Are Religions and Gods manmade?

[Trailblazer]

You can't prove it, therefore an

Argument from ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,

1. true
2. false
3. unknown between true or false
4. being unknowable (among the first three).[1]

Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia

I am not asserting it because I know I cannot prove it... Therefore it is not an argument from ignorance, it is a belief.

 

[Trailblazer]

Argument from ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,

1. true
2. false
3. unknown between true or false
4. being unknowable (among the first three).[1]

Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia

Whereas I can say he got it all from the bible including Adam, Abraham, Noah, Jesus and a lot of other things. Then people can judge the better story.

I am not asserting it because I know I cannot prove it... Therefore it is not an argument from ignorance, it is a belief.

You can say he got it all from the bible including Adam, Abraham, Noah, Jesus and a lot of other things, but you cannot prove it, not anymore than I can prove what I said about my beliefs.

 

[Trailblazer]

Which is something you do repeatedly. In fact your evidence is wafer-thin, mine is stronger based only on the fact that there are many charlatans in religion.

I am not asserting anything because I know I cannot prove anything...

The fact that there are many charlatans in religion does not mean that Baha'u'llah was a charlatan. To say that would be committing the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization and the Fallacy of Jumping to conclusions.

 

[Trailblazer]

So what does Bahaullah say about these messengers Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses and Jesus?

If he doesn't believe in the bible and got the message from god what made them stand out? They had to do something and god must have told him.

Baha'u'llah wrote about those Messengers in The Kitáb-i-Íqán and He described what they did..

Baha'u'llah did believe in the Bible. Below is what He said to the Muslims about the Bible, calling them foolish and saying that the Bible is God's greatest testimony among His creatures.:

“We have also heard a number of the foolish of the earth assert that the genuine text of the heavenly Gospel doth not exist amongst the Christians, that it hath ascended unto heaven. How grievously they have erred! How oblivious of the fact that such a statement imputeth the gravest injustice and tyranny to a gracious and loving Providence! “How could God, when once the Day-star of the beauty of Jesus had disappeared from the sight of His people, and ascended unto the fourth heaven, cause His holy Book, His most great testimony amongst His creatures, to disappear also?” The Kitáb-i-Íqán, p. 89

 

[Bird123]

That applies equally to your beliefs.

Your beliefs are not facts regardless of how badly you want them to be.

You are right. Beliefs are not always facts especially with religion. That is why I am never satisfied with mere beliefs. I continue the journey until the facts are Discovered.

Assuming can lead one off the path to truth. If I were to assume, as you have, that what I carry is no more than belief, then I could only conclude that you do not exist. After all, the evidence is the same that you and God do exist. Since I avoid beliefs, you do exist or at least someone or something exists that is generating your responses, thereby God exists. That is not a belief, now is it?

Give me Math, Facts, or at least Reason rather an emotional feeling that what you believe is the truth. Everything about God will add up perfectly. This is the base at which one should not fall below. If one does, one is no longer seeking truth.

That is what I see. It's very clear!!

 

[Trailblazer]

You are right. Beliefs are not always facts especially with religion. That is why I am never satisfied with mere beliefs. I continue the journey until the facts are Discovered.

I will also continue on my journey all of my life, and I am always Discovering new things every day. There is no end to what we can learn, and religion does not impede me in any way, I just keep adding more knowledge. In fact, that is a Baha'i teaching, that we should continue seeking truth all of our lives.

Assuming can lead one off the path to truth. If I were to assume, as you have, that what I carry is no more than belief, then I could only conclude that you do not exist. After all, the evidence is the same that you and God do exist. Since I avoid beliefs, you do exist or at least someone or something exists that is generating your responses, thereby God exists. That is not a belief, now is it?

You said: "you do exist or at least someone or something exists that is generating your responses,"

That is a fact, because there could be no responses unless something or someone is generating them.

Then you said: "thereby God exists. That is not a belief, now is it?"

You were doing okay until you said that God exists is a fact because it is not a fact that God exists, it is a belief, and I could still exist even if God did not exist..

