I don’t think that I need to respond.
You posted your thoughts. I read them.
I went into a specific context at least once with him. I had avoided it because I make no claim to resolve conflicting goods such that every rational person…etc. I am not an objectivist. But since he kept demanding it of me, I did it. He did not really respond to it. Not too much time later he began demanding it again. He also accused me of having contraptions since I was less fractured and fragmented than him. And he told me what these were. I told him he was incorrect. This did not deter him from his mindreading for months and months. He just kept repeating it. Despite his lack of an ‘i’ and being fragmented and fractured he managed to be utterly confident that he could read my mind and knew what I was thinking. A fractured adn fragmented mind with no ‘i’, it seems to me, would be nervous being certain about his OWN thinking, but here he was sure about my inner motivations. He also predicted he would scare me away from ILP.
Criticisms that might make one believe that an utterly concrete solution like participating in the practices of a process, rather than having an abstract discussion of it would be something he would consider at least potentially a good suggestion. But no. He is incredulous that anything other than his approach is the best one. See my post above to him. Incredulous. No, the best thing for his to do to learn if Buddhism might make him feel better is to have abstract discussions with non-Buddhists online, rather than taking steps to have a live interaction with actual Buddhists and have the concrete experiences of the practices themselves.
If he accuses anyone of being abstract, he should be snorted at.
If he tells us he is fragmented and fractured he should be snorted at. Someone who actually believes that about themselves should wonder if perhaps, possibly, they might be confused about what they need or have more ambiguous opinions about the right way for them to learn something. But after nearly a decade of posting his process is the same. It hasn’t helped him, yet he is incredulous that there could possibly be anything wrong with it, in practical terms, or that any other approach could be better. This is not a fractured and fragmented person. This is a stubborn monad.
Those could be fine responses, but he is not open.
Meditating with Descartes
Karen Parham asks how close Western philosophy gets to Buddhism.
And there we go. Certain Western philosophers can rationalize both God and The Good into existence. Grasping them abstractly sets up the battles to come when confronting other philosophers who “in their head” grasp them differently. Then it becomes an [at times] fierce contest to pin down the most technically correct definitions and deductions. This actually becomes what passes for “serious philosophy” for some. Even regarding discussions of morality and immortality.
The same with those here who want to focus the discussion not on their belief in Buddhism as that impacts the behaviors they choose here and now to effectuate what they would like karma to embody for them there and then, but on whether others understand what the Buddha imparts “properly”.
I think therefore I am. But leaving aside an understanding of how the fact that you think must somehow be connected to an understanding of Existence itself, and that, in thinking, you do so autonomously, what in particular are you thinking? And in what particular context are you thinking it?
Do others think the same thing? Can you pin down those things that all men and women agree do in fact exist? What about the relationship between the things that seem to exist objectively but precipitate human behaviors that different people think differently about. Particular behaviors which generate conflicting moral narratives and political agendas?
And is it not these very conflicts that become an important factor in prompting the minds of men and women to create Gods “in their heads”. You may exist because you think but so do others. And, in regard to those things you can’t agree on in the is/ought world, well, there’s God!
Or, for the Buddhists, whatever it is that they think is “behind” karma, reincarnation and Nirvana.
I’ll take that as a good thing… 
I guess I find the scepticism weird, but I know that some don’t like going ‘within/deeper’ for fear of what they may find, but that… my friends, is the best but hardest part.
And around and around we go…
My existential options for trying much of anything these days are…limited. And, given all of the hundreds and hundreds of “paths to enlightenment” there are out there in regard to objective morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side, what are your own options for going down that list above? How many have you tried so far? Note a list of them over, say, the past five years. Having already rejected Buddhism.
You and I will just have to agree to disagree that, in regard to that which interest me about religion, I feel the enlightened ones need first to convince me [in places like this] they can first demonstrate that what they believe in their head [re morality and immortality] is the real deal.
And what makes no sense to you is not how I think about all of this but how you think that I think about all of this. That’s what you do here. You analyze me. You “expose” me to everyone. But all you are really doing is taking out of me that which you must of necessity first put into me: yourself. I become your own iambiguous. Just as you and others become my own renditions in turn. There’s just no getting around the implications of that in virtual reality. Instead, in my view, we can only make attempts to bring what we think and feel about human interactions out into the world by focusing in [over and over again] on particular sets of circumstances and probing the existential parameters of “I” there.
Terrified? No, more in the way of feeling disturbed from time to time at being fractured and fragmented out in the is/ought world; and in feeling dread at the prospect of oblivion. But, in the interim, that’s what the distractions are for: all the things I do that bring me enormous satisfaction and fulfillment; and take me away from what I think philosophically about the human condition.
