It does. Because if you "want to believe", then you go into it with a clear bias and a preferred outcome. And depending on how much you "want" it, this will be tainting your evaluation of claims and evidence.
When I said “want to believe” I meant something different from what you think. You are thinking of want as being emotional and I ma thinking of it as a thought process. I meant it in the same sense as you might decide that you “want” to go to college, for example. If you have decided that you
want to go to college you apply to get into college and if you have decided you
want to believe in God you look at the evidence for God’s existence.
The rational thing to do is to simply evaluate claims and the proposed evidence in support of said claim, without "wanting" it to conclude one way or the other.
That’s right. You should be totally unbiased and just desire to know the truth whatever that ends up being. If there is an emotional attachment to the outcome that will unduly affect the rational thought processes. I think that is what happens with many Christians, because Christianity is a very emotionally-based belief system. Christians
want to be loved by God and they
want the love of Jesus and they
want to be saved and they
want get to heaven. My religion is not based upon these emotionally charged beliefs, it is more intellectually-based.
This is very different wording.
The correct analogy would be "if a prosecutor wants the defendant to be guilty,..."
Not if "he wants to prosecute a case". A prosecutor should just want justice to be served - regardless if that means the defendant being found guilty or not.
Again, I did not mean want in the sense you thought I meant it. I meant if a prosecutor
intends to prosecute a case he has to look at the evidence and determine if he has enough evidence to prove the defendant is guilty. Since he is the prosecutor and not the attorney for the defense, he will be looking for evidence that proves that the defendant is guilty, that is what prosecutors do.
That’s right, the prosecutor should
want justice to be served and a seeker of truth should
want to find the truth, regardless of whether he
likes that truth or not. One should be open to all the possibilities as otherwise they will be biased in one direction or another.
Correct.
And with the presumption of innocence, by default god is considered "not guilty" of existing until guilt is sufficiently demonstrated.
That’s right. It has to be sufficiently
demonstrated to you that God exists in order for you to believe that God exists.
That does not mean it is not evidence just because atheists don’t like it. That is highly illogical because it is evidence to other people, just not to you.
This: who He was as a person, what He did on His mission, including all the sacrifices he made, and what He wrote.
None of those things have any bearing on whether or not his claims are true and accurate.
At best, they merely speak to how hard he believes it all himself. Which off course isn't evidence in support of the claims either.
No, they do not speak to how hard he believes it all himself,
not at all, at all. This is evidence anyone can look at and verify for themselves, it has nothing to do with what he thinks or feels about Himself.
How do you think you could determine if His claims are true or accurate? If you were a Christian you could confirm those claims by looking at the Bible prophecies and how they were fulfilled by Baha’u’llah, and that is incontrovertible evidence that He was the return of Christ/Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament.
That can never be proven as a fact but you can prove it to yourself, and that so all that matters because we are each only responsible for ourselves.
That's not how proof works. That's how belief works.
No, that is how proof works, because you can only prove it to yourself. If you were logical you’d realize that there will never be any
universal proof that a Messenger of God is who He claimed to be because not everyone will ever think the same way as other people think.
Or you can choose to be illogical and believe that everyone will see Jesus and know it is Jesus when Jesus comes floating down from the sky in the clouds.
But how would anyone know it was really Jesus returning? I asked that on another thread and not one person could give me a logical answer. One Christian said that Jesus would do miracles and it would be broadcast on TV that Jesus has returned, but why would people believe it? Not everyone would see the miracles and even if they did, not everyone would be impressed. And how could we know it was Jesus and not an alien who could do miracles pretending to be Jesus?
Think. If a man was a Messenger of God, how could you determine that? What would he have to do to demonstrate that?
I don't know either. That's why I'm asking you, as you are claiming that there are such people. I don't need to be able to verify such things because I don't make such claims. You do. So I ask you how you know.
I never said it could be verified to
everyone. That a man was a Messenger of God has never has been and it probably never will known to everyone unless God intervenes to make it known to everyone. I believe that in the future everyone will know that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God, because that is what Baha’u’llah wrote:
“Warn and acquaint the people, O Servant, with the things We have sent down unto Thee, and let the fear of no one dismay Thee, and be Thou not of them that waver. The day is approaching when God will have exalted His Cause and magnified His testimony in the eyes of all who are in the heavens and all who are on the earth.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 248
But that does not help the people living now. They still have to do an independent investigation.
Think. You're the one who's claiming to be able to know. You're the one who keeps insisting that we don't need to "just believe" such claims and that there is evidence to support it.
Now you say it can't be known or verified. That is in direct contradiction with your claim that we don't need to "just believe" it.
I said that we can know if we investigate and look at the evidence for ourselves. It can be known to individuals but it cannot be verified as a fact that everyone will believe, at least not at this time in history.
Some time ago when asked for evidence I posted the claims of Baha’u’llah and the evidence that supports the claims of Baha’u’llah on this thread:
Questions for knowledgeable Bahai / followers of Baha'u'llah
God is the lamp in the room, which can't be entered/accessed unless you are a messenger of god, in this analogy. And you can't verify if someone is actually such a messenger or not, per your own admission.
So the only option left, is to just believe that this person was able to access the room and see the lamp.
Apparently you misunderstood the lamp in the next room analogy. The lamp in the next room is the evidence for the Messenger of God, and anyone can go in that room and look at the evidence because it is readily available on the internet.
You previously said the opposite.
It’s all over the internet!
50% of the internet is filled with porn. Then there's 45% commercial garbage. 4% propaganda and maybe 1% correct information. (numbers pretty much pulled out of my behind - but you get the point).
So you're going to have to be more specific.
That is a very fair point. There is a lot of garbage on the internet so you’d have to know where to look. There is an “official” Baha’i website and there is the Baha’i Reference Library, so that would be the best place to start, if one was at that point in their investigation.
The Baháʼí Faith - Home
The Baha’i Reference Library can be accessed on this website.
You are funny, but in all seriousness, it is just the opposite of what you are portraying… There is no need for a key because the door is always open to the public to go in and explore, like the public library... Investigation is not only encourages, it is enjoined.
This is in direct contradiction with what you said in post 181.
On the one hand you say that you can't verify it.
When asked "then how do you know?", you say that you have to verify it.
Make up your mind.
You can verify it for yourself and then you know.
Or you could just tell me and mention the important points.
It sounds like you want me to allow for "special" types of evidence when it concerns god, while such evidence would never be considered sufficient for anything else.
So please, just describe the special methodology in a generic way.
This shouldn't be that hard.
Actually a while back when I posted this video, CG Didymus made a list of the most important points. Here are the highlights of what the man said in the video:
· He said that nobody should follow religious beliefs just because it was what their family believes or because it is a long held tradition of a certain religion.
· He said our belief should not be something that we heard from another and have to believe on faith but rather it should be something that has been thoroughly examined and has been found to be solid enough to build a foundation of beliefs from. He said that once a person finds a real solid truth they can be completely confident in that truth.
· He said that truth is a truth is a truth so it cannot be contradicted by another truth.
· He said there reality is only one reality and we just need to discover the truth of this reality.
· He said that we should call into question any of the previously beliefs that we held dear.
· He said that we have to take everything we have been taught and put them into a box and call it the box of unproven beliefs, and then we have to carefully examine that belief to see where it came from -- does it makes sense logically, does it agree with other truths, do I have emotions that are informing this belief, a prejudice or past experience?
