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

[Trailblazer]

And why that was not evidence was explained to you. In other words my statement stands.

And why that was evidence was explained to you. In other words my statement stands.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The fact remains, Christianity has been leading the pack for 1400 years, and what might or might not happen in the future is just speculation and guesswork..

Nope, It is not. It is a logical conclusion drawn from current trends. What you should have claimed is that it would have been speculation and guesswork for you.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That is not "the logical conclusion" it is only your conclusion. There is a logical explanation for everything that the Baha'is have done. Tony explained it in this post.

Tony said: The reason is that Shoghi Effendi went to England to study English so He could better translate the Writings of Baha'u'llah from Persian and Arabic into English.

From his studies he determined that King James English was the best form to portray Persian and Arabic to English speakers.

Apparently Persian and Arabic have a form of poetic prose that is hard to portray to English speakers. King James English must in a small way convey some of that poetic prose experienced by Persian and Arabic speakers.

Shoghi Effendi offered that the future may see different translations.

RegardsTony

#155 Tony Bristow-Stagg

That is a ludicrous allegation, but we all have our personal opinions.

Yes, in my opinion it is the most important message one will ever come across, no maybes about it.

That is a poor excuse for a bad translation. Are you claiming now that your God cannot get his message across properly? You really should never accuse others of not being logical. What you are complaining about is logical conclusions from the data given.

 

[Subduction Zone]

And why that was evidence was explained to you. In other words my statement stands.

Nope. You failed. Almost everyone in this thread pointed out your errors to you.

 

[Dropship]

Nope, It is not. It is a logical conclusion drawn from current trends. What you should have claimed is that it would have been speculation and guesswork for you.

If the statisticians base their data on the numbers of people attending mosques and churches, that means zippo because many Christians don't go to church (myself included) so we don't get included on their pocket calculators..

 

[Subduction Zone]

If the statisticians base their data on the numbers of people attending mosques and churches, that means zippo because many Christians don't go to church (myself included) so we don't get included on their pocket calculators..

That is probably not the way that they do it. And you would be a very very small number when it comes to the total. So it appears that you are wrong on more than one level.

 

[Trailblazer]

That is a poor excuse for a bad translation

"Bad" is your subjective opinion. I love old English and I would not have it any other way. I also prefer the KJV or NKJV Bible translations to the more modern translations.

Are you claiming now that your God cannot get his message across properly?

Not at all. the message gets across to people who make the effort to understand the message.
For the first 42 years that I was a Baha'i, I never understood what Baha'u'llah wrote, so I read what Abdu'l-Baha wrote instead, since he was appointed by Baha'u'llah as the interpreter of what Baha'u'llah wrote. But as I learned more about the Baha'i theology I was able to go back and read Baha'u'llah's Writings and I was better able to comprehend the meaning.

You really should never accuse others of not being logical. What you are complaining about is logical conclusions from the data given.

It is only logical to you. It is not logical to me. Do you understand the problem? Logic is required to understand the problem but humility is also required.

 

[Trailblazer]

Nope. You failed. Almost everyone in this thread pointed out your errors to you.

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.

 

[Dropship]

That is probably not the way that they do it. And you would be a very very small number when it comes to the total. So it appears that you are wrong on more than one level.

Look at this map, christianity dominates it, but the Islam countries are little fish by comparison, and most of their land is barren desert anyway.
So Islam simply doesn't have the population and land area to overtake christianity unless the statisticians include camels and desert rats in their data..

 

[CG Didymus]

The priestly sects, which is what the Levis were, tended to keep to themselves. Perhaps there is something in Jewish history that would explain this. And Egypt's empire extended north past where Israel ended up being at that time. Do you think that they did not leave any namesakes behind?

I thought the tribe of Levi became the priests after the Israelites left Egypt?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I thought the tribe of Levi became the priests after the Israelites left Egypt?

That is the story in the Bible.

 

[CG Didymus]

That is the story in the Bible.

What was Truthseeker trying to say then?

 

[Subduction Zone]

What was Truthseeker trying to say then?

I really have no clue.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Look at this map, christianity dominates it, but the Islam countries are little fish by comparison, and most of their land is barren desert anyway.
So Islam simply doesn't have the population and land area to overtake christianity unless the statisticians include camels and desert rats in their data..

View attachment 56201

Nope. Your map is very misleading. It is as bad as when Republicans post maps of how counties voted and wonder how Trump lost.

 

[CG Didymus]

What is silly is calling beliefs claims.

When does a belief become a claim? Like if I say that I believe in such and such and I have the facts to prove it. Is that a belief or a claim?

 

[Trailblazer]

Nope. Your map is very misleading. It is as bad as when Republicans post maps of how counties voted and wonder how Trump lost.

And as a cartographer I really appreciated the map and your observations and it gave me a much-needed laugh!

 

[Trailblazer]

When does a belief become a claim?

Baha'u'llah made claims because He had something to claim about Himself and His Mission...

On a forum:

It becomes a claim when you assert that something is true.
It is not a claim just because you say you believe it is true or even if you say you know it is true.

Like if I say that I believe in such and such and I have the facts to prove it. Is that a belief or a claim?

It is a belief unless you assert that it is true. If you assert that it is true then you have the burden of proof.

