@boagie,
Ken,
You also said that, I couldn’t just make things up. I believe that you were also saying in your own inimical way that, I had no background on which to found my personal findings. Am I mistaken in this?
I would like to point out that to investigate directly isn’t simply to reinvent the wheel, but rather to see if the wheel previously invented is worth buying in to.
One shouldn’t swallow other people’s words/ideas whole, esp. in a subject that contains so much disagreement.
As I get older, I even find myself re-examining my our words/thoughts to see if they still hold true, given what I have gained since I first concluded.
Not only that, but there is a depth of understanding that continues to grow, hopefully, throughout our lifetime. So it is not only what you know, but how deeply you understand it.
No idea can become foundational, or even actually belong to you, if you do not investigate it personally and thoroughly. It will be, "One man opinion of moonlight." Further, it will be a house of cards if you merely accumulate ideas of others, even if you appear to build an edifice with them.
You will have a bunch of ideas, but no wisdom.
S9