Give me Math, Facts, or at least Reason rather an emotional feeling that what you believe is the truth. Everything about God will add up perfectly. This is the base at which one should not fall below. If one does, one is no longer seeking truth.

The hundred-dollar question is how you could ever know what everything about God would add up to.
By "add up perfectly" I assume you mean that it would make sense to you, but what makes sense to one person will not make sense to another, so who is to say what adds up?

Isn't it just a matter of personal opinion what about God ++ adds up++ perfectly? I believe that what I know about God adds up perfectly so how can you know I am wrong? Are you going to call God on the phone and interview Him?

God is mostly unknowable so there are things I will never know and I accept that. I do not need to know those things; if I needed to know them I believe God would have revealed them to me. As it is I already have more than I can handle. And I learned that mostly through living and Discovering, not by reading books. The Baha'i Writings are just a Guide to living a good life, we still have to live and learn by making choices and making mistakes.

 

[joelr]

First of all, “Hell” in the Bible (Hebrew, “Shéol”; Greek, “Hades”), is only the Grave. This can easily be seen in the account of Jacob mourning for Joseph, at Genesis 37:35, Douay-Rheims Bible....”And all his children being gathered together to comfort their father in his sorrow, he would not receive comfort, but said: I will go down to my son into hell, mourning. ...”

And Psalms 16:10 reveals that, when Jesus died, even he too was “in hell.” DRB 10Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; nor wilt then give thy holy one to see corruption.
Applied to Jesus at Acts 2:25-27...
Acts 2 DRB



Fine with me. Rarely do I go to AiG...
Here you are...
University of Leicester physics students says Noah’s Ark would have floated with two each of 35,000 species of animal

So they understood how to build ships? People built ships in these times.
"The students said it was not clear if all the animals would actually be able to fit on board. But if they did, the boat would still float."

Noah's ark is a myth taken from what was originally a Sumerian story about their Gods flooding Earth and telling someone to build an ark and put animals on it.

Hell is a concept that the Israelites took from the Persians during the occupation. They may have used the concept slightly different to work with Judaism but all of the ideas we now think of as Christian were taken from Persia.
They were not in the OT before this.
Scholar Mary Boyce was one of the first to live with the modern Persians and make many corrections in our understanding of the influence on other religions.

"We believe that Zoroastrianism greatly influenced Judaism and Christianity, and then trickled through to Islam. This ‘osmosis’ particularly seems to have happened with the afterlife doctrine. The concepts of heaven and hell, individual judgement, resurrection of the body, the last judgement, the coming of the Messiah – these are mainstream Zoroastrian theological ideas which entered post-exilic Judaism around the fourth century bce. From my understanding of Judaism, it did not originally have a defined ideology as far as its eschatology was concerned."


"Professor Mary Boyce [/], who was based in London. I used to visit her in London for my tutorials. Contact with her completely changed my life in terms of knowledge, and in terms of the sensitivity which she had towards the living faith. She had visited Iran in 1964, and also I think in 1966, and spent many months there. She lived with Zoroastrian villagers and meticulously recorded their oral tradition."

"The logical answer is that we believe in a cosmic dualism, so we have Ahura Mazda, and we have the spirit of Ahura Mazda who is in continuous combat with the evil spirit. Does the evil spirit come from God? The answer is no; evil is the absence of God. Every other religion in the world believes that good and evil come from the same source. In Zoroastrianism, evil does not come from God. Evil is the absence of God. And therein lies the difference. You can’t say darkness comes from light, but what you can say is darkness is the absence or moving away from light. We believe that there is this constant battle going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil, until the end of time."
The Zoroastrian Flame | Beshara Magazine


"Historical features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, judgment after death, heaven and hell, and free will may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy,[7] Christianity, Islam,[8] the Baháʼí Faith, and Buddhism.[9]"

 

[joelr]

One thing, you have a little over 1000 messages in 6 years. Some people have more in a month. So why this thread? What is it that makes this thread so important to you?

I pick and choose a thread here and there. I'd rather spend time reading and learning and only spend a small amount on discussion. But occasionally the knowledge has to be run by other points of view. To post 1000 messages in one month would take away any time to read things by actual experts in the fields.

