abe smith

Thos Aquinas's *PREMISES* are JUNK! Apart from that he's very delightful bathroom/bathtub/and bed reading. ("get you through many a long & weary night"). An unscrupulous Thinker, tho.
Lots of those bright & witty guys (Michelangelo, Dante, Blake, Chagall, John of *Revelations*, et tutti cuanti : all the deity-makers) have invented bunches & bundles of very entertaining verbal & visual materials. Give them & their products credit!.
....Just don't try to use that stuff as enslaving weapons against yourself & yer fellow man, & fellow WOMAN.

Sheesh: all that Bach, for Christ's sake... You don't have to BELIEVE the stuff to get a big heavy physical full-body BANG out of those! Nobody shd go deaf or dead w/o hearing the B Minor Mass. And the Old Man's Magnificat. and the *St Matthew Passion*.
(Wonder what Gemma Therese thinks of those?) Of course the Smiths, "of whom I am one", besides being the very-early fire-users (Not quite as early as the cooks) and toolmakers, were also the first makers of the gods and fetisches. Kiss my ancestors!

dbporter

I'm as critical of Christianity as the next. However, some of the arguments on this thread need to be strengthened:
1) authority begins as testimony, eg, forensic. So, argument from authority does not necessarily mean untrustworthy/unacceptable;
2) everybody has presuppositions, that doesn't make something true or untrue;
It doesn't serve to two 'sides' using similar weak arguments if their presuppositions are their only difference.
By the way, abe smith, I like your point about using one's beliefs to enslave oneself or others!