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Can we change our mind about what we believe?

joelr

Well-Known Member
I have no desire to gaslight you but I see what I see. I see you caught up in a "morass of details". That is your choice just as it is my choice not to get bogged down into details.

In my opinion you can't see the forest for the trees.
HA HA HA again with "my opinion", yet that is your only criticism against me. HA,

Clearly you are saying this because the details reveal incorrect information.

So, please, explain how looking at details of a religion isn't important? Someone wrote a book detailing 27 prophecies. If those are only a "morass of details", why was the book written.

AND< WHY DID YOU OFFER IT AS EVIDENCE??????????


WHY IS THIS THE EVIDENCE YOU LINKED TO AND WHEN I GAVE A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE YOU MOVED THE GOALPOST, and now claim it's a "morass of details".

Wow, that's looks like a huge inconsistency and a fallacy as well.
Your links. Your "evidence", didn't work out how you wanted and suddenly it's me who is at fault.

This is textbook manipulation. Notice the dictionary link as a distraction as if it's a good point? Very manipulative.

It's your evidence dude. You linked to it. How dare you act so dishonest.





idiom. US. : to not understand or appreciate a larger situation, problem, etc., because one is considering only a few parts of it.

Not see the forest for the trees - Merriam-Webster


More trees....
Perfect, this could not be more clear. You link to a book of prophecies as evidence, I study them to actually see, which was your intent.
When it turns out they are all wrong or lame, suddenly you shift the blame on me as not seeing the forest. Wow. Gaslighting at it's finest.

You have nothing. Are you going to drag this into the mud any further?




That is what I see you doing, dishonest denial, lost in the forest and ineffective at making any real point.

Again, perfectly demonstrating your dishonesty. You post a book of prophecies and when I show they are awful you name call and move the goal post.
Give up dude.



Religion is not philosophy.
And yet, one of the books you posted to says the reasons we know a messenger is
new science
new philosophy
prophecies
new message

maybe one other thing.

And when I point out there actually is no new philosophy, here is the response. Goal post, moved.

Duh... must be because they came from the SAME GOD.


And another goalpost move.
You said -
"A bunch of works clearly copied from the Quran and Bible. That sounds like an allegation.
Where is your proof? NOWHERE."

So I offer some proof and you suddenly agree. FAIL.


More trees.
No, it's actually the proof you ASKED for above. I gave it and you dishonestly didn't respond except to use your new label "trees" you think is effective but is actually a hilarious and failed attempt at changing what you asked for. So lame.




More blah, blah, blah. I don't even read it anymore, but maybe you can impress some readers.
Uh, yeah probably because it wasn't written to you.
Now you have resorted to answering my posts to other people and pretending like you are not reading them? Good because I'm talking to NOT YOU?!

It actually gets worse for you as it goes?





Now you are accusing Baha'u'llah of plagiarism.
No, you cannot see that, you can only believe that, just as I believe that Baha'u'llah received a NEW revelation from God.
Uh, actually the last two posts you just said "trees" to was articles explaining how Bahai is extremely similar to Islam and looks to be a lot of borrowing. Articles that you cannot defend until later when you pretend I didn't offer evidence of borrowing.

So I'll re-post them.


"I do not need a pass from you to believe what I believe" is not a strawman. I suggest you learn your fallacies.
Yes it is because I said over and over I don't care what you believe and never said you need a pass. Believe whatever claims you want.
so not a strawman. Again, give up on pretending to understand rhetoric. Or maybe learn it?



More blah, blah, blah. I don't even read it anymore, but maybe you can impress some readers.
If you cannot make an argument why are you responding as a twitter feud would?
But I will repost how terrible his prophecies are to warn people about buying into this clam:
See the gaslighting? The prophecies are not wrong in an "opinion". He said cancer would be found to be communicable.
He said Newtons alchemy would be common. At that time it was thought that that was going to happen. We would be able to easily take a metal and transform it into gold. There were ideas then about cancer being transmitted like a cold.

