Can you give me a solid proof

[Trailblazer]

Or maybe [he] turned 65 and just retired?

[He] retired long before 65. I guess [He opted] for early retirement.

 

[Twilight Hue]

No, the evidence is not in my mind. The evidence is the Messengers of God.

It's in your mind. If not, then where is it outside your mind that validates this?

 

[Twilight Hue]

Or maybe [he] turned 65 and just retired?

There is no retirement anymore.

 

[blü 2]

[He] retired long before 65. I guess [He opted] for early retirement.

It's VERY like the hunt for D B Cooper, y'know.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

No, I do not care about the burden of proof because I do not have any burden of proof since I am not trying to prove anything to anybody.

The burden of proof has nothing to do with "wanting to convince others" and everything with a conceptual "status of believability" of claims. It rests upon claims, not upon people. Off course it's people that make the claims and meeting the burden of proof would be their own responsibility.

But no other people need to be involved. If I care about being rationally justified in my beliefs, I myself will want to meet my own burden of proof. As failing to do so would mean that I'm not rationally justified in believing what *I* myself believe. And as said already, I actually care about holding rational beliefs.

The burden of proof applies to all claims. Regardless of who makes the claims and why. They are hooked to the claims themselves, not to whatever motivation people have to make them.

I am rationally justified in my beliefs, and I don't need to prove that to anyone.

To be rationally justified in your beliefs, you'ld have to meet the burden of proof of the claims you believe.
You either can or can't do that.

It seems that you can't. Or you would have said so already.
So yeah....

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I adamantly disagree [with premarital and extramarital sex] for reasons that were already stated. Please bear in mind that the following was written about 70 years ago. How much worse it is today! Divorces, broken families, STDs and unwanted pregnancies are the result of the inability of people to control the sex instinct.

That's irrelevant to the question of the merit of sex outside of marriage. The way to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancies is with contraception, not abstinence, which advice has failed more young people and led to more unwanted pregnancies than the advice to have safe sex. Sarah Palin's daughter was the poster child for the failure of advising abstinence only.

I don't want to make it to personal, but after several years of sex outside of marriage without incident in my youth, I became a Christian, met a Christian girl, proposed to her, and married her all without any sexual relations before the marriage. Huge mistake. I don't think I would have married her had I known what was in store.

And I mentioned the problem of the Catholic clergy.

The overemphasis on sex has absolutely nothing to do with religion.

I think you misunderstood what I meant by the overemphasis on sex. I am talking about the church's meddling in the sexual matters of people. The church overemphasizes sex with its irrationa, unnatural, and destructive moralizing.

You mean most atheists and agnostics who are critical thinkers will come to compatible conclusions. I disagree with you because I do not believe the conclusions of so-called critical thinkers are sound at all, since they have concluded that God does not exist for reasons that I do not consider valid.

No, even the theists who are competent critical thinkers will be in agreement about how to evaluate evidence and arrive at sound conclusion.

Also, most atheists have NOT concluded that gods don't exist. You've never seen those words from me. In fact, you and I recently discussed what I called non-interventionalist gods and the impossibility not only to rule them out, but to even make an educated guess on the likelihood of their existence.

Also, you didn't come to your god belief using sound critical thinking, but if you had, the other critical thinkers would be right there with you, since the method is constrained to produce only sound results. That was my point about critical thinking - it leads to consensus, because if there is right way and unlimited numbers of wrong ways of assessing a proposition, those using that method will be in agreement, and those who don't will be all over the place like the religionists are now. There is only one logically sound form of atheism, agnostic atheism, but countless numbers of religions, denominations, and deities. That's because the former is constrained by the ruled of evidence and reason, and the latter not.

How many people on this forum disagree with me has nothing to do with whether the Baha’i Faith is true or false, or whether God exists or not.

Agreed. I didn't claim otherwise.

It would be committing the fallacy of ad populum to suggest that and that is not what I consider critical thinking.

