New Board Request Revisited

Hi Ben

Even resting at home with a nasty cold and needing to deal with more negativity like a hole in my head, I’m determined to write this because I do think it is important. I do value the depth of ideas which is my attraction to philosophy and religious philosophy in these times since they still incorporate the search for meaning and the love of wisdom without being restricted to the egotistical joys of debate.

I know that the spirit of Simone Weil who wrote this at 14 is not the usual but still I cannot believe it is dead either. I’m convinced there is a healthy minority that feel to a certain extent as she did:

This is real love of wisdom and the truth within. It is not the desire for self justification through argument but the normal attraction to something more objective and greater than ones own. From this perspective, the great truths do not create friction with others but with oneself.

My last new board proposal asserted what I believe to be what is necessary to respect this human need. The religion board now is nothing but a haven for egotism and criticism. there is no love of ideas. You suggested sticking around and maybe something may happen in the future… I did but if anything, my responses from Bob, JT, and Angel, indicate it is getting worse.

It would be natural to say that maybe the problem is me. This is true if by this is meant having my own mind and not following the crowd. There do not appear any more around that would be willing to share on the great ideas rather than condemn what they initially do not understand. In short, the board has lost its respect for the pursuit of wisdom latent in profound religious thought preferring instead the trivial, condemnation, or fantasy. This leaves no room for the pursuit of wisdom. Such hostility is not conducive for it to flourish.

So once more I’ll make the request for a board with a positive approach. It begins with the idea that there is something greater than man, the essence of religion, for which those that are sensitive to it, have their unique perspective. There is value in the sharing of this perspective. All the nastiness, ridicule, sarcasms and the like are unwelcome from realizing that these ideas, touching the heart, have a personal meaning which should be respected. Basically it would be a board of religious psychology or the psychology of being. This board opens up entirely new directions for ILP in sharing the philosophies of the great traditions. For me, this is the authentic spirit of philosophy and the love of wisdom.

The hard thing would be to bring in some new necessary blood that would appreciate a board to converse at this level. I’d be willing to see who I could steal from some other sites, help build, and protect it… The request to join me in discussion on that basis not just for ourselves but to maybe allow some others to experience what is lost from all the pettiness could be attractive as well. When people are exposed to this alternative, they may gravitate towards it to their benefit

This way the secular approach would retain its place and a board valuing the desire to share on our concerns for the pursuit of the transcendent Kingdom Simone refers to or just the source and depth of wisdom itself would have its place.

I just know I can’t deal with this any more. I have too much respect for the value of these deep ideas and the good they can bring. If you reject this request, that is OK too. When I come to England to visit my cousin, I’ll still look you up to share a cocktail.

However, I still believe that efforts such as what I am requesting is something necessary for the Internet in light of so much nastiness I see. In short, hopefully it will get done somewhere to serve the needs of this minority with the love of wisdom in the presence of nastiness to highlight the distinction…

Anyone wishing to partake in this effort someplace else if it comes to that is welcome to PM me and I’ll let you know if and when it happens.

In the meantime, I’ll become more normal, change my signature soon tosomething more appropriate, and stick with the tried and true retorts like “Yo momma sucks.” This way no one will be annoyed and everything will be wonderful.

Hi Nick, Dunamis might be waiting for you over there in philoforum.com.

I want a highly produced Simone Weil supersite!

…and I want it now.

Hi there Uniqor

Not a bad idea and if this idea took hold somewhere else, I would e-mail Dunamis. But don’t forget, the purpose of such a board isn’ t for the debate of fine points, trying to prove another wrong, and the joy of the fight, it is to allow ourselves to be fed and inspired by the shared love of the great ideas. I’m more a lover than a fighter so it is easy for me to see this. Yet others enjoy the verbal battle itself which gradually takes the place of this love. I don’t know Dunamis to know if he is a lover or fighter at heart. Reading Jacob Needleman’s: “The Heart of Philosophy” verified for me what I had suspected; that something important, namely the heart, has been lost in modern philosophizing. I have my ideas as to why this has come about and would be a worthwhile discussion on such a board seeking understanding but such a question is not conducive for short sarcastic replies. For me these replies seem to be just a natural result of this growing tendency to belittle for the purpose of increasing self esteem.

