Dear Yuyutsu,

<<Even if the world could be divided that way, it would make no real difference.>>

That's close to what I've been saying about what I directly experience.

<<The mind, being of the world, can only inform us about the world, but although the world exists, existence itself is an illusion.>>

So our minds tell lies because existence is actually an illusion? What do you mean by "illusion" then, and how do you know this?

<<So will you kindly tell me what the context is...>>

I already explained to you that the context of everything in my response had been set over a couple of days prior to it. I even provided links to the starting points.

<<...why I keep receiving a rain of so many questions to answer...>>

Because you accrue more questions with each attempt to evade the last with yet even more unfounded claims. This is what happens when people are dishonest: they compound their problems as they attempt to cover their tracks and end up contradicting themselves continuously.

<<...what reason(s), if any, should I have to answer them...>>

Because you have a burden of proof that you need to fulfil if you want to defend religion by having anyone other than the gullible and foolish take your claims seriously. No-one but your own ego and neuroticism is forcing you to stay here, though.

<<...and what reason(s), if any, should I have to go back reading 38 pages of stuff I'm not even interested in?>>

That was never asked of you.

<<Otherwise you risk receiving answers one by one to the questions you've written rather than to what you may have had in mind.>>

Nice try, but it has been purely your own inadequacies, or desire to obfuscate, that has led to the failure of your answers to address my questions.

<<But must knowing what is good be the answer?>>

Do you have a better one?

<<Further, as knowing anything is not truly possible, how less so knowing what is good, then why try?>>

That depends on how you define knowledge.

Continued…

…Continued

Either way, this doesn't make your list of possibilities any more reliable. This is pure sophistry. Knowledge is good enough for you when you want to appeal to it, then suddenly it's useless when the problems with your logic are exposed. There are still varying degrees of certainty that can be attained even if true knowledge is impossible.

<<"...trying to impose your epistemology even when the issue of knowledge has not come up in our conversation.">>

If you state what you say as fact, then yes, I probably will call you to account because knowledge will be implied. That wouldn't be imposing anything either because your burden of proof would remain regardless of any arbitrary epistemology you may dream up at the time.

<<Only if I cared enough whether or not you travelled back in time.>>

So you're saying that unless you care about a claim, then you remain entirely neutral regarding the likeliness of it being true? Regardless of how absurd it may be, nothing tweaks at all? Okay, but I don't believe you. Perhaps that explains the predicament you now find yourself in, though? Most people are a little more switched on than that.

<<While they admire the ideal, only very few of the Christian creed delude themselves that they would in fact be willing to lay their life on the cross if needed for the love of God and others.>>

Well that runs contrary to my observations and I'm the one who was once a Christian. Even if this was true, though, you're still assuming that those who would be so insane, agree with your definition of religion.

<<Implicit in the definitions of those who wrote the first English dictionaries...>>

Oh, so suddenly we care about implications? Ah, the whims of those who invent their own reality. Sorry, but dictionary definitions of words change with their use.

Continued…

…Continued

<<...had they either believed that the religious process exists OR respected those who hold that belief, then they wouldn't use the word which those who believe in that process use among themselves to describe it, to describe something else.>>

This assumes that they thought religious institutions were a bad thing. You've provided nothing to suggest this. Many of those who played a major role in the Enlightenment were actually Christian and simply appreciated the value of empiricism and evidence-based reasoning.

<<Once you had even a glimpse of anubhava, you could no longer even conceive of yourself as a brain, no matter where that brain is located.>>

Yes, well I'm sure those suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy and schizophrenia are just as certain about similar are phenomenon. Again, we make assessments of claims by contrasting them with what we already know, so how can you know this?

I could have an out-of-body experience that feels very real indeed, but I know that there’s no evidence for any these occurrences, and that our brains can play some awesome tricks on us, so the most rational conclusion to draw there is that I probably didn’t actually have an out-of-body experience.