Can we change our mind about what we believe?

[IndigoChild5559]

No, I'm saying if one buys the stories than they have supernatural evidence, to them,

I don't think you ar understanding what it takes for something to be evidence. Evidence is something that lends proof towards something. Many times people accept things as evidence which quite frankly are not. Other things may be commonly thought of as evidence, but are very unreliable.

Let's take eye witness accounts. These are allowed as evidence in a court of law. Yet we know full well that eye witness accounts are extremely unreliable. People's memories can be altered by all sorts of stuff. Indeed, we have seen so many cases where new DNA evidence has exonerated people who were convicted simply because the eye witnesses seemed so convinced.

Let's look at another example. Many people believe that miracles are evidence of the supernatural. A miracle is something wonderful that happens for which we do not yet have a scientific explanation. But it doesn't mean there is no natural explanation -- it only means we do not have one at this time. Miracles happen in all sorts of different religions, and they also happen to people who are not religious at all. So which religion then are they evidence of? In short, miracles are evidence of nothing.

Another common claim is that religious texts are evidence. But ultimately it is circular reasoning. The Quran is the word of God because the Quran says it is the word of God is not a rational thought. Religious texts make all sorts of contradictory claims. So they are not evidence of anything simply by being religious texts. The fact that someone "buys" into a religious story does not make it evidence. A four year old buys into the story of Santa -- this in no way makes a plump old man in red who lives at the North Pole exist.

In the end, we really have two things that can be considered evidence. The first is a reasoned argument, and I mean one that obeys all the rules of logic. The second is empirical evidence, meaning things that can be gathered through observation or valid and reliable experimentation. Even in such cases, conclusions may be incomplete, and so we are always open to altering our conclusions should new evidence come to light.

 

[joelr]

That cannot be proven as a fact, not anymore than I can prove God was speaking to Him as a fact.
All you have is a personal opinion.
Better luck next time.

I don't need luck.

It can be proven, as a fact, that that evidence is not sufficient evidence to warrant belief in a God intervening.

Exhibit 1, Mormonism has just about the same evidence, as does many cults. Doesn't impress you.

Also, it common knowledge, a man claims God gave and is giving him revelations and he had no supernatural powers, events, knowledge, - not sufficient evidence.

 

[muhammad_isa]

..As I started out by saying, I'm highly reluctant to make statements about God's nature. Because I interact with God, it is very difficult for me not to think of him in terms of a "person."

Yes, I agree. Most of us, regardless of creed, envisage G-d as an entity .. a kind of person.
..but clearly, our usual thought about what a person is, is not one that can know what is in our hearts,
from birth to death .. and each and every one of us.

However, it is also true that I perceive God imperfectly. It is the temptation for all humans to make God in our own image. But we know this is not the case. There are all sorts of references to "the hand of God," "the face of God," "the arm of God," etc. But we know that all of these are anthropomorphisms. In that same respect, I may very well simply be succumbing to the temptation to think of God in human terms when he is certainly not human..

..not human, no. Humans are part of the Creation .. but spiritually, we are able to comprehend
the meaning of 'Holy', for example, which I understand is the meaning of "G-d created us in His own image" i.e. spiritually .. but needless to say, we are imperfect, and although we often feel independent,
we are not. We cannot be successful as a lone soul.

 

[joelr]

I never said that my list of criteria that I believe a Messenger of God would have to meet is evidence, so I never presented a different set of criteria for evidence. That is where the misunderstanding started.

My personal criteria of what I believe a Messenger of God would have to meet is not evidence.

It was neither untruthful or deceptive. You just misunderstood what I was saying.

Yes, you were playing games and were definitely deceptive. And now, because you continue to blame this on me (classic) I will demonstrate

ALL along you were talking about evidence, beliefs, NEVER about a "personal set of criteria".


These are all your words:


#144
I did not say that His character ALONE is evidence. It is only PART of the evidence.


#163

1) he did do miracles. Famous Miracles in the Baha’i Faith

#234
Messengers of God are the evidence for God.

