Good lord, Shotgun, I think you are jumping at shadows here. I don’t think Satori’s point was not to disagree, but rather to recognize disagreements between rational people as, occasionally, necessary. I’ve had many meaningful philosophical discussion here on ILP with people who share different worldviews, often foundationally different. But I’ve still taken a lot from them and I’d like to think that they’ve taken something from me. For example, I’ve got a very good rapport with Ucci. If I spent all my time trying to convince him that God isn’t real and he spent all his time arguing that the Chinese Classics are mediocre literary works devoid of significant meaning, such a rapport couldn’t exist. But if instead we talk about things like virtue ethics, or the place of tradition in society, areas where we mostly agree and can learn from each other we can do pretty well. We can even argue about certain implications of our worldviews taken on their own and see where that takes us. But arguing unprovables doesn’t go anywhere. There was a hilarious thread recently where two parties were trying to shift the burden of proof with respect to God onto each other. It was hilarious because both sides knew if they got stuck with the potato in their hand at the end, they were screwed.
We can bang our heads up against a wall, but why? Satori’s point wasn’t that we should sit around singing kumbaya, which is how you took it, but rather that we ought focus our energies on discussions where understanding can grow and relationships can be built as opposed to discussions where understanding stagnates and enmities are formed.
For example, you said that knowledge begins with fear of God. Where does it go from there?
