Can we change our mind about what we believe?

[Trailblazer]

Then he's a negligent deity. He creates humans to have confirmation bias, to believe stories they are told and become so attached to them they can never accept they might not be true and will die rather than hear any reason why they are wrong. He also created humans to have logic and rational thought. Which leaves religious people who have attached to many different religions and are not leaving and rational thinkers who won't accept claims without evidence.
A God would know this and understand to unify all religions it would take a strong case.
Turning a blind eye to obvious problems and letting a God off the hook is just more confirmation bias.

God is never 'on the hook' for anything, since God is in no way accountable to humans.

Secondly, a strong case was made by Baha'u'llah, who was a Representative of God.

Thirdly, God did not create humans to have confirmation bias. Everyone can have a bias, no matter who they are. You have a bias against religious people.

I don't know why you have a mental block here.
You made 2 options:
1) if God exists, = what we see is what God chose to do

2) God does not exist

but there is more

3) God does exist - but what we see is not what God chose, it's what a man chose, we have free will to write books and claim they are revelations from God, but the claim is false.

3) is patently illogical. If God exists, what we see is what God chose, since it is reality. How we 'interpret' what we see will vary.
In reality, the claims are either true or false. They can never be proven true or false, except to ourselves.

 

[Trailblazer]

Hmmm, maybe because in scripture the character and motivations of God are presented. Which you then pretend you don't know because your scriptures make zero sense. Or you re-write them and erase all mentions of God and what his motivations are.

You said: A God would understand and respect logic and know the best minds use logic.
God would not want people "choosing with free will", the same method people use to join every cult, racial motivated hate group, oppressive political movement and so on. You reject the OT stories about Yahweh walking with people yet you keep the jealous "must use free will" God from the OT?
He would want us to know, through a logical, rational, empirical method that we are making a good choice because that is how the universe works. That is how humans have made progress in every area.
It also has nothing to do with us or free will. God would first, show he is God, and second he would not be uptight about our choice, freewill or not. He would not want to appear ambiguous, exactly the same as any cult with no evidence, he would know faith sucks, has been used to justify all movements good and evil.

'What God would' do as you depicted it is NOT in any scriptures. The scriptures contain no mentions of God and what his motivations are.
What you said above is all your personal opinion.

Well then let the slanderer do that. I however, am not slandering anything, I'm demonstrating a lack of logic, rational and empirical methodology in these claims. It is true that there are no good reasons to take these claims literal and this is a clear example.
I hope adding fuel to critical thinking makes it burn brighter.

Have fun. I don't care what anyone believes.

First, you are pretending to know what God wants because we don't know if any of the books are written by any God.

You don't know, but I do know they were written by a Messenger of God.

But I am pure and detached just fine. I speak for belief in things justified and skepticism for things not justified.
You can try to make that the negative view but it only shows your position is flawed because you are still trying to ad-hom me in subtle ways.

What is justified or unjustified belief is all a matter or personal opinion.

I could say the same to you, can you not even see that?
You can try to make my view the negative view but it only shows your position is flawed because you are still trying to ad-hom me in subtle ways.

But I would not say that since a negative view does not show that anyone's position is flawed.

 

[Trailblazer]

Is your excuse for why Bahai has zero abilities. Also you are 100% wrong because 1/3 of all religious belief is Christianity which still uses all of the stories, another almost 1/3 is Islam, same thing, Judaism, same, all sorts of supernatural stories, Mormonism, same, Zoroastrianism, same, Sikh, same.
Yeah, every religion still needs unearthly stories, big time.

The only reason Bahai doesn't have them is because if he tried to make the claims people would know it never happened.

So what if those older religions use the stories? What does that mean, logically speaking? NOTHING. It only means that people are attached to their older religions that have stories in them, confirmation bias.

The only reason Baha'i doesn't have them is because Baha'i does not need them.

He did no miracles. The logical explanation is Bahai is like all the other claims of revelation. Made up.

