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

[Trailblazer]

Corrections of your logical fallacies. You make them quite often. I am not the only one that has explained them to you.

Let's start with a recent example. Do you understand how you abused the Wiki article that supported me, not you?

I did not abuse anything, I just posted it from the website verbatim.
I am not looking for support and I did not even disagree with you! There is some cognitive distortion going on in your mind.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Do you think I was trying to prove something by posting those definitions? No, I was not. I am not saying I am right and you are wrong. That is not even my style. From MY perspective I am not in a debate with anyone, this is just a discussion.

I would be careful when making assumptions. I did not edit anything, I did a Google search and posted those as is. I did not add the bolding, it was already there. You won't see that if you click on the link, only if you do a Google search. Type in 'are circular arguments valid' and 'are circular arguments sound' into the Google search and you will see that I am telling the truth.

I did not leave out anything, I just posted what I got when I did the Google search. Do the search and you will see.

I am not denying that circular reasoning is a logical fallacy. As I said, only if the premise is true can the conclusion be true and since I cannot prove any of my premises are true I cannot claim that my conclusions are true and that is why I am not foolish enough to try to make any 'formal' logical arguments for God or Baha'u'llah.

Now can we please put this circular argument fallacy to bed?

Why is it that every time that you are shown to be wrong here that you deny trying to make a claim?

And you did add bolding to the quote from your source. Here is a copy from it as it is on the site:

"The components of a circular argument are often logically valid because if the premises are true, "

Do you see anything in bold there? Here is your quote that you posted:

"The components of a circular argument are often logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true."

I copied that from your post near the top of this page. Do you see the difference?

When you deny something so obvious you sound like a child with frosting smeared all over his face trying to deny that he was the one that ate it. Your post is still on top of the page with the edit. The link is still there that does not have that edit in there.

 

[Trailblazer]

Tb's real position.
The B.man says the Baha'i Faith is true.
∴ Tb thinks the Baha'i Faith is true.
∴ Tb believes the Baha'i Faith is true...

and so on, ad infinitum.

That is NOT my position at all, it is a big fat straw man.
What is your problem, that you feel a need to speak for me. That is so disrespectful.
Do you see me speaking for what you believe and why you believe it?

Do you have any reason for being on this thread other than to take pot shots at me? I don't see you engaging in any discussions.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Do you really think that God is a physical being? I guess you don't read your Bible. God is a spirit being.
God communicates to His Messengers through the Holy Spirit. That is made clear from reading the Bible or the Writings of Baha'u'llah.

You said: "For humans communication is a physical process. Even if God can communicate directly with a brain that would have to be a physical process."

There is no physical process occurring on God's behalf because God is not a physical being, but there is a physical process occurring in the brain of the Messenger because he is a physical being. There is also a spiritual process occurring in the Messenger's soul because he is a spiritual being.

To say that because human to human communication is a physical process that means that God to human communication would also be a physical process is the fallacy of false equivalence because God is not a physical being so God does not communicate physically. God is a spirit being so God communicates spiritually.

God has a mind but it is not physical because God is not physical.

These are not claims, they are beliefs.

I don't have any beliefs about what a God is like. I am working off of your claims. You contradicted yourself. How can God not have a physical presence and communicate with a messenger? You can't have it both ways. You are in effect saying that it is impossible for God to communicate with people. That would include his so called messengers. Last time I checked they were people too. Like it or not thought is a physical process. If you want to claim that there is a magical process in our thinking you would have a huge burden of proof. If God cannot manifest physically he cannot communicate. By the way, that sounds like one weak donkeyed God. How did he make the universe in the first place? Or is God just a freeloader when it comes to the universe?

 

[Trailblazer]

And you did add bolding to the quote from your source. Here is a copy from it as it is on the site:

I told you what happened. I did not add the bold. It came that way when I did the Google search.
If you click on the link you will not see the bold, you only see it when you type the questions in the Google search box.

 

[Trailblazer]

Here's what you said:
"But that does not mean I am wrong, nor does it mean I am right. That is just how I came to know".

SO...
Tb knows.
Tb's knowledge does not mean that Tb is right.

Please explain the logicality of this.

My knowledge does not mean I am right. Why bring logic into this?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Do you really think that God is a physical being? I guess you don't read your Bible. God is a spirit being.
God communicates to His Messengers through the Holy Spirit. That is made clear from reading the Bible or the Writings of Baha'u'llah.

You said: "For humans communication is a physical process. Even if God can communicate directly with a brain that would have to be a physical process."

There is no physical process occurring on God's behalf because God is not a physical being, but there is a physical process occurring in the brain of the Messenger because he is a physical being. There is also a spiritual process occurring in the Messenger's soul because he is a spiritual being.

To say that because human to human communication is a physical process that means that God to human communication would also be a physical process is the fallacy of false equivalence because God is not a physical being so God does not communicate physically. God is a spirit being so God communicates spiritually.