So now about Baha'is and myths... Since Baha'is don't believe the Bible stories, including the physical resurrection of Jesus, literally, I've asked them... doesn't that make if fictional and mythical? Or, because the stories are presented as being true, doesn't that make them lies? The usual answer I got from them was "no". They are not "literally" true. They are "symbolically" true. So they went out of their way to give me examples. One was about Lazarus. The Baha'i said that Lazarus was "spiritually" dead and Jesus made him "spiritually" alive. Similar with some of the healings... the person was "spiritually" blind and Jesus made it so he could "spiritually" see. Here's Abdul Baha's interpretation of the resurrection...

(W)e say that the meaning of Christ’s resurrection is as follows: the disciples were troubled and agitated after the martyrdom of Christ. The Reality of Christ, which signifies His teachings, His bounties, His perfections and His spiritual power, was hidden and concealed for two or three days after His martyrdom, and was not resplendent and manifest. No, rather it was lost, for the believers were few in number and were troubled and agitated. The Cause of Christ was like a lifeless body; and when after three days the disciples became assured and steadfast, and began to serve the Cause of Christ, and resolved to spread the divine teachings, putting His counsels into practice, and arising to serve Him, the Reality of Christ became resplendent and His bounty appeared; His religion found life; His teachings and His admonitions became evident and visible. In other words, the Cause of Christ was like a lifeless body until the life and the bounty of the Holy Spirit surrounded it.
​

What's strange to me is Baha'is do believe Jesus was born of a virgin. But they don't believe the details of the gospel stories. Some of us tell them that these things could easily have been borrowed from the other religions. Several religions had virgin born God/men that died and came back to life. And, now that I think about it, I don't remember any Baha'i addressing that? That things like the resurrection were just things borrowed from other religions.

I hope you followed all that. It makes me dizzy just trying to explain it. So then I ask, if the stories aren't literally true and are symbolic, doesn't that make the stories fictional? or mythical? In the end, Baha'is believe what ever they want to believe in the Bible. And they decide what that is and how to interpret it.[/QUOTE]

There are many historical myths that Baha leaves out as I suspect he just didn't have access to writings about those religions. He also doesn't seem to be aware of how diverse Christianity was until the 3rd century or that it was all just a Jewish version of an already popular Hellenistic story that many cultures adopted.

it sounds to me like a prolific writer who was well read and wanted to take aspects of several religions and start a movement. Some of it is pointless fiction and some are good laws to live by. I find it pretty unimpressive. The Bible was written by many many highly educated people and the best of the over 40 gospels was shaved down to just a few. Those contained wisdom copied over from other traditions so it was a compilation of many traditions of wisdom. It was common then to take lesser known books of wisdom and import then into gospels. One of the Gnostic Gospels was in the process of having sayings from some wise writer imported into the Thomas gospel and attributed to Jesus when they suddenly had to hide it in a cave.

The channeler Jane Roberts also wrote re-interpretations of the message and meaning of Jesus in the Seth books in the 1960's.
Of course Islam and Mormonism also do some re-interpretations also.

 

[joelr]

It is that fallacy of hasty generalization to say that just because some religious people are deluded the Baha’is are also deluded. Moreover, you cannot prove that Baha’is are deluded unless you can prove the religion is false.

Again you are hiding behind falsifiability. I cannot prove Santa Clause is not real. It is far from a "hasty generalization" to take a supposed "god-message" as fiction. Especially one that has no supernatural proof or extraordinary evidence. Also the text is unimpressive, has scientific mistakes and has limited historical knowledge.
That was written by a man.

Yes, that is what I believe. Why on earth would the resurrection “stories” have to be true in order for Jesus to be a Messenger of God? That does not comport with logic as there is no relationship whatsoever. Moreover, not all Christians believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead.

What many liberal theologians believe about Jesus' death

http://www.religioustolerance.org/resur_lt.htm
So Jesus was a "messenger of god" but his messages about non-believers going to eternal torture and all the nonsense about the resurrection, which is incredible clear.....is wrong......
And the wisdom he wanted to impart - belief in Jesus resurrection gets you into the afterlife....WAS WRONG????