Hi Ben.

Aparrently you’re offline now but when you do look in and all this seems absurd, I invite you to look at both the “Intelligence” thread and “Gifts of the spirit” thread on the Religion board. I copied a lot of posts but it is not right for me to post them here out of context but if you prefer, I’ll PM them to you.

Taking the classical position of Man’s nothingness is a no no and it is still worse to post something by Meister Eckhart, Jacob Needleman, and of course the mysterious Simone Weil. to broaden the idea. For them, posting the Tao or Osho is just fine and I agree. Yet, as you probably know, Osho is very double edged.

I’m just asking you to say something so that I know where I stand.

I’m a lousy visual artist but there have been those in my background that were quite good. One even rivals Britain’s celebrated Joseph Turner. This has helped me to realize the value of what good art brings. The same is true with ideas for me that permeate philosophy and the essence of all religions. Right or wrong, I believe they serve a necessary purpose in awakening the heart to something greater than the mundane.

If you’d like to give it a shot, I’ll help. If not, don’t worry about it and at least the situation will be clear.

Hi Ben

I guess your silence means no to my proposal.

In the future if something should change, drop me a line. In the meantime, to have the direction the Religion board has taken, with the help of these attitudes I’ve pointed out, suggestive of the depth and vitality of religious philosophy is ludicrous. Without the new board to reveal the contrast in approach, the subject will die a rapid death.

Anyhow I wish you the best but I have too much respect for these ideas and the sincere efforts of those that have experientially explored them both past and present to continue with attempts towards a substantive approach…

I’ve changed my signature to be more normal.

Sincerely

Ben is currently swamped with work and hasn’t read most threads on ILP. He will be able to reply as soon as he can - he certainly isn’t ignoring you.

Sorry, didn’t know Ben was so swamped. That explains it.

Hi Nick,

Just to reiterate what Obw has said. I have literally not had time to deal with anything ILP related for the past month or so. It’s not because I’ve made a decision on your proposal it’s just I haven’t had a look at it yet. Your patience on this would be greatly appreciated, I will deal with it eventually.

All the best,

Ben

Hi Nick, I appreciate your reply. Please note that the follwoing might have little to do with your actual proposition.

In a world of will to power, to reconcile your dualistic claim above in this light I say, that you as well as everyone else are a lover of fight. Philosophers are among the most determined and subtle fighters ever existed. Dunamis 7000, was a philosopher precisely due to this sense. His eventual departure was an act of decadence, but now we know it’s not really so, because existential detective detrop, after some time stalking, has reported back on the occurance of Dunamis’ new wars waged in philoforum.com.

The worrior is polite in mouth, yet savage in mind. The strongest worrior is at heart, the less competent ones have an unexaustible storage of insults and assertions standing by their lips that hardly reflect the weakling hiding in their heart’s corners. The weak needs a strong appearance, while the strong needs a remedy mask. Dunamis is a fighter at heart. Gamer could only watch and drool, afterall, the poet can never be too tough or stupid so as to tear apart his own thin thread on which the romantic existentiality lazily hangs.

Both are fine human beings, given their individual strengths.

We are the weaker ones. The weakest link among us is the kind who manages self-deception in order to come across as firm, tough, united mind who has got all his shit fixed together. Whenever the shield behind which he hides is directly provoked in the slightest manner, the coward erupts in a string of overwhelming aggression and fight hard to retain that fake air of composure and indifference. Precisely for this reason, he would often comes across as bizarre, capricious and passionate. Time will of ocurse toughen and smarten him in his degenerative art, only to the detriment of the innocent others. The sign of redemption dews upon him, only when arogance is authentically dropped. His improvement and strengthening, is not reflected by his actual gain of strongholds, as existentiality is historically independent on physicality.

