Kudos to Spock for starting this thread. Respects to all. but especioally to AndyF, Gothi, and JDanile. I admire the sanity of your presentations and your proactively upholding a standard for all.
In this case, JD, I did read all the posts before launching into this, but there is at least one thread on here that has upwards of 700 posts. That is daunting, so your take on that is useful. Regarding this thread, in particular, I was appreciative of Spock’s premise of addressing opponents (I think that is the right term for a participant in a debate…) on their own terms. I have seen few more frustrating things on here than arguments between people who appear to live on differnt planets. These often fall into the “apples vs oranges” catagory. This is closely followed by the lack of defined terms. In any case, I feel that the movement toward definition and propriety is advanced by this thread.
For what it is worth, this is my contribution to the already useful ideas put forth here, these being added in the hope of greater scope of inclusion.
First and foremost, I strongly recommend spell check and and at least a perfunctory editing. I wish that our education system had this so inculcated in us that even if we hadn’t slept off any recreational chemical residue, we would yet do this. Of course, I myserf neber make mistrakes…
As I think JD(?) stated, these posts stem from our private and/or faith based
opinions and no one so far that I have encountered here is the actual founder of a movement or author of any of the cited books that appear on here in profusion. In this regard, that means that as Gothi mentioned, we are varied in our degree of debating ability. I think therefore that it might behoove at least those who are interested in such, to delve a bit into such things as basic epistemology, General Semanitcs, various simple logics, etc. Clearly some have done this, AndyF coming immediatly to mind.
In this regard I continue to emphatically recommend the unfortunately and misleadingly titled *Insights for the Age of Aquarious: a handbook for religious sanity *by Gina Cerminara. It is the best, most entertaining, and clearly annotated work on comparative religon I personally have ever come across. It includes such usefull tools for analysis a Korzybski’s
structural differential, and sections on meaning, translation, communication, collections, etc. If there is any book on this topic I would recommmend everyone to have on their shelves, this is it.
There might be another area of investigation associated with the above, and that, being somewhat esoteric despite its fundamental importance, I will only mention in passing. That is the very structure of English as a perceptual/expressive modality as relative to reality. As an example for consideration I will suppy this quote from RA Heinlein: “In English, only the first person singular of the verb ‘to be’ is true to fact.” For a more complete discussion of this issue, I recommend David Bohm’s
Wholeness and the Implicate Order. I might also recomment an inquiry into the matter of the word “I” having an entirely different meaning in many Middle Eastern teachings when used metaphysically/scripturally than our common English undestanding of that word.
Next I strongly support the warnings of using the internal logic of the Church to convince anyone outside of it. That can and does spark incindiary remarks. Those of course tend, like the “idiots” statement, to be declarations of mistaking a part for the whole. One stance on one issue does not necessarily an idiot make, except perhaps in that single area, and that is yet a point on a continuum of change. Blah, blah, you likely know what I mean.
Next, I would like to point out a dynamic of omission that I find on these fora, though I do have a good and very understandable clue as to why it is present. I am presenting it merely as a curiosity, having little hope or intention of there being any change in this regard.
This being a Catholic sponsored venue, the main divison of debate is along Catholic/non-Catholic lines. There are sub divisions of non-Catholic, which as far as I can tell include the following catagories: Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and sometimes Buddhists, and of course atheists. Generally, these are further characterisable by being theistic vs non-theistic stances or systems. My observation regards a further refinement in the thiestic catagory, with my paucitude of hope stemming from the lack of proponents of these “ways” participating on these pages.
I speak of the deists, who believe in God, yet from natural reasoning as distinct from scriptural referents, and of non-dualists whose concept of God and our relation to diety is radically* different from that of the mainstream believer. Yet these views are at least of historic and pragmatic importance, even if dismissable on grounds of Catholic belief. Somehow, I sense that the garden variety Catholic is not even aware of these positions of understanding.
Again, as a matter of completeness, I would encourage a working familiarity with at least the non-dualist stance, especially in regard to the note above pertinent to the understanding of the word “I” as used in some Middle and Far Eastern teachings. I have personally found this understanding to aid immeasurably in the interpretation of particular personal experiences and some historical issues inadequatley addressed by any explanations offered by the Church that I have by my own years long effort been able to discern.
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*Worth looking up etymologically in your Funk and Wagnalls
He might go to church for the company or for social reasons. I have been in church a few times when I was invited to a wedding. There is nothing wrong with it. 