1) he did do miracles. Famous Miracles in the Baha’i Faith
2) Miracles are no proof of a revelation from God.

Well that's a problem in 2 ways.

1) you already said all the unearthly events were fiction. Now your prophet is saying they happened?

2)They still happened in a book, which has no proof. It does have proof it was borrowed stories and so on.

I did not say that they happened or did not happen. I only said that the Manifestations of God can do miracles.

“The Holy Manifestations are the sources of miracles and the originators of wonderful signs. For Them, any difficult and impracticable thing is possible and easy. For through a supernatural power wonders appear from Them; and by this power, which is beyond nature, They influence the world of nature. From all the Manifestations marvelous things have appeared.“​

Some Answered Questions, p. 100​

Some of the miracles of Christ might have happened, but it doesn't really matter, except to some people like you.

“Observe: those who in appearance were physically alive, Christ considered dead; for life is the eternal life, and existence is the real existence. Wherever in the Holy Books they speak of raising the dead, the meaning is that the dead were blessed by eternal life; where it is said that the blind received sight, the signification is that he obtained the true perception; where it is said a deaf man received hearing, the meaning is that he acquired spiritual and heavenly hearing. This is ascertained from the text of the Gospel where Christ said: “These are like those of whom Isaiah said, They have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not; and I healed them. 2​

​

The meaning is not that the Manifestations are unable to perform miracles, for They have all power. But for Them inner sight, spiritual healing and eternal life are the valuable and important things. Consequently, whenever it is recorded in the Holy Books that such a one was blind and recovered his sight, the meaning is that he was inwardly blind, and that he obtained spiritual vision, or that he was ignorant and became wise, or that he was negligent and became heedful, or that he was worldly and became heavenly.“​

Some Answered Questions, pp. 101-102​

 

[Trailblazer]

1) Then why does he teach almost entirely the same information about God?

Because God never changes.

2) That information isn't the purpose of the messenger, it's so God can demonstrate he is actually giving messages.

The information is the purpose of the messenger, it is not so God can demonstrate he is actually giving messages.

All religions came with strong proofs. This "look at his life" is pure nonsense. No reason to buy into this.

All religions did not come with strong proofs. I do not consider the Bible a strong proof. It is proof of nothing, except that men can write a book about God and Jesus and other prophets, and tell stories.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I believe an assessment of ignorance must have evidence. It is not the person who says he knows something that is ignorant but the person who denies the possibility that it is known who is ignorant.

Your belief is welcome. But I would not agree that there is an elephant in my cupboard. That is for all to see clearly. There is a male rabbit though.
I have an impression that male rabbits have a larger ear than the female rabbits. That could be true, because they are in-charge of the security.

 

[loverofhumanity]

How many enlightened people have already come up. Nine (at least, since the Creation starting with Adam, the first manifestation of Allah), if we go by Bahai belief. Have wars ended? Then, what is the use of having enlightened people?
So, you mean Kitab-i-Aqdas or Bahaollah are not the only sources of enlightenment, and that it is possible with any scripture, Bible, Quran or Vedas, BhagawadGita? Were Laozi and Confucious manifestations of Allah and enlightened?

If the followers practised love and unity then it would be a beautiful world but since we all have freedom of choice we have chosen not to heed their counsels to love one another thus hatred and wars.

 

[Aupmanyav]

The freedom of choice is limited. He made us selfish, greedy and lustful too.

 

[loverofhumanity]

The freedom of choice is limited. He made us selfish, greedy and lustful too.

I believe we were born pure and free from every form of taint. Gradually through wrong education and bad influences we became very materialistic. But through education we can change that.

 

[Trailblazer]

The freedom of choice is limited. He made us selfish, greedy and lustful too.

The freedom to choose a or b or c is very limited.

 

[CG Didymus]

I believe we were born pure and free from every form of taint. Gradually through wrong education and bad influences we became very materialistic. But through education we can change that.

I don't know how "pure" a baby is. I'd say maybe they are like a blank slate, and good and bad education and influences leave their mark on them. And like a slate, the old marks can be erased.