The lengths you are going to make your scripture true is literally absurd.

Osiris -- the Egyptian God of the earth, vegetation and grain. The legend that he visited the underworld between his death and resurrection was simply copied from common Pagan themes of surrounding cultures. One example again was Osiris. "With his original association to agriculture, his death and resurrection were seen as symbolic of the annual death and re-growth of the crops and the yearly flooding of the Nile." 1

Osirus was a resurrected demigod same as Jesus:
"Not only does Plutarch say Osiris returned to life and was recreated, exact terms for resurrection (anabiôsis and paliggenesia: On Isis and Osiris 35; see my discussion in The Empty Tomb, pp. 154-55), and also describe his physically returning to earth after his death (Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 19), but the physical resurrection of Osiris’s corpse is explicitly described in pre-Christian pyramid inscriptions!
And that’s just Osiris. Clearly raised from the dead in his original, deceased body, restored to life; visiting people on earth in his risen body; and then ruling from heaven above. And that directly adjacent to Judea, amidst a major Jewish population in Alexandria, and popular across the whole empire. "...

Jesus and Osirus were myths. Another strike against Baha. being real.

They also believe that Paul regarded the resurrection to be an act of God in which Jesus was a passive recipient of God's power. Paul did not mention the empty tomb, the visit by a woman or women, the stone, the angel/angels/man/men at the tomb, and reunion of Jesus with his followers in his resuscitated body. Rather, he believed that Jesus was taken up into heaven in a spirit body. It was only later, from about 70 to 110 CE when the four canonic Gospels were written, that the Christians believed that Jesus rose from the grave in his original body, and by his own power.”

http://www.religioustolerance.org/resur_lt.htm

http://www.religioustolerance.org/resur_lt.htm

Paul only knew of revealed scripture and a pre-existant celestial being. The gospels created the earthly Jesus.
He was a myth. Again, Baha refering to him as an actual person demonstrates the author did not realize he was speaking of a myth.

All the scholars agree that Jesus in fact existed, so He was not a myth. What is attributed to Him in the NT is another matter because it was written by men who did not even know Jesus, so all the verses about how bad it's going to be for non-believers, false prophets and eternal torture were not necessarily anything Jesus ever said.

Not true any longer. The most recent Jesus historicity study since 1926 done by Richard Carrier has put forth excellent evidence that Jesus was in fact all myth. Several scholars are now in his camp. His peer-reviewed work has not been debunked.

Maybe you are right, but you cannot know that the author knew it was not true, so that is just a personal opinion.

When we look at a writing and it's wildly fictitious and written using all myth devices the author likely knew it was fiction.

I would not need the Writings of Baha’u’llah to know that some things in the Bible are myths and others are not. All I need is a logical mind.

Any messages from God are not true. This is what logic says because we have never had a god-message been confirmed or even suspected. If you think a god-message is from a God you are not using logic.

You are not going to convince me that Baha’u’llah was not a Messenger of God, and I am not trying to convince you that He was, so what is the purpose of this conversation? I have no interest in arguing with you over who is right and who is wrong.

I do not care what you or anyone believes. I'm discussing evidence, probabilities and such. It's an open forum and I hope to spread critical thinking over emotional thinking.

The origin of God is not the Bible so the Bible does not prove that God is a myth. Just because there are myths in the Bible, that does not mean there is no God. I consider that illogical, because other religions not based upon the Bible also reveal a God, Hinduism for example.

What demonstrates Gods to likely be myth are how they are constructed. When a God starts out living on a tent on a hill, is then a warrior god, has a wife and fights sea monsters, interacts with people, sends Satan to do work and so on. That's a myth. 2000 years later after theologians have updated the concept using Neo-Platonism and the 3 I's - it's all just man-made fan fiction.
Whatever God there may be it isn't one of the mythical versions.

Believe whatever you want to believe, you have no proof. I believe what I do about Jesus because of what Baha’u’llah wrote, which I consider scripture, so I do not need the Bible to know who Jesus was.

There is excellent proof that religions are made up. In this case we have clearly man-made writings, lack of knowledge of science, math, belief in numerology, limited history and confirmations of past religious chararcters being real while we know they were not.
Among other issues like why not update creation myths or explain the universe to a now educated world?

