Atheist looking for religious debate. Any religion. Let's see if I can be convinced.

[Dropship]

Oh please, he never argued that at all. You found one uninformed atheist that made a bad argument.
Remember, as a Christian you are supposed to be honest when speaking of others.

Ah, so you're saying there are such things as uninformed atheists who make bad arguments.
Congrats on your honesty..

 

[ratiocinator]

Ah, so you're saying there are such things as uninformed atheists who make bad arguments.

What on earth would make you think that there weren't any? You tend to see somewhat fewer of them than uninformed theists who make bad arguments, though. At least that goes for my experience on forums like this.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Ah, so you're saying there are such things as uninformed atheists who make bad arguments.
Congrats on your honesty..

Of course there are. No one ever claimed that there were no atheists that made poor arguments. It is easy for me to "disprove" God if I go after the low hanging fruit of believers. There is no challenge to that. One that you would recognize would be the God of Flat Earthers. Disproving that version of God does not disprove all versions of God. It only disproves a very small and specific version of God. All you did was to show that one belief by an atheist or two, was wrong.

 

[Trailblazer]

How so?

All I have done is copy your argument and replaced "Messengers of Gods" with "magical pixies."

I consider it foolish because "magical pixies" are not known to exist whereas "Messengers of God" are known to exist (at least by some people).

 

[Trailblazer]

Of course you have claims. Many of them.
This is getting silly.

I have no claims, I only have beliefs, because I believe the claims.

Do you understand the difference between a belief and a claim? I have nothing to claim because I did not do anything claimable. Baha'u'lah had something to claim - who He was and what He did - and He made a claim about it. I believe what He claimed is the truth so I have beliefs.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You would lose that bet.
Ehrman himself says that he identifies as an agnostic Maybe he doesn't understand what that is.

Nope, I would win. What do you think that atheism is? In aa 2008 interview he did say that he was an agnostic not an atheist, but then he used an improper definition of atheist. One may try to say "I am not an American, I am a New Yorker" his claim of being a New Yorker actually means that he is an American. Now it is not a perfect analogy because there can be agnostic theists. But they tend to make their beliefs in a general god clear.

By the way. Bart Ehrman realized his error later. At the time of that interview he thought that atheists all deny the existence of a god. I was pretty sure of this because of the Wikipedia article about him. And one things that makes Wikipedia a very good source is that they have links to their claims. The article linked an article that is buried right now due to all of the Christian response to Bart Ehrman:

Bart Erhman - Freedom From Religion Foundation

"I’ll begin by explaining what I myself mean, by this term that I’m using, that we all use all the time, the term “agnostic,” because over the last 18 months or so I’ve come to think it means something different from what I used to think. What I used to think was that agnostics and atheists were two degrees of the same thing. When I first declared myself agnostic, I was amazed at how militant both agnostics and atheists can be about their terms. Every agnostic I met thought that atheists were simply arrogant agnostics. And every atheist thought that every agnostic was simply a wimpy atheist. Two degrees of the same thing. When someone will say “I don’t know,” the other will say they do know. I’ve come to think that they are not two degrees of the same thing but are two different things. Agnosticism has to do with epistemology — what you know. Atheism has to do with belief — what you believe. I actually consider myself to be both an agnostic and an atheist. I am agnostic because if somebody says to me, is there a greater power in the universe? My response is, “How the hell would I know!? I don’t know!” So, I’m an agnostic. If somebody were to ask me, do you believe in the god of the bible? Do you believe in a god that interacts with the world, who intervenes in the world, who answers prayer? Do you believe in the supernatural divine being? No! I don’t believe it! So, I don’t believe, so I’m an atheist. But — I don’t know. So I’m an agnostic. And since I’m a scholar I prefer to emphasize knowledge rather than belief. And so, I tend to identify as an agnostic"

For the TLDR version: He realized that he is an agnostic atheist that prefers to identify as an agnostic. There is no problem with that. It does not make my claim that he is an atheist wrong. He merely wants to make it clear that he is not saying "there is no God". He seems to think that is likely the case, but he won't stake his career on it.

 

[Subduction Zone]

ALL Biblical scholars? ALL archaeologists?
You appear to be unable to support your claim intelligently.

