I'm not conducting a debate, Bill. Maybe that's why I don't get your point. I'm simply discussing things I'm interested in.

What is your point, anyway? Try and make it brief. ;-)

EVERYONE, Bill, EVERYONE has a chosen set of assumptions about reality! (unless they are in a coma or otherwise unconscious)

It's just that most people take their own chosen set of assumptions about reality so totally for granted that they don't even know they have them! I don't do that. I have been examining my basic assumptions, and challenging them, ever since my early 20's. I have changed my opinion about a whole lot of things, and I will no doubt continue to change my opinion with further investigation.

Life is not about "proof", as far as I'm concerned. It's about transformation.

I wouldn't say that mind and body are independent, exactly, I'd say that they are fully integrated while the body is alive, but that body is much secondary to mind, an effect of mind...since it was built BY mind in the first place, and is later discarded by that same mind when it wears out. Kind of like a car...built by mind, used by mind, discarded by mind. Only...a body is built through normal biological processes (conception, 9 months in the womb, birth, growth, etc.) whereas a car is built on an assembly line.

I assume that you think mind arises from the body, whereas I think it's exactly the other way around. I see little likelihood that we will arrive at a resolution of that philosophical difference, and I see no way of effectively dealing with it through your debating system. No way whatsoever. You can't play chess with a deck of cards or saddle a moonbeam with a refrigerator. ;-)

I am NOT debating. I'm discussing. Who needs a debate?