Again, up into the stratosphere of the general description intellectual contraptions you go!!
Instead, choose another context in which, in regard to morality on this side of the grave and the fate of “I” on the other side of it, you yourself reacted to the conflicting goods embodied by individuals as that pertains to the part where the choices impact their fate on the other side.
I will then note the extent to which, in reacting to this same particular set of circumstances, I do feel fractured and fragmented – down in my hole. Then you can note the extent to which you either feel similarly or very much different.
Just make it about a situation in which we do have particular reactions and then make an attempt to explain them.
Then [sigh] this is how you respond:
Okay, pick that time you believe best encompasses a substantive exchange between us in which, given a particular situation, we exchange perspectives on the “fragmented and fractured” “I” down in this hole existentially:
How is this applicable and not applicable to you in this particular situation?
Instead, back up you go:
Like I haven’t already responded to this above. But it’s not the right response. It’s the response that you would expect given the manner in which you think that you have pinned me down above. If I am your iambiguous then that’s what you’d expect.
Then of course the part where you confirm all of this by making me the issue here:
And none of this “makes sense” to you because I refuse to be other than this caricature of me that you “nail” in post after post after post.
Though, you assure me, in a truly “respectful” manner.
What I suggest then is that, in regard to a brand new context we all agree on, we discuss the manner in our own respective “I” reacts to conflicting goods as that relates to our view about objective morality here and now and the fate of “I” there and then.
Given our take [assumptions] regarding either a God or a No God world.
My own favorite context revolves around abortion. But I’m open to any other that we can all agree would best highlight the things we might agree or disagree about.
You can note your reactions in this non-discussion of abortion:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195498
Some participants are trying to discuss it but Biggus … not so much.
The reactions are enough in themselves?
Indeed, here are some examples of me not discussing my views on abortion:
Note to others:
Seriously, what point is he making here that I am clearly missing?
Biggus sits on a fence:
He asks posters and ‘philosophers’ a bunch of questions:
If you give an answer :
Then you have a political prejudice, an existential contraption, a general answer, it’s in your head, you’re abstract, you’re in the clouds.
If not that, then your answer doesn’t meet his interests:
As always, the poster fails in some way.
Yes, and to the moral and political objectivists [Buddhists, Christians, liberals, conservatives etc.] I ask for an explanation as to why they don’t sit on the fence. How, in other words, their own convictions are not impinged by the manner in which they construe identity, value judgments, and political power in regard to abortion. Giving them the opportunity to explain why the intertwined components of my own moral philosophy are not at all reasonable to them. I sit on the fence because, philosophically, it makes sense to. And I suggest in turn the reason objectivists don’t sit on the fence is embodied in what I call the “psychology of objectivism”.
But beyond this I cannot go. My own assessment here is no less an existential contraption subject to change given new experiences, relationships and access to ideas. Just as is the case with them. And with you.
Yes, given the manner in which I assess moral convictions as political prejudices rooted historically, culturally and interpersonally in dasein, it makes sense to me to describe them as such.
But to the extent that others are not willing or able to demonstrate to me how and why their own value judgments transcend the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein and conflicting goods in my own argument, I can only react to what they post as I do. I’m not saying that they are necessarily wrong any more than I am saying that I am necessarily right. I am only pointing out that here and now they have failed to persuade me. Exactly what they do in regard to their reactions to me.
And what interest me on this thread is the extent to which Buddhists choose the behaviors that they do in interacting with others from day to day as that is reflected in their beliefs about karma, enlightenment, reincarnation and Nirvana.
The part that, in my opinion, you yourself nearly always avoid.
And, please, come on, on thread after thread after thread here others are either able to convince those who don’t think like them to finally do, or they “fail” to.
I fail to convince you, you fail to convince me. Only with the objectivists, if someone fails to agree with them that makes them necessarily wrong. That makes them ineligible to become “one of us”. And, for some, that then precipitates the retorts, the name calling, the huffing and puffing, the ad homs.
And, no, by all means, not just you.
I would just like to note that this thread is in no way about the solution to the abortion problem, so it is hijacked. Buddhism is not really a moral system, it is a practical system. I think the discussion of whether participation vs. abstract discussion of Buddhism is on the border to being off topic, but given that Buddhism so clearly, as a system and culture, is about getting away from overratiocination and emphasises practices vastly more than belief, our foray into Iamb’s approach is at least somewhat relevent.
the thread is, after all, about ‘getting’ buddhism, no solving the moral conflict issues of a person who has said he has never been interested in participating in Buddhism despite exposure to Buddhist ideas and buddhists in his life.
Not that: he has never had any interest. Yet, here we are discussing his abortion issue in a thread about a subject he is not interested in.
