Can we illustrate the use of different styles to emphasise what kind of point we’re making?    

A bit of light relief:

There is a Buddhist story about one of the Zen masters that goes something like this:  A student monk asks the Zen Master, “What is it like to achieve enlightenment?�  In Buddhism this is the highest mental state, which can take decades or many lifetimes to achieve.  We paraphrase a bit because we don't know the actual words (and they would have been in old Japanese anyway).  The Master replied:

“Before Enlightenment, I worked in the fields and shovelled shit; after Enlightenment, I worked in the fields and shovelled shit.�

We need to cite references for this story.                                                                  .                      

We need to show the evidence for our beliefs, particularly those based on science or history.  Examples also help understanding.

The Zen Master example may not be the best one, but at least we're trying.

It’s not enough just to say something and hope that everyone understands the implications.  People can draw different conclusions from the same facts.  We must try to link it all together explicitly, so that what we mean is easier to understand.

We put this story of the Zen master here as a kind of joke.  It shows that even if you finally do understand “it all� you still need do your activities of daily living, so it may not change your outward behaviour much.

But an epiphany could make a profound difference to your life.

We may not like some other interpretations of the facts but be unable to say why they are wrong.  They may be consistent with the evidence, and not bad.  We must acknowledge these alternative interpretations and explore them, modifying our understanding, until we resolve any differences.

We can be impressed with the Buddhist way of looking at the world, and try to reconcile it to contemporary science.

We need to understand enough to be able to work out which alternative explanations are wrong, that is, which can be shown to be false because they are inconsistent with the evidence, or self-contradictory, or simply bad.

Even though we can be impressed with Buddhism, reincarnation does seem to be inconsistent with the evidence, so we don't believe in it.  The apparent evidence for it needs to be explained another way – we discuss this elsewhere.