 

[Ella S.]

I can only speak for myself here, but I do think there's an argument to be made that we can choose what to believe arbitrarily to some degree.

The two main instruments for that are the suspension of disbelief and intentionally invoking confirmation bias. If I repeat an idea to myself often enough, that idea becomes so familiar that I internalize it as "true."

It took me a long time to decondition myself from genuinely believing that I was going to go to Hell for not believing that Hell exists. Yes, that is indeed self-contradictory and therefore irrational, and I knew that. It took awhile for me to adjust to my intellectually founded belief in eternal oblivion.

If I wanted to, at any point, I could have willingly suspended my disbelief in Hell and intentionally thought and acted as if it exists. I could have easily convinced myself that Hell exists again, I think.

There would be cognitive dissonance at first, but, over time, that dissonance would become quieter and quieter.

The problem is that I really care about making sure that my beliefs are all rationally justified, even if they might be wrong. I really care about making sure that what I believe best fits the current information that I have available to me. On some level, I intentionally choose to believe based on reason and dismiss all "other ways of knowing."

For that reason, I went through a period in life where I was converting to new religions constantly and entertaining several more at any given time. New information I obtained during my research wasn't assimilated into the framework that I had. Instead, when new information contradicted what I expected to see given the religious paradigm I adhered to at the time, I decided to completely re-evaluate my entire worldview from the ground up.

I was constantly destroying and rebuilding everything I thought I knew about reality, history, physics, evidence, and so on. I couldn't have done that if I didn't make a choice to keep my beliefs as closely in-line with the data available to me as I could.

I'm sure I haven't done a perfect job in the sense of maximal or ideal rationality, but I have done the best I can within my bounded rationality, and I still find it likely that most of what I believe now is false. I just don't know which beliefs those are and why they're false, so for now my current beliefs are the best I have.

I often have to choose what to believe after careful deliberation. While I might make snap judgments and have my own beliefs that I start with, I'm pretty sure those are called "biases," and so I use reason as a way to try to correct those as best I can. If I couldn't change my beliefs, I don't think they would be based on reason at all, because those snap judgments are irrational.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

I can only speak for myself here, but I do think there's an argument to be made that we can choose what to believe arbitrarily to some degree.

I appreciate the degree to which you have tried to think this out. However, I cannot disagree more strongly. I don't think people choose their beliefs. I think they are either convinced or not convinced. And usually the convincing has nothing to do with reason.

 

[Ella S.]

I appreciate the degree to which you have tried to think this out. However, I cannot disagree more strongly. I don't think people choose their beliefs. I think they are either convinced or not convinced. And usually the convincing has nothing to do with reason.

Do you believe that it's possible to reason?

 

[joelr]

That is your belief..
However, I find myself conscious and aware now, and have no good reason to think
that it cannot happen again after death.
i.e. the physical body (hardware) is not all that is meaningful

I might find myself in a new body somewhere, for example.

Weather you have no reason doesn't change the fact that actual reasons exist. All data points to the brain as the only source of consciousness.
NDE experiences are not confirmed as actual life after death. When a brain is damages the personality changes, even beliefs will change. The evidence suggests there is no conscious experience after the brain is gone.

Saying the body is not all that is meaningful is just speculation and wishful thinking. You need evidence.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Do you believe that it's possible to reason?

Yes, but I don't think that reasoning governs our decisions. fMRI studies have shown for example that moral decisions are made before the person is even conscious of it. After our unconscious minds decides, then our conscious minds manufacture reasons for it.

 

[muhammad_isa]

The evidence suggests there is no conscious experience after the brain is gone..

Well, what evidence would you expect to see?
I mean, do you remember being dead?

 

[joelr]

Jesus was talking about the man who the Father would send, whoever that would be.

