@mattbutnot
Post Script

Now a productive manifestation of this agnosticism is, "What is Dukkha" and "Who is
liberated from Dukkha".

There is a fundamentally different answer to that in Mahayana, that I'm uncomfortable dismissing out of hand.

And thus I wanted to see what you--who seems to have a solid foot on the path heading towards one of the 84,000 gates in close proximity to where I'm aiming--thought.

Is Buddhism a mechanism for the reduction of personal suffering in one lifetime, or humanity as a whole?