clara17
Memorable member
are you sure? There was no cancer prior to the introduction of toxins into food and medicine
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Does Atheism Lead to Immoral Behavior?
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
Are you sure? Here's a timeline of cancer from the 18th century BCE until 2011 (around 39 centuries). What you mean is there wasn't enough medical knowledge, or sophisticated tools, to diagnose cancer until fairly recently. It has been around evidence of tumors have been found in fossils dating from 70-80 million years ago.
History of Cancer
Explore a timeline of the history of cancer from 18th century BCE to 2011.
canceratlas.cancer.org
Tomef
Well-Known Member
I’ve never tied anyone to the train tracks, or to an over-pressurised boiler, or anything so dastardly. It’s people motivated by religious zealotry or ideological conviction who have committed the worst horrors in human history, on a large scale. So I think it’s the tendency some people have to buy into ‘the truth’ as they see it, whether politically or religiously, in a totalitarian sense, that is at the root of much evil.I'd suppose this depends on what you view as moral behavior but I thought I'd ask the question to see what people would say.
It is easy to justify one's personal morals but I'd like you to consider the world at large. Is the world becoming more moral or less moral?
And, does this have anything to do with the decline of religious belief?
As a kind of cultural codification of fundamental moral behaviour, the kinds of things most societies, or all societies are based on, the sort of diffused legacy of religion has some use, but only when it’s out of the hands of zealots and other assorted nuts.
Brian2
Veteran Member
You seem to have a strange concept of what "restore" means if you think that Baha'u'llah did any restoration.
However I know you must say that since you believe Baha'u'llah is whom Acts 3:21 and the holy prophets must have been referring to. But if we read from verse 19 we can see that Peter was speaking about the return of Jesus.
Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.
When it comes to cancer I can speak from experience.
Regardless, cancers of various kinds are found in nearly all mammals. As for humans, there's evidence of a case of breast cancer from ancient Egypt around 2200 BCE >News - 4,200-Year-Old Case of Breast Cancer Found in Egypt - Archaeology Magazine<.
Cancer is nothing new.
PS Here's >Cancer in Wild Animals | CancerQuest< one about evidence of cancer in dinosaurs.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Citation needed.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Baha'u'llah restored us in the following way since He renewed the Holy Spirit.
8. Ezekiel 36:26 – Restoration of the Heart
"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you..."“One who does not know God’s Messengers, however, is like a plant growing in the shade. Although it knows not the sun, it is, nevertheless, absolutely dependent on it. The great Prophets are spirits suns, and Bahá’u’lláh is the sun of this “day” in which we live. The suns of former days have warmed and vivified the world, and had those suns not shone, the earth would not be cold and dead, but it is the sunshine of today that alone can ripen the fruits which the suns of former days have kissed into life.”
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
How is it God's fault that people do not accept His Messengers?
All new Messengers have been rejected when they first appear and they continue to be rejected for the same reasons Baha'u'llah was rejected.
I would say that #4 is the main reason that a new Messenger of God is rejected.
Below are the seven reasons why more people have not recognized Baha’u’llah yet.
None of them have anything to do with God or Baha'u'llah. All of them are related to human behavior.
1. Many people have never heard of Baha’u’llah, so they do not know there is something to look for. It is the responsibility of the Baha’is to get the message out, so if that is not happening, the Baha’is are to blame. However, once the message has been delivered the Baha’is are not to blame if people reject the message.
2. But even after people know about Baha’u’llah, most people are not even willing to look the evidence in order to determine if He was a Messenger of God or not.
3. Even if they are willing to look at the evidence, there is a lot of prejudice before even getting out the door to look at the evidence.
4. 84% of people in the world already have a religion and they are happy with their religion so they have no interest in a “new religion” or a new Messenger of God.
5. The rest of the world’s population is agnostics or atheists or believers who are prejudiced against all religion.
6. Agnostics or atheists and atheists and believers who have no religion either do not believe that God communicates via Messengers or they find fault with the Messenger, Baha’u’llah.