I believe I have that evidence. What is excellent to me will not be excellent to others unless they are also a Baha’i. You need to have evidence that is evidence to you if you are going to believe. I have no idea what that would be, only you know that.

Right, confirmation bias and emotional attachments. I don't have those. If there is actual evidence then show what it is?
Did you just say you cannot believe in Bahha'i unless you are a Baha'i?? That would be confirmation bias then!
This evidence game you are playing is just more proof there is no logic involved here.

 

[joelr]

No, I cannot make you see anything. There is no such thing as good evidence because what one person considered good others won’t consider good. I am not going to argue about whether it is good or not.

And that is not true. There is good evidence the Earth is round, the sun goes around the Earth, light has different wavelengths. The evidence that Thor and his son Odin are myths is reasonably good.
Even if some people believe in them (they do) it's reasonable evidence that they are not real.

You have stories of God showing up, but those are just stories. Do you believe these stories just because they are in the Bible? I don’t. As for that being an excuse for God sending Messengers God does not need an excuse.

The Bible is a book of myths. None of the God stories are real. Every time a person claims to be speaking for a God they are not telling the truth.

No, God could not communicate with all humans at once and reveal everything contained in the 15,000 Tablets that Baha’u’llah wrote. Nobody could even understand God if God spoke to them directly, and that is one reason why God uses Messengers, because they can understand God.

That is complete crank. You have no proof of any Gods, no proof that Gods cannot communicate directly or that Gods use messengers. Outside of fiction none of those concepts are real.

I have no interest in convincing you that religion is not a myth. It is not my job to demonstrate Gods or reasons to believe in a Messenger.

And yet here you are putting forth concepts? No one said it's your job? You're on a debate forum?

You have no way of knowing what I did. I consider it a personal boundary violation when people speak for other people and it is the result of projection.

Call the personal boundary police. Maybe the projection investigation unit too?

 

[joelr]

No, that is not what I meant by evidence.

The evidence mystery continues.

I do not care about scholarly consensus, as I do not consider that evidence that Moses did not exist.

Darn. Now you are just a woo-woo person. Once people take unsupported religious doctrine and use it to say people are wrong, people who have spent their lives studying all available source material, evidence, learning all the languages and make an excellent case that is peer-reviewed and then accepted into the field as fact. Then you are just a Big Foot/Roswell/alien abduction person.

This was the first work that established Moses and the Patriarchs as myth:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563383896/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4

If you are comfortable in some fantasy world then have fun, I am interested in finding out things that are likely true.

You will never convince me that religions are myth, so there is no reason to continue this conversation. That there are myths in religious scriptures does not mean that religion is a myth.

I don't convince people, scholarship does, comparative religion, literary analysis, historicity as well as our current understanding of all supernatural phenomenon and what all actual testing shows.
If you are happy in Baha, Scientology, Cargo Cults or whatever magic group makes you happy then great.
I'm just looking to see what types of evidence can be presented.

What is written in older religious scriptures is not evidence that my religion is not true. There is no reason for me to try to explain why I think that because you have made up your mind.

Like I said my mind will always accomodate reasonable evidence. If the evidence looks to be more crank I will have to admit it's crank. This is true with religion, spirituality, ufos and even Mothman.
The confirmation bias I'm seeing here is the fact you cannot let the concept "made up your mind" go. I never said that and I continue to repeat that good evidence is always welcome.
Hmmm.

I think this conversation is over. As soon as people start speaking for me and telling me what I care about and why I believe it is over.

It was over when you failed to produce reasonable evidence. Being it a discussion if someone says something you believe is not true you are always free to demonstrate how it's not the case.

 

[joelr]

I have all the proof that I need.

I'm not asking to be convinced by your standards of proof. It seems you do not have a strong standard of proof.
I'm trying to see if you have proof that would convince someone who does not believe scripture is a message from God just because it says it is.

I have evidence but it would not be evidence to you.