What I wrote was, "Have you not noticed how many people disagree with you in the same way? There was no ad populum fallacy committed because there was no argument that something is correct because many people believe it.

The consensus of expert opinion is by itself strong evidence that that opinion is probably correct, but not proof, and is not offered as proof. The experts will show you the proof. Right now, the consensus of informed opinion is that the coronavirus is more dangerous than the vaccines, and that all qualified individuals should take it. What makes this correct is not that consensus of opinion, but the data that led to it. That's the main point here. Critical analysis of that data invariably leads to the same conclusion.

The large numbers of people that don't understand that and believe the opposite are the ones unwilling or unable to evaluate data even as simple as the relative number of hospital deaths among the vaccinated and unvaccinated. They are not critical thinkers. You may call their uninformed opinions consensus because they agree to not get vaccinated, but consensus among the unqualified and uninformed is of little value, and arguing that they are correct because of their numbers is ad populum fallacy. And as with theists who all agree that there is a god, unlike with critical thought, once you get past that, there is no consensus. The reasons the consensus of people advocating vaccination give will be identical. The reason the "consensus" of antivaxxers give will vary widely if they give a reason at all.

 

[Trailblazer]

It's in your mind. If not, then where is it outside your mind that validates this?

The evidence is the Messengers of God.
The evidence for Messengers of God is their Person, their completed Mission, and the scriptures they wrote.
That does not exist in my mind, it exists/existed in reality.

 

[Twilight Hue]

The evidence is the Messengers of God.
The evidence for Messengers of God is their Person, their completed Mission, and the scriptures they wrote.
That does not exist in my mind, it exists/existed in reality.

Those are just other people. .

That's what I'm pointing out, which it's always sourced to people and nothing else.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The evidence is the Messengers of God.
The evidence for Messengers of God is their Person, their completed Mission, and the scriptures they wrote.
That does not exist in my mind, it exists/existed in reality.

We have been over why that fails ad nauseum.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You know i play dumb in this thread because you can not prove the non existence of God, just as I can not prove scientific that God exist.

But when we can't tell whether something exists:

- living as if it doesn't exist is reasonable.

- living as if it does exist is unreasonable.

- living as if you know its wishes and actions is very unreasonable.

- building your life around the absolute certainty that the thing exists and you know its wishes is completely ridiculous.

 

[Trailblazer]

The burden of proof has nothing to do with "wanting to convince others" and everything with a conceptual "status of believability" of claims. It rests upon claims, not upon people. Off course it's people that make the claims and meeting the burden of proof would be their own responsibility.

I am making no claims. I believe the claims of Baha'u'llah so I am a Baha'i.
Baha'u'llah made the claims and I believe he met the burden of proof because He backed up His claims.
Not everyone will believe the claims because everyone views the evidence differently.

But no other people need to be involved. If I care about being rationally justified in my beliefs, I myself will want to meet my own burden of proof. As failing to do so would mean that I'm not rationally justified in believing what *I* myself believe. And as said already, I actually care about holding rational beliefs.

The burden of proof applies to all claims. Regardless of who makes the claims and why. They are hooked to the claims themselves, not to whatever motivation people have to make them.

I believe the claims of Baha'u'llah because I believe He met His burden of proof by providing evidence that backs up His claims, so Imo I am rationally justified in believing what *I* myself believe.

To be rationally justified in your beliefs, you'ld have to meet the burden of proof of the claims you believe.
You either can or can't do that.

It seems that you can't. Or you would have said so already.
So yeah....

I do not have to justify what I believe to anyone except myself. Imo, I am rationally justified in my beliefs because they are based on good evidence.

 

[RestlessSoul]

But when we can't tell whether something exists:

- living as if it doesn't exist is reasonable.

- living as if it does exist is unreasonable.

- living as if you know its wishes and actions is very unreasonable.

- building your life around the absolute certainty that the thing exists and you know its wishes is completely ridiculous.