Please. why do you keep making this error?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I consider it foolish because "magical pixies" are not known to exist whereas "Messengers of God" are known to exist (at least by some people).

NO, people that call themselves "Messengers of God" exist. That does not mean that there are Messengers of God. Guess, what, there are people that believe in pixies too. You might be surprised by at least one of them.

 

[Trailblazer]

Ah so that's your game.
If you just say you believe it, and then make a bunch of claims about it, you don't have to back up those claims because you called them beliefs (or so you seem to think).
Very clever.

As I just explained to you, I am making no claims.
Baha'u'llah made claims and He supported His claims with evidence. All I ever do is pass along to you what He claimed so I am kind of like the messenger for the Messenger.

 

[Dropship]

Ah, so you're saying there are such things as uninformed atheists who make bad arguments.
Congrats on your honesty..

What on earth would make you think that there weren't any? You tend to see somewhat fewer of them than uninformed theists who make bad arguments, though. At least that goes for my experience on forums like this.

True Christians don't do "argue", we simply state facts, and Christianity is the biggest game on the park, heck even the polar bears are christians..

 

[ratiocinator]

True Christians don't do "argue", we simply state facts blind faith...

FIFY.

...and Christianity is the biggest game on the park, heck even the polar bears are christians..

Argumentum ad populum.

 

[Subduction Zone]

True Christians don't do "argue", we simply state facts, and Christianity is the biggest game on the park, heck even the polar bears are christians..

View attachment 56165

Sorry, but land does not vote. About one third of people are Christian around the world. By that standard the map should be only one third blue. It does not match reality.

 

[Trailblazer]

So we have free will most of the time, except sometimes when it comes to things (such as?) that are "predestined by God." Are those two ideas not contradictory?

No, not at all. Some things are subject to free will and some things are not.

“Some things are subject to the free will of man, such as justice, equity, tyranny and injustice, in other words, good and evil actions; it is evident and clear that these actions are, for the most part, left to the will of man. But there are certain things to which man is forced and compelled, such as sleep, death, sickness, decline of power, injuries and misfortunes; these are not subject to the will of man, and he is not responsible for them, for he is compelled to endure them. But in the choice of good and bad actions he is free, and he commits them according to his own will.”
Some Answered Questions, p. 248

Man is forced to endure them because God set it up that way, given God is in charge of fate.

And then God gave us logic to help us navigate the world around us, but this same logic doesn't apply to this God, but this God still expects us to do what we "are responsible to do." Somehow we're supposed to know what that is without exercising logic.
Sounds pretty convoluted to me.

Logic is not going to help you know what God expects us to do. the only was we can ever know what God expects of us is through what the Messenger of God revealed in His teachings and laws.

The purpose of logic is so we can reason logically and rationally and discover any errors in reasoning. God does not need logic because God cannot have errors in reasoning since God is infallible.

 

[Subduction Zone]

FIFY.


Argumentum ad populum.

And a bad one. He used a very misleading map. And of course the logical fallacy.

@Dropship will Christianity become wrong when the number of Muslims exceed the number of Christians?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So here is my perfectly valid circular argument: If the premise Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God is true, then the conclusion God exists must be true.

But that wasn't your argument. Nor is it circular. You're no longer assuming that which you are trying to prove. Your argument above is formally valid. Nor is it an argument for the existence of a God. It's also not an argument that Baha'u'llah was a messenger of God whether a god exists or not.

It's also true that if Clement Moore, the author of It Was The Night Before Christmas, was a messenger of Santa, then Santa exists. It's not much of an argument for either Santa existing or Clements being his messenger. Yet this is what you call objective evidence for God. If Baha'u'llahs writings are objective evidence of a God, why is this poem not also objective evidence for Santa?

And I understand that you are offended by comparisons of a God with any other thing, but that's how reasoning often works. For you, God is real and these other things are not. But the people you are debating with do not hold that belief, and they are telling you why the God you propose exists has the same ontological status as anything else which it is claimed exists, but cannot be demonstrated. It doesn't matter which of them you choose to believe in or exalt.

No, it cannot ever be established that God exists without a Messenger of God (who is also a Manifestation of God) and who is the only evidence that God exists and God's mouthpiece and God's representative on earth.