John 14:16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

John 15:26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:

In John 14:17, the identity of the helper is now revealed: He is the Spirit of truth (cf. John 15:26; 16:13). The Spirit of truth is God the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity. The Father will send the Spirit to come alongside the disciples. He is called the Spirit of truth because He bears witness to the truth of Jesus Christ (see John 14:6).

Not a man claiming revelations and starting a new religion.

Only according to stories in the Bible.

LOL, cherry pick much? You just used scripture to back up your religion. THEN, when it doesn't help your position you claims they are "stories in the Bible" in a negative way.
One reply later!

John is not an interpretation, it is a NT verse that requires interpretation, in order to determine what the verse means.
There is a Christian interpretation and there is a Baha'i interpretation.

Completely pointless, provide evidence.

No, I just interpret the NT differently than Christians, and I don't believe all the stories about Jesus.
Apparently you believe the NT is an accurate depiction of Jesus. If you want to be a Christian why not just be a Christian?

What I am doing is not believing the stories, I'm pointing out your interpretation is all over the map. You claim some verse is true, others are just stories, you have to make an entirely new gospel to make Bahai work. Yet another sign that its' fake.

No, they are not doing 'everything' it says the Comforter/Spirit of truth would do. Only Baha'u'llah did all these things.

· Teach you all things
· Call to remembrance what Jesus said
· Testify of Jesus
· Glorify Jesus, receive of Jesus, and shew it unto you
· Guide you into all truth
· Speak what He hears and shew you things to come
· Reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment

1) nothing here means a person is getting magical revelations
2) All religious leaders in Christianity meet this list
3) I cannot even believe you would make such a poor argument. Everything on the list is things any person could do.

That is the most pathetic interpretation I have ever seen in my entire life.
Christians cannot face the reality, that the same Jesus is never going to return to this world.
Christians are clueless as to what these verses mean, only Baha'is know.

LOL! This is too much. Only Bahai know because some dude who wrote a lot and made revelation claims also reinterpreted scripture and "he knows". Christians are clueless, yet their guy did magic, miracles, raised from the dead and your guy wrote books and excuses why he couldn't also do supernatural things.
Maybe some evidence first might be nice.

John 14:19 Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.
John 17:4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.
John 17:11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

Oh wow, so these verses are good but the other verse that say Jesus himself is coming back, those are mistaken.
And you have no evidence, a guy said so.

Son of God is a title that belongs exclusively to Jesus but Son of man is not a title that belongs exclusively to Jesus.
37 Bible verses about Son Of Man

Jesus was called the Son of man, but He was never slated to be the Son of man who will come in the clouds of heaven.

Who is the Son of man who will come in the clouds of heaven?

It's Jesus:

saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.”


in the Gospels. Also, it's an anonymous mythology that almost definitely didn't happen and it's extremely likely, based on scholarship that John also copied Mark and updated it with his personal ideas. None of it having anything to do with actual reality.
Christianity is a Hellenistic version of Judaism. So an offshoot religion that claims Jesus is real, is also a fantasy.

The title ‘Son of man’ is symbolic of the perfect humanity that Jesus represented, but it does not apply exclusively to Jesus. It ultimately comes from the Book of Daniel, where it refers to the Messiah. It is a Baha’i teaching that the title applies to both Jesus and Baha’u’llah.

Bahai teaching has no authority in the fantasy world because there is no evidence he's even a fictional character. He is a man who writes books in the real world.
I could write a new myth based on Lord of the Rings, wouldn't make LOTR true, wouldn't make my myth true. Even if I:

· Teach you all things LOTR
· Call to remembrance what LOTR said
· Testify of LOTR
· Glorify LOTR, receive of LOTR wisdom, and shew it unto you
· Guide you into all truth
· Speak what LOTR hears and shew you things to come
· Reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment

To explain in brief, ‘Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven’ means that the return of the Christ Spirit promised in the Bible will be made manifest from the heaven of the will of God, and will appear in the form of a human being. The term “heaven” means loftiness and exaltation. Although Jesus was delivered from the womb of His mother, in reality He descended from the heaven of the will of God. Though dwelling on this earth, His true habitation was the realms above. While walking among mortals on earth, Jesus soared in the heaven of the divine presence.