Then it is probably not reasonable evidence and probably some type of confirmation bias or emotional attachment.
If Baha'i produced a document explaining relativity would be invented in 30 years and that space and time were connected by the speed of light or something then I would say it was great evidence.
People claim to speak for God all the time.
A woman on the now defunct Personal Development for Smart People wrote daily messages from Jesus. They were pretty good. Still don't care. Need evidence.

I do not "refuse to believe in God-messengers" I'm just not interested in getting suckered by made-up scripture.
The book explaining Baha'i science was incredible vague and unconvincing. God didn't feel like saying ANYTHING constructive about upcoming science besides some vague statements that anyone could have thought of. Not one bit of science that was about to EXPLODE forth in the 1900's? All planets have life? Mentions of stars (we already knew about them) but not one peep about how we live in a galaxy (just 50 years later we find out) or any other space science that would have been mindblowing. Superclusters, nebula, black holes, neutron stars, fusion.
Weird concepts about evolution that do not make sense, we get that though.

The prophecies are all vague, predictions of war in already war-torn areas, a prediction of peace in the 20th century (wrong) and very similar to prophecies of other known prophets. Then matching vague things to events. It's awful. Why bother to talk science and future events than suck at it?
It's insane that after seeing this someone could be like "why do you refuse to believe in god-messengers?". As far as god-messenger this is total fraud.

Gary Matthews. The Challenge of Baha'u'llah
The book about prophecies and science is incredibly vague, it's purposely hard to tell what is actual scripture and what is the authors comments or quotes from scientists because he changes the size of letters constantly. Scripture is small but then so is his comments and there just isn't anything interesting at all. He's also picking and choosing and making sentences seem more accurate.
He's taking vague statements and trying to make them fit later scientific discoveries.

Here is one failed prediction.
"prediction - Failure to find evidence for a 'missing link' between man and ape.
One thing, however, is clear: 'Abdu'1-Bahi predicted that fossil remains of the missing link would remain forever undiscovered. 'Between man and the ape,' He told an audience at Leland Stanford University in 1912,"
Nope we found many links.

Then he's trying to show that the uncertaintity principle was prophecized by a statement that says " ..non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine'.
We still have a highly mechanized version of the laws of physics but the 1830's saw a popular movement where metaphysics and ideas about thoughts creating the universe and so on were very popular. This was called "New Thought".
Nothing here is impressive prophecy. It's not even impressive for a man to have done it by his own deductions.

 

[PAUL MARKHAM]

I am not asserting it because I know I cannot prove it... Therefore it is not an argument from ignorance, it is a belief.

You can say he got it all from the bible including Adam, Abraham, Noah, Jesus and a lot of other things, but you cannot prove it, not anymore than I can prove what I said about my beliefs.

So you believe in something that isn't true and is true.
Why not give us the reasons for Behallah claiming they are messengers rather than telling us to search for them?

 

[PAUL MARKHAM]

So they understood how to build ships? People built ships in these times.
"The students said it was not clear if all the animals would actually be able to fit on board. But if they did, the boat would still float."

Noah's ark is a myth taken from what was originally a Sumerian story about their Gods flooding Earth and telling someone to build an ark and put animals on it.

Hell is a concept that the Israelites took from the Persians during the occupation. They may have used the concept slightly different to work with Judaism but all of the ideas we now think of as Christian were taken from Persia.
They were not in the OT before this.
Scholar Mary Boyce was one of the first to live with the modern Persians and make many corrections in our understanding of the influence on other religions.

"We believe that Zoroastrianism greatly influenced Judaism and Christianity, and then trickled through to Islam. This ‘osmosis’ particularly seems to have happened with the afterlife doctrine. The concepts of heaven and hell, individual judgement, resurrection of the body, the last judgement, the coming of the Messiah – these are mainstream Zoroastrian theological ideas which entered post-exilic Judaism around the fourth century bce. From my understanding of Judaism, it did not originally have a defined ideology as far as its eschatology was concerned."


"Professor Mary Boyce [/], who was based in London. I used to visit her in London for my tutorials. Contact with her completely changed my life in terms of knowledge, and in terms of the sensitivity which she had towards the living faith. She had visited Iran in 1964, and also I think in 1966, and spent many months there. She lived with Zoroastrian villagers and meticulously recorded their oral tradition."