What are the odds that he was taking hings that were expected to happen withing 20 years and predicting they would happen? Very good odds. They did not, he was wrong and he had no god whispering in his ear. Because if he did the god would say, "everything is made of atoms, atoms have a particle in the middle and a charged particle orbiting. They make all the elements. Light has a speed limit. Particles are waves and particles. The galaxy is one of billions and the universe is expanding. And so on. It wouldn't be the things that people already expected, it would be the things we had not even thought of because we couldn't. Only God would be able to tell us.

A number in pi we haven't calculated. It WAS THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION.
He got ALL of his scientific predictions wrong. HE WAS MAKING THEM UP.

This is all tap dancing to desperately try to make this line of thinking wrong. What a cult will do. "don't think too much?"









More blah, blah, blah. I don't even read it anymore, but maybe you can impress some readers.

No response. I'll gladly re-post to expose these horrible claims.

To someone who ignores all the literally wrong prophecies. Ignores the lack of writing and philosophy skills. Ignores the lack of supernatural abilities or any other type of evidence, nothing new even though the revelations are supposed to be "progressive", these are not.

To someone who thinks evidence is literally "a guy claims to be a messenger". That's it. He claimed it, so it must be real.
You can bet your bottom dollar that Jesus is EVIDENCE that God exists.
Ok I bet you my bottom dollar that you cannot present any compelling or sufficient evidence that Jesus was anything except a normal man.

Joseph Smith was not a Messenger of God so he is not evidence of God.
LOL, that sounds like YOUR OPINION?
Please provide evidence that excludes Smith but doesn't exclude the others.




More blah, blah, blah. I don't even read it anymore, but maybe you can impress some readers.
You mean, you cannot argue effectively anymore but you think using rhetoric from Mean Girls sounds effective.
Again, I'll re-post as a warning:
Cargo Cults would also be true because the shaman messenger who had divine revelations from the communication pole left by the U.S. Navy, IS THE EVIDENCE!!!

Wow, so much is true I had no idea it was so easy?

Oh the prophecies, I'll re-post them in that case.

"No mising link", not wrong? We found it. Then found more, but "not wrong".

So if you just use denial hard enough does something become true?

Sure, all you need is any evidence at all?

Oh wow, ok, SO.....when it comes to your beliefs, it's your business. But MY beliefs, you sure have a lot to say about.

But how can Mormonism not be true when they also have a messenger, which is your evidence?

1) I'm not judging Bahai, I'm looking at the evidence, true things would not be afraid of having evidence examined.

2)The evidence already suggests no God is real, all Gods are mythology, people do make up revelations or are delusional. The afterlife is a product of Greek mythology. That is true for all religions, nothing special to Bahai. But a supernatural claim must be evaluated by the evidence, for those who care about what is actually true.

3) Gaslighting my evaluation into a "judgment that rolls off a duck's back" is manipulative and dishonest. Having to resort to this over and over shows you are probably clinging to something not real.

4)I already told you I don't care what you believe. I never said stop believing. Believe in whatever you like. If you openly claim it's real, on a public debate forum I will challenge the assertions and the evidence.

5) Calling a mere debate " All your judging ", is further gaslighting, especially ON A PUBLIC DEBATE FORUM. And is truly absurd. If you
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Personal opinion, not fact

Then provide evidence Bahai did some supernatural thing.



Supernatural things cannot be confirmed unless you were the one who witnessed them.

They can be said.


No, your posts are full of personal opinions against Judaism.
I suggest you learn the difference between a personal opinion and a fact.

I do know the difference between personal opinion and facts.
Personal opinion is almost all you have used in this debate.

Against Judaism I have used, many findings from archaeology, mainly William Dever, Hebrew Bible scholars such as Dr Baden, Dr Stavrakopolo, Dr Collins, and several others.
These are not personal opinion, no matter how many times you make the claim.