Baha’u’llah explained the meaning of clouds in The Kitáb-i-Íqán. The term “clouds” as used in the Bible means those things that are contrary to the ways and desires of men. Just like the physical clouds prevent the eyes of men from beholding the sun, the desires of men hindered men from recognizing the return of Christ. Thus the meaning of clouds is symbolic, not literal. Their judgment was clouded. Christians were looking for the same man Jesus in the same body that resurrected and ascended to appear in the actual physical clouds in the sky with power and great glory, trumpets and angels, but when that did not happen that way they rejected Baha’u’llah. However, if one looks at what happened before, during and after Baha’u’llah appeared there is not one prophecy that cannot be applied to Him.

He also thinks humans are not animals, the ether is real and is just a man writing about a mythical religion. You need evidence to believe claims of that nature. There are 1 million wu-wu translations of scripture.
Abraham-Hicks has a take, Jane Roberts /Seth has a take. Don't care.

 

[joelr]

God is never 'on the hook' for anything, since God is in no way accountable to humans.

Yes, God is on the hook to provide sufficient evidence to hold such a belief. There is not sufficient evidence for any God beliefs.

But your God apologetics are deplorable. So God can do anything because he is God. Kills women, children, babies, pets, cattle, it's ok because God. Nope.

Secondly, a strong case was made by Baha'u'llah, who was a Representative of God.

Sure, please provide sufficient evidence that a God is real, then provide evidence that Yahweh is that God, then even more-so, provide evidence that this Bahai is getting messages from this God.

You haven't even started with the first. Unreasonable beliefs by a logical , rational, methodology standard.

Thirdly, God did not create humans to have confirmation bias. Everyone can have a bias, no matter who they are. You have a bias against religious people.

IF a God created people (no evidence of that) he is infinite and would know all about confirmation bias and religious war. If he cared he would make it known he is God. In the stories he does want it to be known, so he would have done it correct, not so the world ends up divided and everyone is 100% convinced they are correct.


But I have no bias against religious people. I have a dislike for beliefs and methodologies that are founded on weak evidence, weak logic, and accepted emotionally rather than by empirical evidence.
Some people truly believe their God doesn't like gays, wants women to play a definitive submissive role and other anti-human rights issues. It's only a matter of time until another clever writer starts claiming revelations, but next time there may be a more radical message.
People need to be able to use critical thinking to accept things with evidence and disregard claims that require good evidence but merely reach out to fantasy aspects of the psyche.

3) is patently illogical. If God exists, what we see is what God chose, since it is reality. How we 'interpret' what we see will vary.
In reality, the claims are either true or false. They can never be proven true or false, except to ourselves.

A God could exist and all religions are false. This is generally called deism.

 

[joelr]

You said: A God would understand and respect logic and know the best minds use logic.
God would not want people "choosing with free will", the same method people use to join every cult, racial motivated hate group, oppressive political movement and so on. You reject the OT stories about Yahweh walking with people yet you keep the jealous "must use free will" God from the OT?
He would want us to know, through a logical, rational, empirical method that we are making a good choice because that is how the universe works. That is how humans have made progress in every area.
It also has nothing to do with us or free will. God would first, show he is God, and second he would not be uptight about our choice, freewill or not. He would not want to appear ambiguous, exactly the same as any cult with no evidence, he would know faith sucks, has been used to justify all movements good and evil.

'What God would' do as you depicted it is NOT in any scriptures. The scriptures contain no mentions of God and what his motivations are.
What you said above is all your personal opinion.

No, it's based on human experience. Methods that have worked best for humans understanding reality and based on ethics and morals which a God should have.

The scriptures DO contain motivations for God, have you read the OT?????????????????

Have fun. I don't care what anyone believes.

I don't believe that.

You don't know, but I do know they were written by a Messenger of God.