Most unreasonable of all, is your apparent conviction that man can navigate through life guided by reason alone.

 

[Trailblazer]

We have been over why that fails ad nauseum.

Only in your opinion. We all have opinions.
And since we have been over it I do not want to go over it again.

 

[Trailblazer]

Those are just other people. .

That's what I'm pointing out, which it's always sourced to people and nothing else.

Messengers of God are human but they are also divine, so they are not just 'other people.'
The only way anyone is going to receive any communication from God is through the Messengers.
God is not going to speak to anyone else directly because nobody else has the capacity to understand God.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Only in your opinion. We all have opinions.
And since we have been over it I do not want to go over it again.

That is false and we have been over that too. You are trying to make your own special definition of "evidence". Words do not work that way. The meaning of words may change over time, but one person does not get to redefine words.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Messengers of God are human but they are also divine, so they are not just 'other people.'
The only way anyone is going to receive any communication from God is through the Messengers.
God is not going to speak to anyone else directly because nobody else has the capacity to understand God.

Claims are not evidence. Once again, here are the red tiles that you ordered:

 

[Trailblazer]

That is false and we have been over that too. You are trying to make your own special definition of "evidence". Words do not work that way. The meaning of words may change over time, but one person does not get to redefine words.

I do not have my own definition of evidence. I go by the dictionary definitions.

Evidence: anything that helps to prove that something is or is not true: EVIDENCE | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid: https://www.google.com/search

Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened.
Objective evidence definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

What is subjective and objective evidence?

Subjective evidence is evidence that we cannot evaluate. In fact, we have two choices; to accept what somebody says or reject it. ... Objective evidence is evidence that we can examine and evaluate for ourselves.
Objective evidence - definition and meaning - Market ...

We can examine and evaluate the evidence for the Baha'i Faith for ourselves thus it is objective evidence. For example, we can examine and evaluate the evidence for Baha'u'llah for ourselves because there are actual facts surrounding the Person, the Life, and the Mission of Baha'u'llah.

 

[Trailblazer]

Claims are not evidence.

I never said that claims are evidence. In fact, I have said about a hundred times that claims are not evidence.
Evidence is what supports claims.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I do not have my own definition of evidence. I go by the dictionary definitions.

Evidence: anything that helps to prove that something is or is not true: EVIDENCE | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary

That is an exceedingly weak definition of evidence. By the way, when you go use dictionary definitions for a complex idea you have admitted that you are wrong.

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid: https://www.google.com/search

That is a little bit better and guess what, you just refuted your claims about their being evidence for your beliefs. The key word being "facts".

Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened.
Objective evidence definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

What is subjective and objective evidence?

Subjective evidence is evidence that we cannot evaluate. In fact, we have two choices; to accept what somebody says or reject it. ... Objective evidence is evidence that we can examine and evaluate for ourselves.
Objective evidence - definition and meaning - Market ...

We can examine and evaluate the evidence for the Baha'i Faith for ourselves thus it is objective evidence. For example, we can examine and evaluate the evidence for Baha'u'llah for ourselves because there are actual facts surrounding the Person, the Life, and the Mission of Baha'u'llah.

And back to weak definitions of evidence.

Here is something else that you need to understand:

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Your claims are all in the extraordinary class and none of the "evidence" has been any stronger than me saying:

"I bought a puppy today!"

My claim in itself is evidence. The above claim many people would take as enough evidence to believe me. If I said:

"I bought a 12 foot dragon today!!"

You would be much more likely to demand some sort of reliable evidence. My claim alone is not strong enough evidence for such an event. So until you show some reliable evidence, and "I am convinced of it" is never enough for a concept to be reliable, the question is are other people convinced by it, then you have no evidence for your beliefs.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I never said that claims are evidence. In fact, I have said about a hundred times that claims are not evidence.
Evidence is what supports claims.

The problem is that you contradict yourself when you post only claims as evidence.