When Pinnacle of Reason shouts “fuck you”, it is quite different from when impenitent says “fuck society”. Firstly, PoR acts out of a coarse nature, while impenitent retains the humor. Secondly, the latter does not mean what he says, not as much as the former does anyway, because despite of having declared several times how much he would like to “fuck the majority”, much of impenitent’s philosophy is still advocating for the concern of general public welfare. Although I don’t know if the man realises this irony himself. However, what is fundamentally akin here, is that both act out of a taste of anger and frustration, again, the latter necessarily account for a lesser role ever here. Disgust and pity is involved here. Human, all too human, even given the fact that the former is supposedly a benevolent Christian and while the latter is an impenitent nihilist.

Both do not live up to their existential ideaologies, due to lack of strength.

Therefore, born self-dissatisfaction that so easily degenerate further into expressed aggression when having idea clashes here in the forums. The only reason that Dunamis was swamped and surrounded by contagious foulness of uncivilty, namely existential decadence, was not because of the man’s own inititive to degenerate by slipping into verbal insults, but most likely is due to his unconcious propensity to punish and counter-offend the, so to speak, smaller men. In this sense, his self-imposed departure, or hopefully temperoray exile, was intitiated upon the instance his strong intellect made him aware of his own decline. His departure was essentially a personal conflict, fought by the stronger within against the weaker within. Could he have stayed yet still able to recover from the brief decadence? Perhaps that is a question for the rest of us to ponder through. Ask ourselves still, that the return of Dunamis in an ubermenschen aura, would do ILP positivity, or even more negation?

Hi Uniqor

Actually ideas you bring up discussed from the spiritual perspective reveal additional meanings.

As a chess player, I love the fight. It is not the dominant motive for me, yet for Bobby Fisher types, there is nothing else. It defines their perceived greatness for them.

Reading what Simone Weil wrote about the attraction of the great ideas for her, do you think her profound joy at 14 was in basking in the love they indicate the direction of or “annoying the Great Beast” as she did during her passionate concern for the human spirit as well as the physical needs such as world hunger.

Perhaps this is the weakness of today’s philosopher. Jacob Needleman speaks of this lack of experience in his book “The Heart of Philosophy.” We talk a good game but what do we understand. How does our heart appreciate what our logic suggests? It has gone past the point of understanding being just an intellectual curiosity. There is a literal future at stake. Do we have the heart to appreciate technological advances for the common good or has it become so corrupt that widescale destruction is inevitable? This is what worries me. Do you think I enjoy seeing good discussions go down into the gutter from all this egotism? No, which is why I’m pushing for a fresh approach, an alternative for what always will exist.

I agree completely with Prof. needleman when he writes in the Preface to “Lost Christianity:”

I seriously believe there is a need for sincere discussions on religion that is neither escapist or secular. We are in dangerous times and it is essential I believe to consider these questions with the whole of ourselves: the harmonious inclusion of our intellect, heart, and body. It is, I believe, the intentional integration of this wholeness that tends to offset the faults of specialization that brings imbalance. What good is a man who invents a new killing device in a world that cannot discriminate between offensive and defensive weapons? It is through the conscious realization that there is something higher than our collective selves that we become increasingly ignorant of through specialization that this higher wholeness begins to be seen.

Probably this appears absurd but it is the worth of such a board, even on such a small scale, that such ideas can be explored free of the normal ignorant ridicule and condemnation. CIRET founded by Basarab Nicolescu, one of Europe’s finest particle physicists, strives to do just this. Consider the "Moral Project

nicol.club.fr/ciret/english/projen.htm

The elegantly simple idea is that skilled persons in the different domains of life share for the purpose of mutally coming closer to the higher meanings and purposes of life each of these skills is a facet of. This "cause of meaning and higher purpose is in the direction of God however it is perceived. This is why it is a religious rather than secular board. Participation begins then with the mutually respected and accepted idea that there is meaning and purpose higher than Man of which man is a part. From this perspective, what is the value of fighting about who is more important: the artist or engineer? Both bring something necessary to the table. Is it really so preposterous that people could discuss not for the sake of winning but for the mutual effort of understanding?