God has a mind but it is not physical because God is not physical.

These are not claims, they are beliefs.

I see an awful lot of claims here.

What is a "spirit being" and how do we know they exist?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I told you what happened. I did not add the bold. It came that way when I did the Google search.
If you click on the link you will not see the bold, you only see it when you type the questions in the Google search box.

That means that you did two things wrong. It appears that you did an improper Google search where you searched for the result that you wanted to see. That leads to biased searches. Second you never quote that part of a search. It added your bias to it. Always go to the source. You may not have added the bolding directly, but you still did so indirectly.

But the important question is, do you understand how that website supported my claim and not yours?

 

[Trailblazer]

When you deny something so obvious you sound like a child with frosting smeared all over his face trying to deny that he was the one that ate it. Your post is still on top of the page with the edit. The link is still there that does not have that edit in there.

Go ahead and type into the Google search box:

is a circular argument valid
is a circular argument sound

and you will see the bold. I did not ADD anything

You need to stop accusing me of things I have not done, that is unjust and unfair.

 

[Trailblazer]

I see an awful lot of claims here.

What is a "spirit being" and how do we know they exist?

Can you read? I said: These are not claims, they are beliefs.

You cannot know they exist you can only believe they exist, according to scriptures of religions.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I see an awful lot of claims here.

What is a "spirit being" and how do we know they exist?

Have you ever heard of "Spirit science" on YouTube. Don't worry, I am not going to post that directly. Let me introduce you to Martymer81. This is his first video dealing with Spirit science. A good time will be had, but don't forget your facepalm protection:

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Can you read? I said: These are not claims, they are beliefs.

You cannot know they exist you can only believe they exist, according to scriptures of religions.

Then you can't give evidence or use logic on them. You have faith, that is how that works.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Go ahead and type into the Google search box:

is a circular argument valid
is a circular argument sound

and you will see the bold. I did not ADD anything

You need to stop accusing me of things I have not done, that is unjust and unfair.

Your search still led to the bolding. And you never quote from just the blurb. You need to go to the source and read the quote in context.

You may not have added any bolding but you still did not quote properly. By the way, didn't you go to the site to copy its address?

Lastly do you understand how that site supported me, and not you?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Can you read? I said: These are not claims, they are beliefs.

You cannot know they exist you can only believe they exist, according to scriptures of religions.

Except that they're claims.
Calling them something else doesn't make them something else.

What is a "spirit being" and how do we know they exist?

 

[Trailblazer]

That means that you did two things wrong. It appears that you did an improper Google search where you searched for the result that you wanted to see.

There is nothing improper about that. Why would I search for something i did not want to see?
You claimed that circular reasoning is not valid so i wanted to find out what others say about it. This is what people do when they are searching for truth. So I typed in.....

is circular reasoning valid
is circular reasoning sound

I did not have time to read everything in articles. I just wanted the main points.

That leads to biased searches. Second you never quote that part of a search. It added your bias to it. Always go to the source. You may not have added the bolding directly, but you still did so indirectly.

I did not add a bias, the person who posted that website added the bias by bolding it.

But the important question is, do you understand how that website supported my claim and not yours?

Let's start from scratch. What claim do you think I have?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Have you ever heard of "Spirit science" on YouTube. Don't worry, I am not going to post that directly. Let me introduce you to Martymer81. This is his first video dealing with Spirit science. A good time will be had, but don't forget your facepalm protection:

Then I definitely need to make some popcorn first.

 

[Trailblazer]

Except that they're claims.
Calling them something else doesn't make them something else.

What is a "spirit being" and how do we know they exist?

Can you read? I said: These are not claims, they are beliefs.

I do not make claims about something I cannot prove.

I do not know what a spirit being is, that is unknowable. The essence of God is unknowable. All we can know are some of God's attributes and God's will for us and we know that from what the Messenger of God reveals. That is not a claim, it is a belief.

I already answered that. You cannot know they exist you can only believe they exist, according to scriptures of religions.

 

[Trailblazer]

By the way, didn't you go to the site to copy its address?

No, I did not. I copy/pasted the address which appeared right below when I did the Google search.
Click on the link below and see what happens.

https://www.google.com/search?q=is+circular+reasoning+valid&client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=AOaemvIn8HudE5fatpX70mkcpKpQjdhFqw:1635531419394&ei=mzp8YeGvF4rP0PEP3vsC&oq=is+circular+reasoning+valid&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsAMyBwgAEEcQsANKBAhBGABQAFgAYOT3QmgFcAJ4AIABAIgBAJIBAJgBAMgBCMABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwih6ZWqnfDzAhWKJzQIHd69AAAQ4dUDCA0&uact=5

 

[SkepticThinker]

Can you read? I said: These are not claims, they are beliefs.

