"ReKant!" bah!, HumeBug! (VERY in joke among philosophers)

Boy, I am so far behind, I dare not try to comment on all the pieces of this...but you asked, daylia....so, regarding "is there any balderdash"? (I have enuf, thanks...ain't buying no mo')...no, no balderdash in your post, but there is a LOT buried in this:

"The recognition and interpretation of any event is entirely up to the one who experiences it."

...including, presumably, the 'event' of reading that sentence. Are you sure you want to claim that all 'events' are entirely subjective? That's what Hume (David) claimed, in contradiction to Kant...(well, at least he claimed you couldn't prove otherwise). Both of them made statements to the effect that "all knowlege begins with experience"...and then proceeded to head in totally different directions ..*grin* Hume went so far as to argue that no one could 'prove' that anything existed outside their own subjective experience.

Now, after making this claim, Hume noted in a footnote that although he was convinced of the tightness of his argument, he sometimes had emotional problems dealing with it...he just couldn't ACT as though it were all subjective.....And I suspect that's at the core of some of the differences between the posters here--they have convinced themselves of things that they can't wrap their minds around.

People use 'words' to talk of Gods, inner conciousness, souls, Nirvana, ghosts, etc., etc......when they often have little idea what they mean themselves. They like thinking they have said something about something, but like an old woman once said of some current "navel gazing" pop songs, "why, he's singin' about air!"

I have often made remarks about 'proof'...and my point is not that I can dis-prove claims people make, but rather that they have not proved them, and **IF** they do not have the kind of proof that one can show others, then their experience IS only subjective, and discussing it is only word games!

No...there's no law agin' word games, or agin' folks getting together and doing it as a group, or in electing a leader of their group, or paying him a salary.....etc.....but I sure hate to see them come out of their meetings and presume to inform ME that the results of their discussions are binding on ME...but, that is basically what is happening a lot, and that a major reason why I enter these discussions.

Rustic Rebel noted "The Urantia Book", which I have mentioned before..(as well as "Oahspe" and others)...what if I managed to get a majority of the Congress to accept the details and teachings of EITHER of those and we started to see laws, wars, taxes, etc....based on the concept "that earth is an experimental planet" placed here by strange aliens?...you see? I cannot prove they are wrong!

ah, well...I keep returning to one point, don't I? *big, silly smile*

I just maintain that we can have love, beauty, art, songs, deep emotion and human creativity...even literature ABOUT mysticism, religion, ESP and aliens, without buying into the idea that any of them are literally true fact.

But, as I have said, I suspect that many would find it boring to see things from my curmudgeonly point of view...*grin*...in any case, I sure don't expect to change many minds. I do, however, hope to make a few work harder...and, who knows?, "...the horse may learn to sing."

(old joke ...details on request)