I believe that the great ideas suggest something greater than ourselves that can be profitable to discuss without animosity, condemnation, ridicule, sarcasm, and all the rest of it. As Prof. Needleman suggest, it is time to shift gears.

So unashamedly stealing from both Prof. Needlman, Basarab Nicolescu and others, I am making an attempt to provide a haven where such discussions could occur with this attitude leaving the usual battles for the usual places.

We shall see.

Hi Nick,
to reintroduce new blood one must reintroduce…

1. New and interesting topics (to your present demographic)
2. Rehash old topics with a new twist (that suits your present demographic)

• or -

3. Rehash old topics that you think are of interest to your present demographic.

You’re not alone.
Follow your heart and listen to your body.

oy,yah there is a reason i stay out of the religion section,but that basically had to do with the paradox(s) of argueing for god.

that forums seems owned by the athiests,if thats what you mean.

sorry i didnt read all that you wrote here,it is just too much. maybe i could have if i’d slowly followed this thread.

Magius

Big help you are. I saw this cute blonde and remembered that you said to listen to my body so I pinched her behind and she belted me. No justice. This is what I get for blindly accepting what others say.

One thing I’ve learned in my discussions with others on the nature of Man and his relationship to the cosmos is that it is largely swimming upstream. A lot of topics are uncomfortable simply because they are not flattering. I love the way Simone Weil described this:

The reason I don’t appreciate this as I could is because of my blinders and programmed life. Yet in dealing with the psycho/spiritual or evolutionary potential for ourselves and mankind we are forced to come up against this and become open to receive contact with external life through our capacity for thought, feeling, and sensations… You said:

I’ve come to see this differently. It is more than rehashing but bringing a new attitude to discussion. The trick is to experience the old questions in a new and deeper way, without the blinders and rose colored glasses.

The clash that I am up against is one of basic attitude. I am beginning with the uncomfortable premise of man’s nothingness while those like Bob are only interested in community. Those like Tentative condemn these speculations as annoyingly intellectual. Others believe themselves gods or goddesses or in doing God’s will in their imagination and are content to just go with the flow. As a result, the hostility just continues. It is an affront to question our self importance in relation to the purpose of religion.

I know the dangers of intellectualism but in these times of such rapid intellectual and technological advance, I do contend that our intellect must advance to begin to consciously include the nature of universe and man’s purpose within it including our own self awareness. When better understood, even by a minority, it brings a beneficial effect to the to the long term effects of technology on mankind which IMO is presently serving to destroy it on the inside.

But this begins with the premise understood by all the great traditions of man’s sleep and need to awaken to an objective reality both for the benefit of his own being and man’s collective being.

It would not a board for Atheists. That is not to say anything is wrong with Atheism but it denies the premise of the board that something is greater than ourselves that we must awaken to. What good does it serve for someone to post “you’re nuts?” It may be true but it defies the premise in which something greater than ourselves is a given so is useless for such a board. Its purpose is to serve the needs of those who have felt the reality of something beyond their grasp and how to share in these feelings for the mutual goal of greater understanding and growing into them.

From this perspective, there is a virtual infinity of topics including the nature of man, and in a universal context, ourselves and what we’ve verified, hypothesis on creation, meaning and purpose, and even Gaia. All of this surrounds the essential ancient questions of "Who am I?’ and “Why am I here?”

Yes, if man is part of a universe serving a purpose, there is no reason that the earth could not be alive in its own way. There is a lot of info on Gaia that is fascinating and much food for thought.

