re ancient books in article apr athos rutgers edu mayne ds scri fsu edu bill mayne writes in article apr athos rutgers edu miner kuhub cc ukans edu writes any former atheists converted by argument this is an excellent question and i ll be anxious to see if there are any such cases i doubt it in the medieval period esp th cent when aquinas flourished argument was a useful tool because everyone knew the rules today when you can t count on people knowing even the basics of logic or seeing through rhetoric a good argument is often indistinguishable from a poor one the last sentence is ironic since so many readers of soc religion christian seem to not be embarrassed by apologists such as josh mcdowell and c s lewis i haven t followed whatever discussion there may have been on these people but i feel that c s lewis is an excellent apologist and i see no reason for embarrassment if you think that errors and flawed arguments are a reason for dismissing a thinker you must dismiss nearly every thinker from descartes to kant any philosophy course will introduce you to their weaknesses the above also expresses a rather odd sense of history what makes you think the masses in aquinas day who were mostly illiterate knew any more about rhetoric and logic than most people today if writings from the period seem elevated consider that only the cream of the crop so to speak could read and write if everyone in the medieval period knew the rules it was a matter of uncritically accepting what they were told i said nothing about the masses however comparing the masses in our day and in aquinas day really is odd read ortega y gasset on this i m talking about the familiar experience of arguing all night and winning on logic and evidence only to discover your opponent to be unaware even intuitively of things like entailment let alone pragmatics i am assuming that both parties are college graduates or better myself i don t bother any more ken miner kuhub cc ukans edu nobody can explain everything to everybody opinions are my own g k chesterton
