aChristian;
... it is for the most part a vast spiritual wasteland. To make matters worse, because of the very bad experience all of these people have had with the JW religion, most of them are very skeptical of anything "religious," and are thus very resistant to the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
Why I was trying to be 'nice', and not devalue the beliefs of stevieb1 in my reply, I don't know. To be fair, he's not the one who sounds like he's sneering when talking about non-Christians, a trait you'd be wise to adopt, aChristian. Maybe I misread you... I HOPE SO!
Joseph is right. What you acquire when you leave a high-control group is critical thinking ability, NOT a resistance to other religious thought. You become skeptical, perhaps hyper-skeptical, but being skeptical can only disprove or prove something, or leave it on the cusp between, so being hyper-skeptical doesn't mean you don't believe provable truths, it just means you are... careful about what you believe.
I get so tired of theists running the poor excuse for an arguement around that you rehash above. It makes me wonder about their ability to think critically! Are you gonna say we are 'bitter' next? That way you'll be conforming to the conditioning even more closely!!
Please, present a better argument. Better still, give us some nice solid evidence for what you believe. I doubt if you can present anything that has not already been closely examined and discarded as unsatisfactory evidence by many of the non-Christians here. Believe me, the day someone gives me satisfactory proof of god, or of Jesus being his son, is the day I believe. I have no agenda other than following what I believe sincerely to be true. So save your foundless accusations...
... try instead to show the respect for others beliefs, or their right to those beliefs. God knows it ain't easy, but if poor little atheists divorced from Christ's ransom can try and do it, I'm sure you'll give it a go...
Oh, by the way, your arguement can be reversed like this;
To make matters worse, because of the conditioning all of these people have had with the JW religion, many of them are very suseptable to anything "religious," and are poor in exercising critical thinking, or being able to develop schemes for determining the validity of arguementation or evidence. They also find it hard to accept that death is probably the end of an individuals personality, and cling to beliefs in an after-life rather than reforming their paradigms on a more provable basis.
If you find that offensive, then you'll know what response your above quoted arguement provokes in the people you apply it to.
There is no arguement yet presented which explains the absence of certainty of god. Oh wow, atheists can't prove there is no god; theists can only point to a bewildering array of gods from the sublime to the ridiculous
People living in glass paradigms shouldn't throw stones...