I don't use any method for proof since I have told you time and again there is no proof, only evidence.


#237

His own Self is not it says so


I believe it is true because my book says it is true.


#280

I believe it is true because of the evidence, not because the book says so, but the evidence is not what makes it true.

#307

I can explain why I believe the Baha'i Faith is a true religion, because all the teachings make logical sense to me.


Because the Baha'i Faith makes logical sense, it makes sense that Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God. That is how I think.


#310


The claims of Baha’u’llah and the evidence that supports the claims of Baha’u’llah are in this post:


Questions for knowledgeable Bahai / followers of Baha'u'llah



So here you finally give links to this evidence you have been talking about over and over.

My response is both lines of evidence are fallacies and not good evidence at all.

Your response to that is to move the goalpost. Not only did you move the goalpost but you tried to act like I'm stupid and I haven't been paying attention. You actually feined being mad and acted like I've been "missing" this big thing you have been saying all along.
Except you NEVER SAID IT. That is really really poor tactics. People do this often in personal conflicts, gaslight, act as if the other person is somehow at fault.


#324
Do you read anything I write and understand it? I am starting to doubt that.

2/I have my own set of criteria that true Messengers of God have to meet. No non-God messengers could meet these criteria.




I said I have my own set of criteria, I did not say I laid out my own set of criteria. I did not lay that out.



You just committed the fallacy of jumping to conclusions.



Then when I questioned this practice and said it was dishonest you played semantic games, correcting me saying you "have" your own set of criteria, not "i laid out" a set of criteria. As if there is any difference? But still blaming me for anything. Then blamed me for a fallacy. Unbelievable. Also called be immature in the same post. Yep.

 

[joelr]

I don't think you ar understanding what it takes for something to be evidence. Evidence is something that lends proof towards something. Many times people accept things as evidence which quite frankly are not. Other things may be commonly thought of as evidence, but are very unreliable.

Let's take eye witness accounts. These are allowed as evidence in a court of law. Yet we know full well that eye witness accounts are extremely unreliable. People's memories can be altered by all sorts of stuff. Indeed, we have seen so many cases where new DNA evidence has exonerated people who were convicted simply because the eye witnesses seemed so convinced.

Let's look at another example. Many people believe that miracles are evidence of the supernatural. A miracle is something wonderful that happens for which we do not yet have a scientific explanation. But it doesn't mean there is no natural explanation -- it only means we do not have one at this time. Miracles happen in all sorts of different religions, and they also happen to people who are not religious at all. So which religion then are the evidence of? In short, miracles are evidence of nothing.

Another common claim is that religious texts are evidence. But ultimately it is circular reasoning. The Quran is the word of God because the Quran says it is the word of God is not a rational thought. Religious texts make all sorts of contradictory claims. So they are not evidence of anything simply by being religious texts. The fact that someone "buys" into a religious story does not make it evidence. A four year old buys into the story of Santa -- this in no way makes a plumb old man in red who lives at the North Pole exist.

In the end, we really have two things that can be considered evidence. The first is a reasoned argument, and I mean one that obeys all the rules of logic. The second is empirical evidence, meaning things that can be gathered through observation or valid and reliable experimentation. Even in such cases, conclusions may be incomplete, and so we are always open to altering our conclusions should new evidence come to light.

Tell it to "them", not me.

 

[joelr]

I do not know it. I believe it. It is my experience. But experiences can be misperceived. Generally speaking, however, it is not a good idea to question our experiences. If we walked around wondering, "Is that person real, or am I hallucinating" we would drive ourselves to madness.

You don't have to, but you can.
For thousands of years people thought gods were a pantheon and impersonal. Then they came to more interactive gods, theism, Yahweh started out as a typical lNear Eastern deity. With Aquinas, Origen and others added Graeco-Roman philosophy to create a modern idea. Except the East has a very different version with Brahman. Which suggests it might just be a created concept to deal with unknown eternal, infinities that are not conscious beings and what we experience is the thought of a God which creates a feeling we mistake for a being.