7. Baha’u’llah brought new teachings and laws that are very different from the older religions so many people are suspicious of those teachings and/or don’t like the laws because some laws require them to give things up that they like doing.
Sorry, I use logic and reason in my thinking -- it is impossible for me to think like you. Not a single word that you said above makes it in the slightest reasonable for an all-powerful deity to continue to use the same failed method, unless He actually doesn't want a different result. In which case, it obviously wouldn't matter what anyone believed.
It's as if we set up a system to warn people of tsunamis, and the first tsunami that came after we set it up got the message to 1..2% of everybody in danger, and several thousand deaths resulted. If the designers said, "that's good enough, we'll do he same next time," they'd be out of jobs in an eyeblink.
Because that tsunami warning is "an important message that people need to hear." If we fail so badly, we must think of another way! And being human, we will. I guess, maybe that's what they mean when they say "God is unchanging."
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
Brian2
Veteran Member
If we read the whole chapter we see that Ezekiel 36:26 is written about the Jews when they are brought back to Israel from around the world. It has not happened yet.
The idea that Jesus is just one of a series of so called "Messengers" is just something that the anti christ spirit said through Baha'u'llah.
Nobody else brought the Holy Spirit, only Jesus the Messiah, and that was a part of the New Covenant that God promised to the Jews and which also was sent out to the Gentiles. (see Isa 49:1-6)
The promise of the Holy Spirit is for all who accept Jesus as their Lord and saviour. IOW there is no need to renew the Holy Spirit.
And yes of course Baha'u'llah claims to be the best of a long series of inventions called "Messengers". This idea is a Baha'u'llah invention and is not seen in other religions.
Jesus claims to be the one and only Messiah, the promise of God in the OT, the one whom the NT tells us will return to finish the job he started 2000 years ago and which he is working on even now to finish.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Please pay attention.
I did not claim that Ezekiel 36:26 applied to Baha'u'llah.
All I said was that Baha'u'llah restored us in the following way (the way it says in Ezekiel 36:26) since Baha'u'llah renewed the Holy Spirit.
The idea that Jesus is God and the only way to the Father (which is a contradiction) is a false teaching of Christianity.
Baha'u'llah also brought the Holy Spirit.
“O kings of Christendom! Heard ye not the saying of Jesus, the Spirit of God, “I go away, and come again unto you”? Wherefore, then, did ye fail, when He did come again unto you in the clouds of heaven, to draw nigh unto Him, that ye might behold His face, and be of them that attained His Presence? In another passage He saith: “When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”
“We, in truth, have sent Him Whom We aided with the Holy Spirit (Jesus Christ) that He may announce unto you this Light that hath shone forth from the horizon of the will of your Lord, the Most Exalted, the All-Glorious, and Whose signs have been revealed in the West. Set your faces towards Him (Bahá’u’lláh) on this Day which God hath exalted above all other days, and whereon the All-Merciful hath shed the splendour of His effulgent glory upon all who are in heaven and all who are on earth.”
There was a definite need to renew the Holy Spirit.
The promise of the Holy Spirit is for all who accept Baha'u'llah as a Manifestation of God.
Baha'u'llah never claimed to be the BEST. In fact, He warned us never to call any of the Manifestations of God the best.
“Beware, O believers in the Unity of God, lest ye be tempted to make any distinction between any of the Manifestations of His Cause, or to discriminate against the signs that have accompanied and proclaimed their Revelation. This indeed is the true meaning of Divine Unity, if ye be of them that apprehend and believe this truth. Be ye assured, moreover, that the works and acts of each and every one of these Manifestations of God, nay whatever pertaineth unto them, and whatsoever they may manifest in the future, are all ordained by God, and are a reflection of His Will and Purpose. Whoso maketh the slightest possible difference between their persons, their words, their messages, their acts and manners, hath indeed disbelieved in God, hath repudiated His signs, and betrayed the Cause of His Messengers.”
Jesus made no such claims. Christianity made ALL those claims.
