There is no "I" in "You"

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm actually not interested in the fact that there have been nuts on both sides of the Euphrates to scribble down nonsense and call it philosophy. We both agree on that. What we keep coming back to is that I'm talking about eastern philosophical traditions and you keep talking about eastern religion. It's like objecting to the rationality of Democritus's atomism by citing  Zeus's shapeshifting philandering.

Again you refer to some part while supporting claims to the whole.  I think that you've misread our conversation as grossly as you've misread the eastern tradition. I can only repeat myself. The eastern tradition is larger than your preferred subset, containing a great number of more and less skeptical bits than your favorite portion of your favorite portion.  The same is true of the western tradition.  

And my formulation of anatta isn't scrubbed. It's syncretic in that it integrates what we know about modern physics with the original doctrine, but to Nagarjuna it was exactly what I propounded: a refutation of substance theory informed by a commitment to skepticism. Likewise with paticcasamuppada. In its original formulation, even before the more sophisticated philosophical traditions arose, it was a formalization of phenomenological causal processes.

Your formulation of anatta was -absolutely- scrubbed.  No ghosts, therefore no self.  This is not your formulation of anatta.  I can understand, you're a skeptic..and it was bad logic anyway.  It is syncretic, and that's telling, in that you are now referring to western syncretisms of eastern traditions as though they demonstrated the skepticism of the eastern traditions...when they more informatively point to the influence of western tradition and the necessities of re-branding buddhism for a western audience. You have attempted to rebrand their philosophy yourself, so that it more closely comported with modern physics - a branch of the western tradition.  Allow, for a moment...that modern physics is -not- what those buddhists were discussing..at all, not even Nagarjuna. That they were attempting to explain all of those things you refuse to consider, all of the parts of the skeptical eastern tradition which you find less than skeptical, and so deride as something other than philosphy, in ignorance. All of those things -they- believed in, their axioms, their foundations. Just as classical greek philosophers were not, in their cases, discussing or opining upon modern physics when they referred to an atom or an element. Though it should be much easier for me to construct comments like your own..in that I won't even have to change their wording to make it sound as though they were.

It would not, even in the case that you did find a non-syncretic example (some of which I've pointed you to, in hindusim - derided as other than philosophy - apparently not what you're talking about), demonstrate your point on the relative skepticism of the larger traditions as a whole - because it can't-..that is an invalid means of inference on it's face, in addition to being plainly wrong by simple reference to the eastern tradition as a whole.  Am I not making myself clear?  Did the links provided to you regarding eastern philosophy not help to elucidate that point? Your scope is myopic, your view is uninformed and retrofitting, your means of inference non-existent, and your claim....extravagant. Why should I consider this to be any more or less thorough than the islamists claim to modern physics, or that the quran "more closely comports" with modern physics via reimaginings of the meaning of quranic verses?