It's surely begging the question to say that Barenboim's appreciation of music is greater than someone else's because of some spiritual aspect. Doesn't the fact that he has devoted his career to music also have something to do with it? I happen to think that, overtures aside (and even some of those I find boring) Wagner is pretty awful really.
And, anyway, the same comparison might be made of those who have studied anything else to the point where their appreciation of that subject and its subtleties is greater than the man in the street's could possibly be. Naturally I'm thinking of my own specialism, physics -- and yet in a separate discussion I was accused of being "blinded" by the science. Well, if that's true, how do you know that you haven't been blinded in the same way? Unable to see the wood for the trees, that sort of thing. It stands to reason that if someone who has spent so long focusing on a particular topic then they can risk overlooking the bigger picture, or blinding themselves to the obvious in favour of searching for some desperate attempt to justify their life's work.
I submit, anyway, that if I can be accused of this -- in some perverse twist, the very fact that I know a lot about my subject counts against my ability to understand it -- then so, too, can anyone who "knows a lot" about any other subject, and in particular about religion. Arguments which are logically flawed from the outset people can somehow convince themselves are worth trying. And so we see in particular from goodlife the sort of dross that, if ever he thought to replace the word "Jehovah" with "magic teapot", would instantly be revealed as such. And to a lesser extent I think we see the same from you too, Khandro, at times. These odd comments that seem to be intended as incredibly profound, but frankly come across as something closer to pseudo-philosophical claptrap.
I mean, seriously, what was that whole "it is the mind that moves, not the flag" stuff about? As if that makes any sense whatsoever, and yet it was uttered with such a grand authority that people could be forgiven for thinking you were saying something profound.