The progressive revelation is in what Baha'u'llah revealed that is NEW, the new message and the new social teachings and laws.
I don't see anything new? Demonstrate something new.
A person copying the Quran and giving laws a modern spin is hardly impressive and worthy of accepting as words from a god?





Straw man. I am not doing any of those things.
You are the one who is doing those things so that is projection.
No you do all of them, I'll give examples

Why do you repeat the same non-evidence over and over? (the evidence is the messenger LOL)

Why do you continue to deny prophecies are wrong? (every post, you actually deny that the "missing link" prophecy is wrong, hilarious)

Why do you keep repeating the same points, despite that they have been debunked? (I've demonstrated the entire religion is not backed up by any evidence whatsoever. The prophecies are wrong, the material looks borrowed)


Why do you keep posting the same useless books over and over? (you like to those 3 books over and over - "some answered questions" is one

why do you quote from a man who claims to be a prophet without evidence or saying anything new? you quote in almost every post. Denying that just demonstrates you are not honest at all.)

why do you keep pretending god is already demonstrated and your religion is the ultimate truth without evidence? (you give no evidence and last post say only your scriptures are accurate)

You do all these things over and over.










You debunked nothing.
I have shown the evidence is zero.





The Kitáb-i-Aqdas (the Book of Laws) is new.
The message of world unity is also new.
The social teachings are new.
The list goes non, but I am not going to post all of the Writings of Baha'u'llah just to prove something to you.

Reading it. Nothing new. It's all praise the highest creator blah balh. Oh and -
"Whoso layeth claim to a Revelation direct from God, ere the expiration of a full thousand years, such a man is assuredly a lying impostor. "

Definitely true here.

The Quran says no prophet will come until the end times.





Religion is not philosophy so that is the fallacy of false equivalence.
Except it isn't because you linked to a book that describes a messenger must provide new philosophies.
How quickly you forget when it's convienant.

"Briefly, the universal Manifestations of God are aware of the truths underlying the mysteries of all created things, and thus They found a religion that is based upon, and consonant with, the prevailing condition of humanity."


Prove it.
There is no evidence of gods or angels and the Quran uses Moses and the myths, laws and tales as a guide. Noah is mentioned and the Quran was clearly inspired by the OT. This isn't hard to understand if you read them. But also there is evidence:

No gods have been demonstrated so it's likely made by people and there is evidence in the text and in finds that they used the OT to some degree.

Now prove the messenger in Bahai is real.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
And that is because YOU are all over the place, lost in the forest.
No it's because you use misdirection, goalpost moving any all types of deception. It doesn't work because it's easy to see you have no evidence, at all and are just flailing around.
Anyone is free to read the posts so I have no idea why you think you can just make stuff up now after the fact.

In fact the "forest" thing has been debunked. It's evidence you put forth. I just analysed it , found it incorrect and now you cannot stop with the "you are lost in the trees".

Yeah, the trees of the evidence you linked to as if it would help. But it failed and here you are walking that one back as well.
You have done more to disprove the religion than me by acting this way.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
And as such they are biased sources.
They BELIEVE it is all mythology but they do not KNOW that.
Speaking of bias sources.....

Scholarship believes it's mythology because that is what the evidence suggests/. Over and over.

You go with what evidence is strongest. Here, there is only evidence that it's mythology.

Feel free to find examples of why you think that isn't so. Name the scholar, the conclusion and show why it's wrong.


Now, (this is funny) also, you claim scholars in the field don't know how to interpret evidence, BUT............you happen to know that the Bible is MOSTLY WRONG AND CORRUPTED. HA HA HA HA HA. You have no evidence, but a guy who made up a religion said so.

LOL!!!!!! Scholars just use real "evidence", while you have something much better, anecdotal claims by a guy who said he talked to god.



HA!
 