LOL, no one knows the truth, unless they are in Bahai, then they for sure know 100% what is true.
Wow, they must have amazing evidence?
Nope. Actually none at all. People just buy into it.

What is justified or unjustified belief is all a matter or personal opinion.

Not really, there are standards of evidence that when met, form a solid epistemology and can be shown to be effective.
There are standards that are not effective and can be shown to lead to false beliefs.
Your beliefs and 100% certainty is no different than a Mormon and the Mormon Bible or a JW and the JW message. All 100% certain equally, all have no good evidence.

I could say the same to you, can you not even see that?
You can try to make my view the negative view but it only shows your position is flawed because you are still trying to ad-hom me in subtle ways.

You can, but you sound delusional and desperate because I have not ad-homed you. And I present evidence for my beliefs.

But I would not say that since a negative view does not show that anyone's position is flawed.

Yes, the flaw is you have run out of things to say. But the thing that shows your position is flawed is you have no evidence. The evidence you present is no better than a Mormon, JW, Muslim, Scientologist, Roswell UFO believer and even worse is you not only don't care but you take full confidence in a flawed position. So you don't really seem to even care about what is actually true, as long as your beliefs are true.
Reality doesn't work that way. What you want to be true doesn't have to be true.

 

[joelr]

So what if those older religions use the stories? What does that mean, logically speaking? NOTHING. It only means that people are attached to their older religions that have stories in them, confirmation bias.

It isn't confirmation bias if all the religions DO have supernatural stories, it's a fact that religions needed those stories.

The only reason Baha'i doesn't have them is because Baha'i does not need them.

The reason they don't have them is because he cannot claim to be having super powers because people would see he doesn't. So instead, he says all those tales are misinterpretations. Sounds like a con.

And why wouldn't he need them? Nothing about the religion is believable? It looks exactly like a man who is a prolific writer who decided to make some false claims. OR was deluded into thinking he spoke for God.
Neil Patrick Harris/Conversations With God of the 1800s.

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

Already saw that, anecdotal evidence. One miracle was prediction of safer sea travel? Hilarious.




https://bahai-library.com/gammage_famous_miracles

2) Miracles are no proof of a revelation from God.

Might be a good start.

I did not say that they happened or did not happen. I only said that the Manifestations of God can do miracles.

“The Holy Manifestations are the sources of miracles and the originators of wonderful signs. For Them, any difficult and impracticable thing is possible and easy. For through a supernatural power wonders appear from Them; and by this power, which is beyond nature, They influence the world of nature. From all the Manifestations marvelous things have appeared.“​

Some Answered Questions, p. 100​

Oh so he "can do them" but doesn't. Or he did but a few people saw........whatever. This is Jesus in AU.


http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/SAQ/saq-22.html

Some of the miracles of Christ might have happened, but it doesn't really matter, except to some people like you.

“Observe: those who in appearance were physically alive, Christ considered dead; for life is the eternal life, and existence is the real existence. Wherever in the Holy Books they speak of raising the dead, the meaning is that the dead were blessed by eternal life; where it is said that the blind received sight, the signification is that he obtained the true perception; where it is said a deaf man received hearing, the meaning is that he acquired spiritual and heavenly hearing. This is ascertained from the text of the Gospel where Christ said: “These are like those of whom Isaiah said, They have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not; and I healed them. 2​

​

The meaning is not that the Manifestations are unable to perform miracles, for They have all power. But for Them inner sight, spiritual healing and eternal life are the valuable and important things. Consequently, whenever it is recorded in the Holy Books that such a one was blind and recovered his sight, the meaning is that he was inwardly blind, and that he obtained spiritual vision, or that he was ignorant and became wise, or that he was negligent and became heedful, or that he was worldly and became heavenly.“​

Some Answered Questions, pp. 101-102​

Lot of double talk. Hundreds of people wrote material like this. Talking around everything. Seth, Abraham -Hicks, BAshar, many more.
Heavenly hearing? LOL, he works so hard to not have to do magic. So he knew what was up.