I do not make claims about something I cannot prove.

I do not know what a spirit being is, that is unknowable. The essence of God is unknowable. All we can know are some of God's attributes and God's will for us and we know that from what the Messenger of God reveals. That is not a claim, it is a belief.

I already answered that. You cannot know they exist you can only believe they exist, according to scriptures of religions.

Yes I can read very well, thank you. That's why I'm having such trouble understanding your pov, because you're all over the place, even contradicting yourself.

I just sat here and read a bunch of claims that you made.


So you don't know what a spirit being is. And a spirit being is unknowable.
But wait, you claimed that, "God is a spirit being." How could you possibly say anything or anyone is a spirit being, if a spirit being is unknowable and undefinable? So you don't know what it is but you know it exists even though it's unknowable. That makes no sense. Do you see why I asked the question now?




Maybe I should be asking you if you can read, and more specifically, can you read your contradictions in your own posts?

 

[Trailblazer]

I don't have any beliefs about what a God is like. I am working off of your claims. You contradicted yourself. How can God not have a physical presence and communicate with a messenger? You can't have it both ways. You are in effect saying that it is impossible for God to communicate with people. That would include his so called messengers. Last time I checked they were people too. Like it or not thought is a physical process. If you want to claim that there is a magical process in our thinking you would have a huge burden of proof. If God cannot manifest physically he cannot communicate. By the way, that sounds like one weak donkeyed God. How did he make the universe in the first place? Or is God just a freeloader when it comes to the universe?

I never said that it is impossible for God to communicate with the Messengers, but it is impossible for God to communicate with ordinary people and the reason is because ordinary people only have a human nature, they do not have a spiritual nature. Messengers of God are a different order of creation than ordinary men because they have a twofold nature that ordinary humans do not possess. That is why it is possible for them to understand communication from God through the Holy Spirit. No ordinary human could ever understand communication from God if God communicated to them directly, and that is 'one reason' God never communicates to ordinary people, only to His Messengers.

“Unto this subtle, this mysterious and ethereal Being He hath assigned a twofold nature; the physical, pertaining to the world of matter, and the spiritual, which is born of the substance of God Himself. He hath, moreover, conferred upon Him a double station. The first station, which is related to His innermost reality, representeth Him as One Whose voice is the voice of God Himself. To this testifieth the tradition: “Manifold and mysterious is My relationship with God. I am He, Himself, and He is I, Myself, except that I am that I am, and He is that He is.” …. The second station is the human station, exemplified by the following verses: “I am but a man like you.” “Say, praise be to my Lord! Am I more than a man, an apostle?” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 66-67

You said: "If God cannot manifest physically he cannot communicate."

You hit the nail right on the head! That is very good logical reasoning and you are the first atheist who ever figured that out so you get the door prize!

That is exactly what God does. God manifests physically so He can communicate to humans. Messengers of God are also Manifestations of God, as both descriptors refer to the same entity.

Jesus was God who was manifested in the flesh and communicated to humans but God did not become flesh, as Christians believe.

1 Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

All the Messengers of God were God who manifested in the flesh and that is why they are also referred to as Manifestations of God.

However, being manifested in the flesh is not the same as being incarnated in the flesh. The excerpt below from a longer article explains the difference between a Manifestation of God and an incarnation of God (bold emphasis mine).

“The Christian equivalent to the Bahá'í concept of Manifestation is the concept of incarnation. The word to incarnate means 'to embody in flesh or 'to assume, or exist in, a bodily (esp. a human) form (Oxford English Dictionary). From a Bahá'í point of view, the important question regarding the subject of incarnation is, what does Jesus incarnate? Bahá'ís can certainly say that Jesus incarnated Gods attributes, in the sense that in Jesus, Gods attributes were perfectly reflected and expressed.[4] The Bahá'í scriptures, however, reject the belief that the ineffable essence of the Divinity was ever perfectly and completely contained in a single human body, because the Bahá'í scriptures emphasize the omnipresence and transcendence of the essence of God…..

One can argue that Bahá'u'lláh is asserting that epistemologically the Manifestations are God, for they are the perfect embodiment of all we can know about God; but ontologically they are not God, for they are not identical with God's essence. Perhaps this is the meaning of the words attributed to Jesus in the gospel of John: 'If you had known me, you would have known my Father also' (John 14:7) and 'he who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9)…..

The New Testament, similarly, contains statements where Jesus describes Himself as God, and others where He makes a distinction between Himself and God. For example, 'I and the Father are One (John 10:30); and 'the Father is in me, and I am in the Father (John 1038); but on the other hand, 'the Father is greater than I (John 14:28); and 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone (Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19). These statements do not contradict, but are complementary if one assumes they assert an epistemological oneness with God, but an ontological separateness from the Unknowable Essence.”

Jesus Christ in the Bahá'í Writings