If I say "I believe that Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God" that is not a claim.
If I say "Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God" that is a claim.

If I say "I believe that God exists" that is not a claim.
If I say "God exists" that is a claim.

 

[Subduction Zone]

And as a cartographer I really appreciated the map and your observations and it gave me a much-needed laugh!

His claim should have been supported by a pie chart, if one wanted an accurate physical image:

Please note the "unaffiliated". They are essentially the "nones" when it comes to religion. They may surpass both Christianity and Islam some day.

 

[Trailblazer]

His claim should have been supported by a pie chart, if one wanted an accurate physical image:

That's true, but your image did not come through. Can you post it again?

 

[Trailblazer]

In what way are they evidence? Where is the objective path from these people (who contradicted each other) to a real god?

It does not matter what the Messengers of the past said because their missions have been completed on earth and their messages are no longer pertinent to the age in which we live. Baha’u’llah is the Messenger for this age (according to Baha’i beliefs).

However, it is important to point out that the previous Messengers never contradicted each other. They each brought a new and different message but differences are not contradictions. What you observe are religions that contradict each other but that is because they do not fully understand what their Messengers taught. the older religions have been corrupted by man, so much so that they no longer reflect what the Messenger of that religion revealed.

The rational approach is to look at all the evidence for the latest Messenger of God, Baha’u’llah, and use your rational mind in order to determine if His claims were valid.

This is just silly. You are saying that a god created the world, and can send messengers into it, is "all-powerful" but is so pathetically impotent that it cannot manipulate the world in any way so as to provide proper evidence.

I never said that God could not do that. I said that God could not BECOME the objective evidence. Baha’u’llah said in no uncertain terms that He could make everyone a believer.

“He Who is the Day Spring of Truth is, no doubt, fully capable of rescuing from such remoteness wayward souls and of causing them to draw nigh unto His court and attain His Presence. “If God had pleased He had surely made all men one people.” His purpose, however, is to enable the pure in spirit and the detached in heart to ascend, by virtue of their own innate powers, unto the shores of the Most Great Ocean, that thereby they who seek the Beauty of the All-Glorious may be distinguished and separated from the wayward and perverse. Thus hath it been ordained by the all-glorious and resplendent Pen…”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 71

In the context of the passage above, If God had pleased He had surely made all men one people it means that God could have made all people believers, but IF God has pleased, implies that God did not want to make all people into believers, verified by the fact that not all men are believers. The passage goes on to say why God didn’t want to make us believers... In short, God wants us to do our own homework and become believers by our own efforts (by virtue of their own innate powers).

According to this passage, God wants everyone to search for Him and determine if He exists by using their own innate intelligence and using their free will to make the decision to believe. God wants those who are sincere and truly search for Him to believe in Him. God wants to distinguish those people from the others who are not sincere, those who are unwilling to put forth any effort.

If God proved to everyone that He exists then it would not be possible for God to distinguish between people and how much they really care about believing in Him. In short, God wants everyone to prove their worthiness. (Of course, since God is all-knowing, God already knows what people are going to do but God wants us to do what I just stated.)

No, so as to not be an evil, trickster, unjust, uncaring monster.

So, let me see if I understand. If God does not do what you want Him to do then God is an evil, trickster, unjust, uncaring monster. Did it ever occur to you that an all-knowing God that created you knows more about what you need than you can ever know? God gives is what we need, not what we want, just like a loving parent would do.

So the superstitious and overly credulous deserve to know, the rational don't, and those who never got an uncorrupted message, well, that's just too bad? And never mind about all those who suffered and died as a direct result of god playing silly, evil games of hide-and-seek.

This is where you make your mistake. You assume that all believers are superstitious and overly credulous and that is the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization and the Fallacy of Jumping to conclusions. Just because some believers are that way that does not mean that all believers are that way. You also assume that only atheists are rational but you do not know that there are also rational believers.

Why do you think that people are going to suffer and die unless they get an uncorrupted message? It is true that they will be much better off if they get the uncorrupted message of Baha’u’llah, and it is there for the taking, but it has to be a choice to at least look at the message in order to determine if it is true.

From the person who said that there wasn't objective evidence for god and that there was objective evidence for god...

That was all in how I worded my post which led to a misunderstanding. I think I already corrected that. There is no objective evidence of the entity God, but there is objective evidence for Baha’u’llah, who represented God on earth.

As I explained, if god has a plan to create a world, and it has perfect knowledge of all the consequences, and decides to go ahead anyway, then it is obviously responsible for all said consequences because it could have prevented them from ever happening by either not creating a world or doing it differently.

That line of argument won’t work because you don’t know that there was any better way God could have created the world in order to achieve His objectives since you are not all-knowing. Sure free will had its downsides but there is really no other way for humans to function unless God had preprogrammed us as robots, and that would not achieve Gods primary objective for humans, which is for us to learn and grow spiritually by making our own choices and benefiting or suffering from the consequences of our choices.

If God had not created a world where would you be?

Atheists (by definition) don't accept that a god exists. This is just pointing out the absurdity of theist claims by working out their logical consequences. It's called reductio ad absurdum.

For people who don’t believe that God exists, atheists sure like to talk about the God that doesn’t exist. Maybe there is a fallacy for that but I don’t know what it is.