Yet there are those that even deny materiality asserting that the universe is a thought creation of ours. I was speaking a while ago with such a woman and asked her what would happen to our Milky Way along with the our nearest spiral galaxy neighbor Andromeda if a giant asteroid smashed the earth into rubble killing everything. According to her there would be no universe. This is egotism gone mad. This microscopic speck determines the fate of the universe. The idea that the universe would proceed on serving its necessary purpose is somehow experienced as insulting.

Not to be rude but such denial cannot serve the purpose of a board where people are trying to come to grips with the human condition, their own, and our relationship to something, aquality of consciousness,oflife, higher and greater than ourselves that we feel called to.

Maybe people can no longer think in this way and prefer the usual battles about if God exists and the like. Maybe the Internet is not the place for people to admit that something is horribly deficient with man’s consciousness as has been said so often in the past and how to contend with it by taking the alternative approach to concern for what to do in favor of concerning ourselves with what we are.

Hi Magius

One thing additional to help clarify the situation. You suggest to “follow your heart,” but have you thought on how such statements are abused. They sound good and if one raises doubts it is like questioning motherhood.

All someone has to do is post a quote by Osho and everyone thinks how wonderful it all is. This business of the “heart” is very mixed and apparently can only be discussed in certain respectful environments without people becoming insulted.

I remember Osho when he was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and heard some juicy stories. Somehow I’m skeptical about mystics living in luxury with 27 Rolls Royces. They often can say and write meaningful things but mix it with other qualities. "Rat poison is 98% good corn. This appeal to the heart is then tainted IMO.

But this happens with all of us. We are largely susceptible to it from being hurt and certain people are shrewd enough to take advantage of this. On such a board as I’m suggesting the following biblical excerpt, for example, could be gone into with the depth it deserves simply because those involved would be willing to admit their own weakness in front of it. It is hard to accept our tendency to pervert our potential and Jesus even called Peter and others “dull” for not wanting to be open to it.

On a regular philosophy board this idea is irrelevant. The important thing is to win or appear impressive in debate. This I believe is largely why philosophy loses its value. The deeper meanings are destroyed through the effects of tainted speech or writings and become only tools of self justification at the expense of self knowledge… However, when the topic itself is discussed by those willing to admit these emotional failings, it gives one more freedom to be wrong and in this way be more realistic.

The need to impress, act right, self justify, “win,” etc. is replaced by the willingness to be real which is the deeper aim of all the ancient traditions taught as “getting out of our own way.”

Sadly though, it does appear that mainstream acceptance of this mutual failing or ours is far in the future when even in these times debate or “sugary” appeals to the heart are overwhelmingly preferred over sincere discussion much to the detriment IMO of all parties concerned. It is a struggle just to devote small spaces for such, I believe, mutually beneficial attitudes when faced with so much righteous indignation from those unwilling to see naked emperors.

Wow Nick,
I want to thank you for your last two posts. If I may, you sound like someone who is attempting to pierce the outer shell of this onion of a reality in which reality only gives a keener scent when you get deeper. I can only state my approbation for your route.

I think I properly sensed moments within your posts when you were being comedic and when you were serious, having said that, allow me to better define some terms.

When I said that you should follow your ‘heart’ I meant that in a relativistic way. My personal belief is that in the end all we have is personal truth (two words ‘personal truth’ containing the meaning of all information attained through life of which we are convinced is as we understood it). I also meant it in a sort of spiritual way. For example, when you meet someone you may get a feeling, some people are more sensitive to this feeling than others. Those that are more sensitive can usually read people well or even tell people something about themselves that they have no way of knowing. It is this sensitivity not just with people but in all situations that I was referring to when I said “Follow your heart” - but I didn’t mean this as some absolute truth as though your heart/sensitivity would lead you to the path of TRUTH or something. Nevertheless, I do believe that if people were not afraid to follow their feelings and speak their mind that we would be in a happier state of mind (in general as a population of the world). Furthermore, I said LISTEN to your body which doesn’t necessitate that you act according to it. Listening to your body’s reaction to the cute blonde may have helped you to think and try to understand what it is about her that you liked and in the end you may have come closer to understanding what TYPE of girl you prefer and hence help you to find a suitable mate with whom you may be happy.

