ChristFollower;
My presupposition is that God exists, and the Bible is his inspired word. All thinking stems from that.I respect your right to be an athiest, but it is pointless to ridicule those that believe. What does that solve?"
I think presuppositions are worthy of ridicule, especially if they are indefensable with the evidence at hand. What about people who presuppose that if a woman 'dresses like that', she 'must want it', 'even if she says no'? That's worthy of ridicule, and any other presuppoisitons, even if less offensive, are also due some degree of ridicule. It might not 'solve' anything automatically, but occasionally it might make someone think about their presuppositions.
I had a presupposition once, that god existed and the Jehovah's Witnesses had the truth. I have since found there is evidence for neither of these presuppositions.
You say;
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. The WT is an evil organization. It is a fallacy to then reject the Bible because of what those evil men did and said.
And that is another of your presuppositions. It is just living in a world where you hand pick 'facts' to suit your beliefs. I, and many like me, undertook a good deal of study, both biblical, scientific and historic, and underwent a great deal of soul-searching before coming to our conclusions. To assume that we have just done this out of bitterness, rather than as a result of hard study, is to be both wrong and insulting.
If you want to belive in god and the infallability of the Bible, fine. Don't try to make out other people to be fools to support your faith though.
Nemesis;
There is the problem of the atheists abandoning the deity concept, and then many go right ahead and apply it to humans—then whose slave would they be?It seems ironic that those who have left the concept of God and go for evolution then go forth and put all their faith in the same humans who are claimed to have made up this God concept in the first place. If there is no God, or gods then why accept “societies” morals, values, or judgements when you know according to evolution that “all is vanity and meaningless”—to quote Solomon. Society has now become their new deity and many cannot see the irony of that.
Well, there is a big difference that no amount of words or posturing can rub out. God cannot be proven to exist. Society can (unless you want to subscribe to the views of a particulary unsavoury type of politician). Whilst society may not be infallable, if certainly is there, and is a far better thing to put ones faith in than a concept which may have its origin in a fear of the dark and unexplained natural phenomena. Also, society allows for a certain latitude in one's behaviour and conduct, within broad constrainsts. These constrainsts tend to be narrow and rerstrictive in religions, especially fundamentalistic religions, and in the case of fundamentalist religions often seek to impose a set of beliefs or opinions on non-believers without the support of facts that would be acceptable in a court of law.
As I believe this to be the case, your entire arguement thus far is just opinion; you're welcome to yours, and I ask you to present facts to support it as I have done to support mine.
The next paragraph I will have to disect more thoroughly;
Surely the most logical stance to take would be to class yourselves as gods, and only view your own values, morals, and concepts as truth—all else is deception.
Straw man arguement. Who said we should do this? You. What are you ignoring? The way that society develops rights and wrongs, and the way that the majority of people in a society subscribe to these values. If you want to have an arguement, it helps if you are argueing against something someone has actually put forward, rather than something you have put up to knock down.
Some other threads refer to societies making up the concept of gods for their own self-preservation of the psyche, in their opinion, showing the fallibility of human reasoning and psychology. But the worrying thing is that they then go forth and put their faith in their new deities, the men in white coats [scientists], or philosophers and all the other human areas that are just as contaminated with fallibilities, corruption, and outright deceit.
As stated previously, you conveniently ignore the fact, that whilst these people you rail against may indeed be fallable (as were the goatherds, fishermen, visionaries (well, thy call people who hear voices something different nowadays, but I'm being nice) and political despots who wrote the Bible), they exist. I would rather believe in the accumulated knowledge of infallable men that develops over time, then the speculated knowledge of a god that cannot be proved.
Why return to the human view when they [evolutionists] claim that was the view that cause all this “religion nonsense” in the first place. Letting meaningless accidental entities [humans] tell you what right, wrong, or morals are, is so ironic when they are the very cause of these god[s] concept in the first place. Why swap a divine perfect incorruptible eternal being [God] for a stupid meaningless glorified monkey [human]? If there were no God above then human society would be the very worst place of all to get your morals and values, as they are the ones many evolutionists have just being pointing out how screwed up they are for inventing morals and God[s] in the first place!
A long time ago people made up god to explain things. The arguementation was along the lines of "It's what I say, do it!". These people you continue to rail against can enter into structured reasoned arguementation, present facts, etc.. Thus your contention is just empty word, unfounded in fact. There is NO comparison.
What can an evolutionist offer us that is better than Jesus as an example or morals, integrity, and goodness?
What has that question got to do with anything? More straw man arguements. Evolutionist=scientist. Jesus=possibly real religious leader. What has a scientist got to offer that is better than what a two-thousand year dead person who may have never lived has got to offer us? EASY.
Facts.