Muffled

Jesus in me
From my own experience, I can say: Yes, we can. As a child, I believed in Father Christmas, in the Christian God, then for a while in nothing at all, then ironically in Lucifer, now unironically in the Nordic pantheon (and its equivalents - I also believe in the existence of Vishnu and Krishna, in the Celtic gods as well as the Greek and karma - but I don't worship them with such intensity, I'm "only" accompanied by mine). I didn't even have to change for that.
I believe you have wandered all around the truth without finding it.
 

Muffled

Jesus in me
What do you mean by "if it came to it" ?
What is war all about .. power and wealth/land .. no?

Religion doesn't come into it .. other than people's behaviour.
Some people (I can think of some Middle Eastern instances) believe in forcing religious beliefs on people. I believe God allows free will and anything else is of the devil.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Some people (I can think of some Middle Eastern instances) believe in forcing religious beliefs on people. I believe God allows free will and anything else is of the devil.
Choose my religion of eternal fire is not a free choice. Ever.
If a God knows all outcomes and creates beings who will choose to eat a forbidden fruit, even through freewill (God knows everything, is all powerfull and nothing can happen he doesn't know), then he created them to do this. An all-knowing God cannot regret something because he always knows what is going to happen. So he created people to be destroyed in a flood. Babies, children, animals who did nothing.


The OT Satan was working with Yahweh, he delivered plagues, allowed him to torture Job, called him the Angel of Yahweh. They clearly were associates. So the Satan thing makes no sense. But if Satan was responsible for things, leading humans away, the devil should get the punishment. So the entire thing is a mess of illogical outcomes.
 

muhammad_isa

Veteran Member
..if Satan was responsible for things, leading humans away, the devil should get the punishment..
..so if YOU are effectively "leading people astray", then should YOU be punished,
but not the person led astray?

I mean, is the person who murders innocent, if they were "told" to do it by YOU?
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
..so if YOU are effectively "leading people astray", then should YOU be punished,
but not the person led astray?
In the case of eating fruit, yes, in that myth the serpent is responsible. Adam did not know sin. Didn't know wrong. He understood a nice talking creature told him it was ok. He doesn't know deception so he thinks Yahweh must be fine with it.

Why a god would care about fruit? But it's an ancient myth, the tree of knowledge and life going back to Mesopotamia. The Hebrew people returned from exile being familiar with these stories and wrote versions for their new culture.

Anyway, God cursed women with pain in birth and caused perpetual conflict between man and woman. But it's a myth. The god in the myth is evil still because he knows everything and could have created people with freewill that matched his desire. He creates people to go to hell. Or, he is not all-powerful.



I mean, is the person who murders innocent, if they were "told" to do it by YOU?
In the case of murder, it's different, not knowing the law is not an excuse. But in the case of organized gangs, a person can cut a deal by revealing who ordered the murder.
 

muhammad_isa

Veteran Member
In the case of eating fruit, yes, in that myth the serpent is responsible. Adam did not know sin. Didn't know wrong..
Nonsense!
G-d had warned Adam not to eat from that tree. We often have to learn the hard way..

In the case of murder, it's different, not knowing the law is not an excuse..
G-d had already instructed Adam about the law .. and there was only one!
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I believe you have wandered all around the truth without finding it.
Nobody who speaks for or about gods has any knowledge about gods. Each claims to have the truth, but all they have are fervently held, unfalsifiable faith-based beliefs.
I believe once one has found solid truth there is no need to wander from it.
Then you would agree that if one is comfortable without a god belief and is thriving happily outside of religion, he has no incentive to make a change.
I believe God allows free will and anything else is of the devil.
According to tri-omni theology, the devil is God's creation. It was also that god's will to unleash it on the world and mankind, and to give it eternal dominion over the souls of some of them in a fiery pit for the purpose of torturing them.