I'm confused about where you see a god in all of this. I see a man and his words. Do the words reveal this God to you? If so, how? Is it because you consider them wise beyond what a human being could write without the help of a deity? If not, why are you calling it objective evidence for God?

No, I do not have to first prove that God exists before I can believe that anyone is God's Messenger. All I have to do is prove that the Messenger was sent by God and I have done so.

How do you propose to prove that a man was sent by a God that might not exist just by looking at the man or his words?

You only make yourself look foolish when you compare Messengers of God to magical pixies. The difference between the two is that there is no evidence that indicates that magical pixies exist whereas there is evidence that indicates that Messengers of God exist.

Perhaps foolish in your eyes because of your beliefs, but he doesn't look foolish to me. His argument is the same as mine using Santa, which is probably also foolish to you for the same reason, but once again, for those of us who don't share your beliefs, the comparison is apt. I suspect that some who do share your beliefs would agree that the comparison is apt. They would be the ones who tell you that they believe by faith.

Incidentally, he didn't compare messengers and pixies. He compared gods and pixies. And there isn't a lot of controversy about whether Baha'u'llah existed, but there is controversy about whether there is a god.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I consider it foolish because "magical pixies" are not known to exist whereas "Messengers of God" are known to exist (at least by some people).

Messengers of God aren't known to exist either.
You're just asserting they do.
I believe magical pixies exist and I'm telling you I'm one of their Messengers.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I have no claims, I only have beliefs, because I believe the claims.

Do you understand the difference between a belief and a claim? I have nothing to claim because I did not do anything claimable. Baha'u'lah had something to claim - who He was and what He did - and He made a claim about it. I believe what He claimed is the truth so I have beliefs.

Of course you do and you've made plenty of them in this thread.
This is getting silly.

You've claimed repeatedly that there are Messengers of God, for example.

 

[Trailblazer]

Was this a serious reply or an attempt at satire?

It was serious.

That is not a circular argument, it is just flawed because the first premise is unsupported.
However, it becomes circular if you assume the existence of god to claim that Ali was his messenger, which you then use to prove the existence of god.

Your problem is that you cannot prove Ali was a messenger of god without first proving there is a god for him to be his messenger of!

It is circular but it cannot be used to make a logical argument since the premise cannot be proven to be true, and since we cannot prove the premise is true we cannot know if the conclusion is true.

The premise can be supported but it cannot be proven, so that is why I am not trying to present a logical argument.

Circular reasoning (Latin: circulus in probando, "circle in proving"; also known as circular logic) is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with.[1] The components of a circular argument are often logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

However, just because the premise cannot be proven to everyone that does not mean the premise is not true. It could be either true or false.

If the premise Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God is true, then the conclusion God exists must be true.

Your problem is that you cannot prove that God exists without the Messenger, because the Messenger is the only proof that God exists.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Messengers of God aren't known to exist either.
You're just asserting they do.
I believe magical pixies exist and I'm telling you I'm one of their Messengers.

Code name "Sherlock"

 

[SkepticThinker]

No, not at all. Some things are subject to free will and some things are not.

“Some things are subject to the free will of man, such as justice, equity, tyranny and injustice, in other words, good and evil actions; it is evident and clear that these actions are, for the most part, left to the will of man. But there are certain things to which man is forced and compelled, such as sleep, death, sickness, decline of power, injuries and misfortunes; these are not subject to the will of man, and he is not responsible for them, for he is compelled to endure them. But in the choice of good and bad actions he is free, and he commits them according to his own will.”
Some Answered Questions, p. 248

Man is forced to endure them because God set it up that way, given God is in charge of fate.

This doesn't make sense, as I noted in the post you're responding to. Responding with big blocks of text that don't address my point is pointless.

Predestination and free will contradict each other.

Logic is not going to help you know what God expects us to do. the only was we can ever know what God expects of us is through what the Messenger of God revealed in His teachings and laws.

The purpose of logic is so we can reason logically and rationally and discover any errors in reasoning. God does not need logic because God cannot have errors in reasoning since God is infallible.

This clarifies nothing and still doesn't make sense. And its contradictory.