Infinite regress is equally as weird as reality starting out with an eternal all powerful being. That sounds like a concept we put onto reality because we are conscious beings. We see unconscious forces all around us, that might just be all there is.
But the idea of a soul, that really has no evidence.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

But the idea of a soul, that really has no evidence.

I'm an agnostic when it comes to the idea of a soul that survives the death of the body. But I can certainly appreciate why people believe in it. When you watch a person move from life to death, there is certainly "something" that was there before which is now gone, and the question is, what is that something? I mean think about it. The body that was there before is still there now. Yet its consciousness is gone. It is only natural, I think, to ask, where did that consciousness go?

 

[Muffled]

And science proves how wrong they were! Not just about stars but about many things. No, I don't blame them. They knew only that much. I blame people of today if they stick to what people thought 2000 or 1500 years ago, and have since been proved wrong by science, like Young Earth or Creationism.

I believe science can help interpret the Bible but I do not believe it disproves it. So for me it is not solar objects that falls to earth.

 

[Muffled]

I changed my mind, or my mi d was changed. It does come down to environment - past and present. Past includes travel and exposure to different cultures. Joined fir community/kids, thought it taught good lifestyle. Changed after seeing child abuse by church leader that was covered up by other church leaders. Realized it taught racism, sexism, codependency.

I believe those things are contrary to common Christian teaching. I don't believe you come to the truth by examining the falsehood.

 

[Trailblazer]

Because you offer the same responses over and over.

So do you. If you keep asking for evidence and I have nothing more than I have already offered, so why ask again?
Why keep saying "that's not evidence" after you have already said it 100 times?

For some reason you need to keep saying "that's not evidence" but I am not going to keep the cycle going by saying "oh yes, it is evidence" since I have already said it. Who do you think you are going to convince, certainly not me, and others have already read it 100 times over.

A truer way to say this is that you have become so convinced by a cult that not-evidence is actually evidence that you can non longer use reason to see that you are being taken for a ride.

The Baha'i Faith is not a cult. It is a world religion. Whether you choose to believe in it is another matter altogether.

You ALREADY don't buy other religions who have the same general evidence. You don't even investigate the evidence is so lousy.

Other religions do not have the same evidence, not by a long-shot.

 

[Trailblazer]

That isn't true.
A God could appear, perform superhuman feats, and speak to people. You will default to "a god doesn't......." you don't know what a god can or cannot do. You said that to me and than reversed it when you wanted to say what a god can or cannot do.

Even if a god could only speak in a persons mind, the god could ensure others would know something was up.

It does not matter what God could do, it only matters what God does.
God does not do what you want Him to do, God only does what God chooses to do. That is God 101 stuff.

“Say: O people! Let not this life and its deceits deceive you, for the world and all that is therein is held firmly in the grasp of His Will. He bestoweth His favor on whom He willeth, and from whom He willeth He taketh it away. He doth whatsoever He chooseth.”​

Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 209​

God does not 'care' if you know that 'something is up' because God does not need your belief. God has no needs. Humans are the ones who have needs.

If you heard a voice in your mind you could never know if it was God or simply an auditory hallucination.
Give it up for lost. There is no evidence that is 'better' that what God has already been provided.

In reality you are NEVER going to have empirical evidence because God is a fiction.

In reality you are NEVER going to have empirical evidence because God does not choose to provide any such evidence.

You cannot make an Almighty God do what you want Him to do, provide the kind of evidence that you want. That is drop dead illogical.

 

[Truthseeker]

Matthew 7:3-5 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Baha'u'llah wrote something similar to that.

26: O SON OF BEING! How couldst thou forget thine own faults and busy thyself with the faults of others? Whoso doeth this is accursed of Me.
The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 10

What a coincidence, those verses are in chapter 6 of my Sermon of the Mount study!

 

[Trailblazer]

Then you claimed your own set of criteria, which really also is evidence
#324
" said: I have my own set of criteria that true Messengers of God have to meet. No non-God messengers could meet these criteria."w

I NEVER said that my own set of criteria was evidence. It is not evidence of any kind.