Do you think God allows free will in heaven? Think about that. Both a no and a yes answer are troubling. No means he likes robots after all, and yes means that everybody will eventually rebel against this god.
Some people (I can think of some Middle Eastern instances) believe in forcing religious beliefs on people.
You don't need to go that far. Some of your neighbors fit that description. Their religion tell them that their god disapproves of abortion and LGBTQ+, and they want laws in place to enforce those religious beliefs. Here are the opinions of some of your fellow Christians, all Americans I believe:
"The strategy against the American radical left should be the same as General Douglas MacArthur employed against the Japanese in the Pacific - blast the individuals out of their power bunkers with hand-to-hand combat. The battle to regain the soul of America won't be pleasant, but we will win it." - Pat Robertson​
"I believe this notion of the separation of church and state was the figment of some infidel's imagination." - Rev. W. A. Criswell (Dallas, 1984)​
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." - President George H. W. Bush​
"We need to do more than win an election or win the House or win the presidency, my friends: we need to make this beloved country of ours God's country once again." - Pat Buchanan at the Christian Coalition 1995 Road to Victory Conference, as reported in the October 1995 issue of Church and State.​
"There is a value in spiritual violence," Hagee declared, "and it is time that you considered the role that you are playing or not playing and whether or not it's time for you to become more aggressive in your beliefs" - Matthew Hagee​
"I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good . . . our goal is a Christian nation. We have the biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism" - Randall Terry, Director of Operation Rescue​
"The long term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to his Church's public marks of the covenant-baptism and holy communion-must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel." - Gary North​
"I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be." - Jerry Falwell​
.​
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
Of course I wonder. I sense an agency behind the universe, but I also know that humans are notorious for intuiting agency where none exists, so I realize I may be wrong. However, it would drive me insane if I went around questioning every perception that might be wrong. So I go with it.

What do I believe about God? I believe that God is the creator of the universe, the source underlying all that is. I believe that God cares about how we treat each other. I believe that God is unified, not fragmented. I think that it is very bad idea to speculate about God because the finite cannot fathom the infinite, and that very likely the things I have already said are too much. Everything else is pretty much just icing on the cake. Thank you for asking. :)
Ok. So that clears up a few things in my mind. In other words, you do believe there is a God. Thank you for elucidating. I agree there must be a supreme (intelligent) force behind life. I know there are some things hard to understand in the Bible, but I have faith that God will allow me to understand more later. I hope so. Perhaps during the resurrection when I (we) can actually hear first hand accounts of what happened.
 

vulcanlogician

Well-Known Member
I believe once one has found solid truth there is no need to wander from it.

What about challenging your own beliefs (not in order to arbitrarily change them) but to see how strong they are? And maybe even grow as a person in the process?

I don't see challenging one's own faith as a sign of weak faith. To the contrary, I see it as a mark of strong faith.

What do you say to that perspective?
 

CG Didymus

Veteran Member
In the Book of Certitude, Baha’u’llah unseals the meanings of things like rebirth and return which are mentioned in the Holy Books and Abdul-Baha explains that it refers to the return of the qualities not the actual person. So Baha’is refer to the authoritative interpretations on this topic. The Bhagavad-Gita is such a wonderful Book with so many beautiful truths therein. Exploring it makes me feel so blessed to have accepted Lord Krishna in my heart as a Manifestation of God and I pray that He accepts me as His humble servant.
I'm looking up things about whether or not Krishna was a real person or just a mythic character. The first thing I found out is this...

Vyasa (Sanskrit: व्यास), literally "Compiler") is also sometimes called Veda Vyāsa (वेदव्यास, veda-vyāsa, "the one who classified the Vedas") or Krishna Dvaipāyana (referring to his complexion and birthplace). He is generally considered the author of the Mahabharata, as well as a character in it...
Puranas say that Vyasa took initiation at the hands of his twenty-first Guru, sage Vasudeva. He studied the Shastras under sages Sanaka and Sananda and others. He arranged the Vedas for the good of mankind and wrote the Brahma Sutras for the quick and easy understanding of the Srutis; he also wrote the Mahabharata to enable humans to understand the highest knowledge in the easiest way. Vyasa wrote the eighteen Puranas and established the system of teaching them through Upakhyanas or discourses. In this way, he established the three paths, viz., Karma, Upasana and Jnana. To him is also attributed the fact that he continued the line of his mother and that Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura were his progeny. Vyasa's last work was the Bhagavata
So, since the Gita was not written by or revealed by a manifestation, do the Baha'is believe the Gita or any of these Scriptures of Hinduism are true? Then... was Krishna a real person or just a character in the Gita?

