I have really enjoyed this discussion. I have seen beautifully elegant descriptions from many different points of view and witnessed folks expanding their world to include a little doubt, which I think is very healthy. We're strong enough to move forward with our eyes completely open.
And I think I finally understand, at least in part, what DD has been talking about thanks to Ansii's repetition of constraints on worldviews. I may not be smart enough to abstract out those constraints and deal with them as building blocks, but at least I am able to see that if there are patterns in the constraints or relationships between them something pretty important might be identified.
Just one more thing and I'm done. I wish we had some tools to go back over this thread and somehow tie things together with other threads. I guess I'm talking about a manual abstraction process where we can 'back out' and look for patterns in arguments, etc.
In other words, threads could be of two basic types: initial discussions covering a wide set of views - and mature threads, meaning, the thread has been analyzed and integrated into other structures. I'm not smart enough to do that so somebody else can think about it, ok?
I have to go now for a while. We just bought a house and are moving. So much to do and so little time to do it.