What’s your take?

The Legend (gladfly) has returned.

Hi Magius

Thanks

I prefer light humor to comedic but I think our differences now are only semantic. A lot of things on my path appear backwards at the beginning until one get the feel of it. For example normally we take our lives seriously and religious/spiritual thought and work superficially. But I’ve learned the value of not taking myself seriously but the striving to experience and appreciate what exists underneath the onion skin seriously. The old humorists understood this which is why they could allow us to laugh at ourselves rather than others.

I’m glad that you meant “follow your heart” in a relative way. I’ve been often reading that in a literal way so yours is a pleasant distinction.

I agree that we have personal subjective truth and it changes during our life. I also agree that we get feelings, either favorable or unfavorable about others. I also agree that if we could experience impartially our emotions, they would serve a necessary purpose. I also agree with the value of listening to the body but I prefer the word sensing. Many in these times would not know the difference, for example, between sensing and feeling cold.

But it does seem like a healthy dog could do this better than us with greater balance. Their senses are more acute and their emotions are more natural and attuned to nature while being less burdened with an artificial pride and vanity…

This raises the question if the ideal person is actually a dog with a computer in its head supplying the degree of associative thought the dog is incapable of. Is a person more than just animal emotion, sensation, and a capacity for associative thought and imagination? These seem to be ideas worth discussing.

Greetings Nick,
while I agree that chances are a dog can sense other people’s more primitive feelings than most people, my mind nevertheless brings me to believe that it is only humans that can sense the primitive as well as the evolved parts of the mind like logic, planning, and self-awareness. To some degree I believe that apes (a variety of monkey’s), dogs, dolphins et al can also sense these more advanced processes but only on a minimal level.

However, you ask a pertinent question the remains untouched, namely, whether a person is more than just animal emotion, sensation, thought, and association? My simple answer would be “no” and the complex one a “yes”. By “no” I mean that really we are animals. By “yes” I mean that although we are animals we are nevertheless more sophisticated animals. Hence, though we may be mere emotion, sensation, thought, and association; we have these attributes to on a more sophisticated level or perhaps a more interactive level than any other species on the planet. Allow me to elaborate, there are animals that have abilities that exceed ours, like a bears strength or a cheetah’s speed, or a bat’s sonar (Thomas Nagel reference); but what we have as an agglomeration of attributes that interact between each other is more sophisticated than any other interactions between brain processes for other species. We can do more in general, but less as specialized beings (funny how we are in an era of specialization).

A more vivid way of explaining my point may be to think of emergent properties, or “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”, put another way “the whole cannot be reduced down to its parts”, put yet another way “the complexity of our emotions, sensations, thoughts, et al combine together to create something more then those aforementioned attributes”.

These are, as you said “ideas worth discussing” but they can, as most things with philosophy, get very complicated. One need only look to an introductory level Philosophy of Cognitive Science book to find Andy Clark, De Waal, Noam Chomsky, and then try to come to terms with thought experiments like the Chinese Room Experiment.

Perhaps you could shed some light on a more robust path for our discussion. I’ve seemed to have wondered off.

What’s your take?

Hi Magius

Yes I agree that man’s being integrates the specialization of different forms of animal life. As an aside, I’ll tell you something that got me thinking years ago. I understand organic life on earth as being a giant machine with the purpose of transforming substances serving a cosmic purpose. The different forms of organic life are serving this constant interaction. Nature strives but never achieves a balance of energies manifesting in materiality which is what keeps the machine functioning.

