffer from near-sightedness.

Have you encountered any dispectives in your life and if so, please
describe them. Do they consist of one word representing two ideas or
just two aspects of one idea? Do they cause arguments when they're
brought up in conversation? What is a good way to get beyond each
dispective?