"The logical answer is that we believe in a cosmic dualism, so we have Ahura Mazda, and we have the spirit of Ahura Mazda who is in continuous combat with the evil spirit. Does the evil spirit come from God? The answer is no; evil is the absence of God. Every other religion in the world believes that good and evil come from the same source. In Zoroastrianism, evil does not come from God. Evil is the absence of God. And therein lies the difference. You can’t say darkness comes from light, but what you can say is darkness is the absence or moving away from light. We believe that there is this constant battle going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil, until the end of time."
The Zoroastrian Flame | Beshara Magazine


"Historical features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, judgment after death, heaven and hell, and free will may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy,[7] Christianity, Islam,[8] the Baháʼí Faith, and Buddhism.[9]"

The evidence against the Flood is overwhelming. The explanation for the natural event that created minor floods around the world is overwhelming. We don't need to argue about who came up with the myth, we know.

Proof that the flood never happened is in DNA and the lack of a layer of bones. For which there is no explanation.

 

[PAUL MARKHAM]

The actual concept of an infallible god is wrong. For the following reasons.

Would an infallible god need 4.5 billion years to create the Earth and the universe? It's not Slartibartfast.
Would an infallible god need multiple attempts getting it right by causing repeated mass extinctions?
Would an infallible god need evolution to do its work for it?
Would an infallible god need multiple attempts to get humans right?
Would an infallible god have to wait 4.5 billion years to start creating hominids?
Would an infallible god need a new race of men but leave the old race here for 100,000s of years
Would an infallible god need to have natural events to strike others?
Would an infallible god wipe out all of mankind to rid us of wickedness, or a town, to only see us start again?
Would an infallible god keep telling nobodies to carry its different message, rather than leaders? Knowing they would fail.

The evidence for the above is overwhelming. It points to evolution. The evidence for god is so thin it hardly bears any validity.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

The actual concept of an infallible god is wrong. For the following reasons.

Would an infallible god need 4.5 billion years to create the Earth and the universe? It's not Slartibartfast.
Would an infallible god need multiple attempts getting it right by causing repeated mass extinctions?
Would an infallible god need evolution to do its work for it?
Would an infallible god need multiple attempts to get humans right?
Would an infallible god have to wait 4.5 billion years to start creating hominids?
Would an infallible god need a new race of men but leave the old race here for 100,000s of years
Would an infallible god need to have natural events to strike others?
Would an infallible god wipe out all of mankind to rid us of wickedness, or a town, to only see us start again?
Would an infallible god keep telling nobodies to carry its different message, rather than leaders? Knowing they would fail.

The evidence for the above is overwhelming. It points to evolution. The evidence for god is so thin it hardly bears any validity.

You haven't solved the problem of solipsism and what the world is as independent of your mind.

 

[PAUL MARKHAM]

You haven't solved the problem of solipsism and what the world is as independent of your mind.

You don't answer any of my questions that easilly.

We have evidence the above are facts, you have a belief they are wrong. And then you accuse me of solipsism!!!!

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

You don't answer any of my questions that easilly.

We have evidence the above are facts, you have a belief they are wrong. And then you accuse me of solipsism!!!!

No, I said you haven't solved the problem of solipsism. You apparently believe that the world is natural and real. You haven't shown that to be the case. You apparently just assume/believe it.

 

[PAUL MARKHAM]

No, I said you haven't solved the problem of solipsism. You apparently believe that the world is natural and real. You haven't shown that to be the case. You apparently just assume/believe it.

So give me the evidence your belief is true.

I can give you the evidence evolution created the world and universe. evolution - Google Search

mass extinctions on earth - Google Search

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

So give me the evidence your belief is true.

I can give you the evidence evolution created the world and universe. evolution - Google Search

mass extinctions on earth - Google Search

No, you show that the world is natural and real. And you must also show with evidence that my belief need to be true.

The second one is not science. It is a fact that I can have beliefs without evidence. You then subjective without evidence make a rule, then my beliefs must be true. Then show that your rule is true with evidence. With evidence show that I must have true beliefs.