No, that's the claim, not the evidence.
That's true, it's the claim, but the Person of Baha'u'llah and what He accomplished on His Mission, including what He wrote, is the evidence of who He was. The Bible prophecies that were fulfilled by Him and the predictions that He made that came to pass are also evidence, but they are not the best evidence.
I'm not talking about you believing that Mr B existed. Hell, even I believe he existed, and I'm not even a Baha'i!
I'm talking about you believing that Mr B's claim of God is accurate. You have no actual evidence for that. You just have your belief that Mr B was right.
That is true, I just have my belief, and my belief is not going to be proof to you.
As I probably told you before, I never thought much about God before and after I became a Baha'i, as that was not the reason I became a Baha'i. Before I became a Baha'is i never thought in terms of proof that Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God since that is not what attracted me to the Faith. I was drawn to the teachings such as the oneness of mankind, the oneness of religion, the nature of the soul and the afterlife. I was also drawn to the underpinning theology, progressive revelation from God and the promise of universal peace and a new world order. I never thought much about God back then; I just assumed that God existed but I did not really believe like I do now. It was only after intensive study of the Writings of Baha'u'llah that I came to believe in God like I do now.
As long as you agree that it's a belief.
I can agree it is a belief.
Irrelevant. That does not change the facts. I'm not claiming that a person's opinion about a fact is objective.
Then
what would be objective, if not an opinion?
In other words, how would you express your objectivity if you were objective? You could say "I think" but that would still be your opinion.
But that's exactly what you do. That's why it's called faith, after all. I agree that there is evidence for some of the things Baha'i faith teaches, but that does not mean that God is real. There is evidence, after all, for some of the things Star Trek says, but that doesn't make Klingons real.
I understand what you are getting at, but as I said, I did not approach belief that way. At first I embraced the teachings and principles of the Baha'i Faith and only later did I concern myself with whether God exists or not. Not until June 2014 did I really believe that God exists. Only after intensive study of the Writings of Baha'u'llah did it become very clear to me that God exists and that Baha'u'llah was His Messenger. During the 44 years before that I assumed that God exists but that is not the same as believing/knowing that God exists as I do now.
Irrelevant. It is an objective fact that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299792458 meters per second. That does not turn out different for different people just because they think and process information differently.
Why are we going down the same road again, comparing science to religion? Scientific facts that can be proven do not turn out different for different people because they can be proven to be true, and thus they are accepted as true by any rational person. Religion can never be proven to be true the way scientific facts can be proven to be true so opinions and beliefs about religion will vary, depending upon the view and process the evidence. What is evidence to me will not necessarily be evidence to you because it won't indicate
to you that Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God.
Why would that be illogical. When we look at anything that is objectively true, such as my previous example of the speed of light, everyone DOES view the evidence the same way and they DO all come to the same conclusion.
I just explained WHY people all come to the same conclusion about scientific facts. It is because they are facts that have been proven that they are widely accepted. By contrast, even though the facts surrounding the Baha'i Faith are objective facts, they won't mean the same thing to everyone because they are attached to an unproveable claim, that an unknowable God exists.
You are correct in that it does not, by itself, show that Baha'i is untrue. However, it is entirely consistent with Baha'i being untrue.
Please pay attention. Why would the fact that everyone does not think and process the information about the Baha'i Faith in the same way (and thus not everyone concludes that the Baha'i Faith is true) be entirely consistent with the Baha'i Faith being untrue? To say that it would be true because many or most people believe it is true is the fallacy of
Argumentum ad populum.
How many people believe something is true has nothing to do with whether or not it is true or false.
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.
Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Thus the fact that few people believe in the Baha'i Faith thus far is more of an indication that it is true than it indicates that it is not true.
In every new age, the religion at the narrow gate is the new religion God wants us to find and follow, and it is the gate that leads to eternal life. The Baha’i Faith and is the narrow gate because
only a few people recognize God’s new religion in the beginning and enter through that gate. But it is not that easy for most people to find this gate because most people are steeped in religious tradition or attached to what they already believe. If they do not have a religion, most people are suspicious of the new religion and the new messenger. If they are atheists they do not like
the idea of Messengers of God or they think they are all phonies.
Jesus told us to enter through the narrow gate, the gate that leads to eternal life, and
Jesus said few people would find that gate... It is narrow, so it is difficult to get through... It is difficult to get through because one has to be willing to give up all their preconceived ideas, have an open mind, and think for themselves. Most people do not normally embark upon such a journey. They go through the wide gate, the easy one to get through – their own religious tradition or their own preconceived ideas about God or no god. They follow that broad road that is easiest for them to travel.
