An impassioned plea but not a convincing one. Indeed to disagree and to be intolerant are seperate actions and should be judged seperately. But your ‘dictionary’ definitions are narrow and incomplete. To provide an alternative definition you could always consider wiki where the very first point in its article on intolerance is:

angry argumentation, looking down at people because of their characteristics or viewpoints, negatively portraying something due the contrast with one’s own beliefs, etc. On a more extreme level, it can lead to violence – in its most severe form, genocide.

Now as with Voltaire I will passionately defend your right to disagree, and this is indeed what respect for the “other” means and precisely what I plead for in my post. I respect that you hold a different view, if in the context of the discussion I say ‘I believe in x therefore y’ and you say ‘I do not believe in x because of z’. As long as the argumentation and the logic is valid there is nothing wrong in this sort of disagreement. But ‘angry argumentation’ of the sort that for example saw Richard Dawkins describe a womans face as being somewhat odd – a woman who happens to have a different belief system from his – is intolerant and transgresses mere disagreement. A disagreement would take this form:

The mere statement on the part of a religion that its own beliefs and practices are correct and any contrary beliefs incorrect does not in itself constitute intolerance.

Likewise when an atheist says ‘I dont believe in God’ this is not intolerance, nor is it intolerant to say I believe belief in God to be wrong or harmful to the individual. Its a highly contentious statement but not intolerant. But to describe it as poison – defined as a substance which kills or injures when introduced into living organisms – and the adherents of religion as poisonous – or to describe it in the terms of pathological illness – or to make scornful comments about the ‘sort’ of person who has these beliefs – that is angry and violent use of language and by most reasonable definitions intolerant.

You have said that to say “view X is poison” is not sufficient evidence for intolerance. But then what is? Actual violence – how far do you have to go to incite something? Language is a precious object easily misshapen and misused, when a journalist like Hitchens describes religion as poison, and uses that word “poison” he is employing hysterical language and that is the spark that lights the tinder. When he says that people of faith are plotting he is using the definite article, he is not saying ‘you never know what they might be up to’ he is saying ‘they are plotting’ and that ‘we are in danger.’ The language they use is explicit and pretty clear.

Neither Dawkins nor Hitchens in their choice of words were merely disagreeing. They were being sensationalist and provocative and to that extent were exhibiting not just disagreement but their intolerance and their prejudices. As you pointed out with Mencken he proposes that we are respectful and polite, not that we do not disagree. Please show me where Dawkins and Hitchens in particular are respectful and polite.

Your final word game about what a persons responses are to a question is interesting, becuase it points out a veyr important point. If I ask what your opinion is of my wife as you said you have three options; evade the question, lie or be honest, and you propose (as I would generally agree) that honesty is best. If then you are an honest fellow and you expect that I should respect your honesty and you choose to tell me that she is the most ugliest woman you have ever seen. Then I must accept that although I may disagree with you, your answer was an appropriate response to the question. If however I ask you what time is it? and you were to respond your wife is the ugliest woman I have ever met, your response would be innappropriate, uninvited and as it is subjective untestable and therefore neither right nor wrong but an opinion – about which we would disagree. The offence taken lies in its innappropriateness.

The leap from stated opinion of disagreement to intolerant opinion and to incitement to intolerance and violence lies as Wittgenstein aptly pointed out in his idea of utterances in its spontaneity – its lack of appropriate context. In those situations he argues “spontaneous utterances have the categorial status of deeds.”

So when Dawkins is asked for his opinions concerning the dispute between BA and its employer who wishes to wear her religious symbol (which they do not permit) it is entirely innappropriate to focus his answer on the aesthetic qualities of her face. Hitchens is even more blatant in his intolerance when he describes ‘people of faith’ as plotting your ‘destruction’. He doesn’t qualify this and say:- I only mean the suicide bombers type, but Quakers and Buddhists are OK. Similarly he doesnt say some people of faith are plotting our destruction in the same way that I could utter some politicians are plotting our destruction – he makes it explicitly clear that he means all people of faith – indicative of his paranoia, ignorance and fear and hatred of the other. Dawkins sadly for a very educated man has as you well know a track record for ‘offensive’ language – and there is no point arguing about what counts as offence and that people should have thicker skins, intolerant language which goes beyond the language of disagreement is indefensible. Intolerant language is itself a deed.

My original post, and my presentation of the postmodern paradigm has no problem with disagreement (that is not the issue). But respect for the “other” involves as Nick Clegg has suggested an open heart and mind. Childish name calling, paranoid conspiracy theories, mocking scorn – this is not open-hearted language.