I said:
Please bear in mind that the following criteria are my criteria which is based upon who I believe were Messengers of God, who met all these criteria. My criteria narrow the playing field and it will eliminate most claimants, since they will fail to meet all the criteria.

The minimum criteria would be:

1. He had good character as exemplified by his qualities such as love, mercy, kindness, truth, justice, benevolence, gracious, merciful, righteous, forgiving, patient.

2. He believed he had been given a mission by God and did everything he could to see that it was carried out. He was completely successful before his death, and he accomplished everything that He set out to do.

3. He wrote much about God and God's purpose for humans both individually and collectively, or scriptures were written by others who spoke for him. He firmly believed that the work he was doing was for the Cause of God.

4. He had many followers while he was alive, and there are still millions who follow his teachings and gather in groups based on the religion he founded.

5. His followers have grown more numerous in recent times.

This is a starting point but there are other questions we would want to ask ourselves before we would be able to believe that a man was a true Messenger of God because that is a bold claim so there should be a lot of evidence to support such a claim.

 

[Trailblazer]

I don't need luck.

It can be proven, as a fact, that that evidence is not sufficient evidence to warrant belief in a God intervening.

No, that cannot be proven as a fact.
It is only a personal opinion. We all have those.

The evidence warrants a belief for some people but not for others. Any logical person would understand this.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

I believe science can help interpret the Bible but I do not believe it disproves it. So for me it is not solar objects that falls to earth.

Do you not see a striking difference between the cosmology we know from science, and that taught in the Bible?

https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/308/OTcosmos.jpg

 

[ppp]

I do not know it. I believe it. It is my experience. But experiences can be misperceived. Generally speaking, however, it is not a good idea to question our experiences. If we walked around wondering, "Is that person real, or am I hallucinating" we would drive ourselves to madness.

I hear people say that, but I don't think that they realize that we are constantly doing just that. Walking around and assessing the reality with which we are presented every moment of our lives. We reject the unconfirmed everyday day of our lives. It is not a big deal, and isn't even a slow walk to madness.

If I experienced a "person" whose existence could not be confirmed by disinterested third parties, questioning whether or not I am hallucinating would be entirely sensible and warranted. In fact, it should be my working hypothesis. And I should be devising ways to test it.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

I believe science can help interpret the Bible but I do not believe it disproves it. So for me it is not solar objects that falls to earth.

Do you not see a striking difference between the cosmology we know from science, and that taught in the Bible?

https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/308/OTcosmos.jpg

 

[IndigoChild5559]

If I experienced a "person" whose existence could not be confirmed by disinterested third parties,

I understand. But that is what makes the experience of God complicated. There ARE disinterested third parties who share the experience. AND there are ALSO people who do not.

 

[ppp]

I understand. But that is what makes the experience of God complicated. There ARE disinterested third parties who share the experience. AND there are ALSO people who do not.

Share the experience? That is an entirely different proposition from your earlier "Is that person real, or am I hallucinating?"
You seem to be trying to muddy the huge distinction between "I saw a person" and "I had an experience and I say that the cause of that experience is a person."

 

[YoursTrue]

I am personally struggling with this topic. As I started out by saying, I'm highly reluctant to make statements about God's nature. Because I interact with God, it is very difficult for me not to think of him in terms of a "person." However, it is also true that I perceive God imperfectly. It is the temptation for all humans to make God in our own image. But we know this is not the case. There are all sorts of references to "the hand of God," "the face of God," "the arm of God," etc. But we know that all of these are anthropomorphisms. In that same respect, I may very well simply be succumbing to the temptation to think of God in human terms when he is certainly not human. At any rate, I think I should say no more, since I am entirely out of my league here.

How about just accepting what the Bible says? Because if God wanted us to know exactly what or who he is, he would have told us, even though we cannot conceive of a being or person never having been created but always there without beginning and without end. Not likely for us to comprehend this well. But He is described to the best of human ability.

• It is written of him: “Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness and truth, preserving loving-kindness for thousands, pardoning iniquity and transgression and sin.”—Ex. 34:6, 7