It is fashionable with many to speak of saving the earth through preserving its resources but this man said more. He explained that man, being as you say inclusive containing all of specialization, has within him a certain amount of high level energies necessary for retaining and developing his higher conscious functions. It exists also in nature within the more exotic forms of animal and vegetable life such as coral reefs and rain forests. Man is destroying these normal storehouses of these subtle energies and materiality needed for his own higher consciousness. Nature is unconcerned with higher consciousness and our personal development and only seeks a balance of the effects of mechanical law. If a shortage occurs of this materiality through our efforts, nature is compelled to take it from us, our being. Where it is normal to think of man progressing consciously, technology could produce the opposite by starving us of the nutrition needed for it. The more I thought on it the more it made sense in the context of man as an unconscious animal with periods of self awareness giving the illusion of self awareness as a possessed quality rather than the potential it is.

Ancient thought including Christian and Buddhist see the earth as special not in the misguided sense of being the center of the universe but rather as a univerwsal plane of existence that separates the higher and lower realms. Hermes Emerald Tablet makes sense in this context.

Organic life on earth as this agglomeration of life you describe is placed on this universal plane of existence of which our planet earth is a representative of. The higher is conscious and the lower unconscious. Would you think it possible that man could be dual natured. Within his being is the evolved animal and also the seed of consciousness devolved from above giving him not only the purpose of organic life butalso the potential for a higher conscious purpose? This midpoint of the plane of earth is where the evolving forms of life meet the devolving levels of consciousness providing the blend through which evolution can occur beyond purely mechanical law? So Man is more than the sum of its parts because as we exist, attributes such as the relativity of consciousness are not included?

I have two definitions of an atom. The first is the usual used in science. The second is a metaphysical one I find more useful for such questions. It states: “What is called atom is the smallest amount of any substance in which the substance retains all its properties, physical, chemical, psychical and cosmic. From this point of view there can, for instance, be an ‘atom’ of water.”

From this perspective I agree that a man cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts since the psychical and cosmic are beyond our limits to reconstruct. Water begins as a drop within many drops of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen plus. Together they can be considered a drop and the smallest amount of water that can be called water.

What then is an atom of man (Adam) if you will?

One thing I’d like to get your opinion on. A major difference between modern philosophy and the more ancient religious philosophy is that the modern uses a lot of inductive reason while the older strives for communicating through deductive reason. As you say all this can become complicated. but is it possible to strive for communication beginning with a common source for deductive logic or the admittance of something greater than ourselves. Let me post this old classic to describe this difference:

Do you think it would be possible to retain this distinction in religious philosophy discussion or would the pull to forget the forest and fixate on the trees be too powerful?

One thing to add while I think of it. From Kant:

Normally it is argued from the bottom up or through inductive reason. But once the universe is considered alive and cosmological in structure, it can be considered related through deductive reason or top down. This is spiritual thought since science works from the bottom up.

Say for example our Milky Way is considered a cosmos. At this level individual suns do not exist. Yet creation is the movement of relative unity into relative diversity so each sun within the milky way as a cosmos exists as itself but not at the level of the Milky Way where they exist as potential in unity. This would be in contrast to the usual belief that the Milky Way is a grouping of suns. From this view point Kant makes more sense. What exists in itself becomes an expression of universal law beyond the limits of our sensory discrimination. However considering from the top down, things come into being through the relationship of their potential as diversity.

But these speculations require a different mode of reason beginning with a quality of being in which everything either exists or exists in potential as fractions of “being” quality.

So this perspective opens the noumenal universe to vertical cosmological relationships characterized by relativity and scale and I find attempts at appreciating this much easier through deductive reason that assumes a higher level of cosmological being then mine. I’m more familiar with it from my interest in esoteric Christianity which is top down oriented.

But the point is that I believe it would be a good thing to attract such open minded spiritual people and retain them through such discussions like the esoteric or inner meaning of noumenon and how it corresponds with the realm of the "Watcher"or “Witness” known in many traditions. Intentional freedom from petty disputes could open up new avenues for contemplation.

All I’m saying is that there is a need for petty disputes that is being served. This is fine and apparently necessary; after all, we are human. Why not develop another board that would serve the need to go deeper through the mutual urge to do so.