In the West religious discussion revolved often around right beliefs. Eastern religions are much more focused on effective practices.
So he has been an effective virus.
…and yet you all seemed to enjoy the exchange. 
We can explore what a Buddhist has that Biggus (or someone like Biggus) lacks when meeting moral problems. IOW, what the difference in the two approaches?
That’s easier to do when the questions are confined to a particular context like abortion.
Combining the two?
From the wiki article “Buddhist ethics”:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_ethics#Abortion
Well, what do you know: “There is no single Buddhist view concerning abortion, although traditional Buddhism rejects abortion because it involves the deliberate destroying of a human life and regards human life as starting at conception.”
Okay, so in regard to any one particular abortion in any one particular set of circumstances, how does any one particular Buddhist encompass his or her own moral parameters as that relates to his or her own individual understanding of karma, enlightenment, reincarnation and Nirvana.
As opposed to my own suggestion that individuals here [Buddhists or not] are likely to embody moral values rooted in their own particular historical and cultural contexts. And, then, from individual to individual, predicated largely on the confluence of actual experiences that they have had predisposing them to one rather than another set of political prejudices.
So, what I would be most interested in here, is a discussion about abortion among those who call themselves Buddhists. How would they rationalize the behaviors that they would choose if they were themselves burdened with an unwanted pregnancy. Or knew of someone they loved who was. Or, if not abortion, any other conflicting goods.
And then others who are not Buddhists noting the manner in which their own value judgments were derived and why from their point of view abortion is either moral or immoral.
And then philosophers [ethicists] taking all of these existential narratives into account and discussing the extent to which, using the tools of philosophy, it might be possible to arrive at the most reasonable and virtuous set of behaviors.
And, finally, theologians, who might reconfigure these conclusions into one that includes their own understanding of God and/or religion and/or Enlightenment — as that relates to their assumptions regarding the afterlife and/or salvation.
All of which eventually coming down not to what one believes is true but what one is able demonstrate that all rational people are in fact obligated to believe is true in turn.
So go and search all those people out and discuss it with them. Stop wasting your time here with people who don’t meet all your needs and expectations.
Yet again you allow yourself to be reduced down to one these…retorts.
You know, maybe if you were to search out Buddhists and become one of them that would happen less often. 
What’s the goat choking on now??
He just wrote that he is “most interested” in hearing from Buddhists, non-Buddhists, philosophers and theologians :
Most of those people are not here, aside from the non-Buddhists. He has to go someplace else to find them. That’s just common sense.
That’s a different thread, easy to start. And likely more effecting in a Buddhist forum.
Generally, Buddhists do not consider Siddhartha Gautama to have been the only buddha. The Pali Canon refers to Gautama Buddha at least once as the 28th Buddha (see List of the 28 Buddhas). A common Buddhist belief is that the next Buddha will be one named Maitreya (Pali: Metteyya).
In Theosophy, the Maitreya or Lord Maitreya is an advanced spiritual entity and high-ranking member of a hidden Spiritual Hierarchy, the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom.
Maitreya (Sanskrit), Metteyya (Pali), is regarded as a future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. … According to Buddhist tradition, Maitreya is a bodhisattva who will appear on Earth in the future, achieve complete enlightenment, and teach the pure dharma.
Meditating with Descartes
Karen Parham asks how close Western philosophy gets to Buddhism.
Same with Buddha and Buddhism. Some people have a conscious understanding of them, others do not. And, from my frame of mind [rooted in dasein], some have one conscious understanding of them while others have a different understanding of them. So how, for all practical purposes, does that work in regard to karma, enlightenment, reincarnation and Nirvana? If there is no innate idea linking the teachings of Gautama Buddha to the billions of mere mortals around the globe, how would it not be the responsibility of practicing Buddhists to at least take their own assessment out into the world and to proselytize.
After all, if someone is not even aware of Buddha and his teachings, how can they possibly attain either enlightenment on this side of the grave or immortality [however that works] on the other side of the grave?
Of course from my frame of mind, this changes very little. We can only project into God that which is derived from our own minds. In other words, that which is derived from our own minds. And how is that not rooted in dasein rooted out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view? Whether you come at God or Buddha inductively or deductively, from the East or from the West, there is still the part where your own unique accumulation of experiences, relationships and access to ideas predispose you to embody one subjective/subjunctive account rather than another. And, to my knowledge, no one able to pin down the optimal account.
Until there is a way to demonstrate both intellectually and empirically the existence of an entity that transcends both the minds and the lives of mere mortals, it really comes down to any particular existential leap that any particular one of us are able or not able to make.
More or less blindly as they say.