Then about "unsealing"... why for hundreds, even thousands of years are the "true" meanings sealed? What good did that do for the Hindus not to know the correct meaning and to have believed all this time in a wrong meaning?
 

CG Didymus

Veteran Member
Muhammad mostly reworked the OT.
I've heard some Christians say that Muhammad took things from apocryphal Christian works and used them. Like Mary giving birth to Jesus under a date palm, and Jesus making birds out of clay and made them come to life.

Since Baha'is take the Quran as being more authentic than the Bible or NT, I've asked them if the story about the birth of Christ in the NT was true or the version in the Quran. I don't think any of them have answered. But I don't suppose they would know and maybe not even care, because they are looking at the forest and don't care about the details. But with their claims and beliefs, they have opened a big can of worms.
 

loverofhumanity

We are all the leaves of one tree
Premium Member
I'm looking up things about whether or not Krishna was a real person or just a mythic character. The first thing I found out is this...

Vyasa (Sanskrit: व्यास), literally "Compiler") is also sometimes called Veda Vyāsa (वेदव्यास, veda-vyāsa, "the one who classified the Vedas") or Krishna Dvaipāyana (referring to his complexion and birthplace). He is generally considered the author of the Mahabharata, as well as a character in it...
Puranas say that Vyasa took initiation at the hands of his twenty-first Guru, sage Vasudeva. He studied the Shastras under sages Sanaka and Sananda and others. He arranged the Vedas for the good of mankind and wrote the Brahma Sutras for the quick and easy understanding of the Srutis; he also wrote the Mahabharata to enable humans to understand the highest knowledge in the easiest way. Vyasa wrote the eighteen Puranas and established the system of teaching them through Upakhyanas or discourses. In this way, he established the three paths, viz., Karma, Upasana and Jnana. To him is also attributed the fact that he continued the line of his mother and that Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura were his progeny. Vyasa's last work was the Bhagavata
So, since the Gita was not written by or revealed by a manifestation, do the Baha'is believe the Gita or any of these Scriptures of Hinduism are true? Then... was Krishna a real person or just a character in the Gita?

Then about "unsealing"... why for hundreds, even thousands of years are the "true" meanings sealed? What good did that do for the Hindus not to know the correct meaning and to have believed all this time in a wrong meaning?
Hopefully this helps.

To Him [Baha’u’llah] the Bhagavad-Gita of the Hindus had referred as the ’Most Great Spirit,’ the ’Tenth Avatar,’ the ’Immaculate Manifestation of Krishna’.” – God Passes By, p. 95.
Although the Bhagavad-Gita does not specifically refer to the “Tenth Avatar,” yet the great epic of India—the Mahabharata, of which the Bhagavad Gita is a part—does.

And also.

Blessed souls — whether Moses, Jesus, Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, Confucius or Muhammad — were the cause of the illumination of the world of humanity. How can we deny such irrefutable proof? How can we be blind to such light? – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 346.
 

CG Didymus

Veteran Member
They do if they're believed, along with all of the other magic inserted into Jesus' biography such as virgin birth, sinlessness, walking on water, raising the dead, and converting water to wine. How many Christians have you read say regarding Buddha or Mohammad that they are not like Jesus because only Jesus was raised from the dead. THAT's the purpose that story serves.
Yes, Jesus is made out to be a God/man. He is greater than any of the characters in the Bible. He is God's only son. So, how do Baha'is bring him back down to a level equal with Moses, Muhammad and their prophet Baha'u'llah? They say that those stories are fictional. So again, and again I ask them... Why believe Jesus and the NT at all?
 
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