Jesus never promised to return to earth, not once in the New Testament. Jesus said His work was finished here and He was no more in the world. That means that the return of Christ has to be another Person.
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 16:10 Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more.
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.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Why would you think that God cares about the result? Whether we accept God's Messengers does not affect God one way or another.
That God is all-powerful is irrelevant because that does not mean God is going to change His time-honored method of communication to humans.
Most people in the world believe in God because of a Messenger of God so that method has been very successful.
According to the statistics, 84 percent of the world population has a faith.
84 percent of the world population has faith; a third are Christian - Washington Times
"Worldwide, more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group," says a new comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Because most faiths have a religious Founder or what I call a Messenger that means most people believe in God because of a Messenger. We know that Christians and Muslims believe in a Messenger and they comprise 55% of the world population. It does not matter if you call them a Messenger; they are holy men who founded the religions, so they are intermediaries between God and man. Sure, there are a few believers who believe in God but not a Messenger but that is not the norm. The point is that with no Messengers or holy men very few people would believe in God.
The fact that most people do not recognize the new Messenger is a failure on the part of humans and I already explained why that happens.
To compare knowing that a tsunami is coming to people recognizing the latest Messenger of God is fallacious because it is comparing apples and oranges.It's as if we set up a system to warn people of tsunamis, and the first tsunami that came after we set it up got the message to 1..2% of everybody in danger, and several thousand deaths resulted. If the designers said, "that's good enough, we'll do he same next time," they'd be out of jobs in an eyeblink.
Because that tsunami warning is "an important message that people need to hear." If we fail so badly, we must think of another way! And being human, we will. I guess, maybe that's what they mean when they say "God is unchanging."
The tsunami warning is "an important message that people need to hear" because their life depends upon hearing it.
By contrast, nobody's life depends upon knowing who the latest Messenger of God was. Do you see anyone dying because they did not recognize Baha'u'llah? I don't.
Brian2
Veteran Member
Denying the divine nature of Jesus is a common claim of the many groups that attack Christianity, but that has only a minor relationship to what I said. My main point is that the Baha'i idea of "Messengers" and what they are is something of Baha'i and it is not of the religions and people to whom Baha'i applies the title and description, and that includes the people in the Bible whom Baha'i want to say are "Messengers" together with Baha'u'llah. It is an invention which is clearly wrong if we look at the description of these others in the other religions.
So Jesus is the Spirit of God (Holy Spirit) and Baha'u'llah promised Jesus (the Holy Spirit) to all those who accept Baha'u'llah as a Manifestation of God. But Jesus had already promised to come with the Father and make His home with those who love Him. (John 14:23). There is no need for anything that Baha'u'llah claims to offer, it is already given by Jesus.
Welllll, there does seem to be a bit of "I am the best Manifestation" in what Baha'u'llah says.
“We, in truth, have sent Him Whom We aided with the Holy Spirit (Jesus Christ) that He may announce unto you this Light that hath shone forth from the horizon of the will of your Lord, the Most Exalted, the All-Glorious, and Whose signs have been revealed in the West. Set your faces towards Him (Bahá’u’lláh) on this Day which God hath exalted above all other days, and whereon the All-Merciful hath shed the splendour of His effulgent glory upon all who are in heaven and all who are on earth.”
Bahá'í Reference Library - Proclamation of Bahá’u’lláh, Pages 17-23
As for the highlighted part of the quote that you gave, that's not only ridiculous, it shows that Baha'u'llah had no idea of the gospel message and what Jesus did to accomplish this salvation that He offers. (Or maybe he just did not want others to see the uniqueness of the gospel message of Jesus and wanted to squash it,,,,,,,,,,,, as the spirit of the antichrist wants to do)
Even Baha'u'llah says that Jesus promised to return, but you say that Jesus said that He would not return. I agree with Baha'u'llah on this one,,,,,,,,,,,,,, but of course Jesus promised to return in person so I have to disagree with Baha'u'llah that he (Baha'u'llah) is the return of Jesus or that Baha'u'llah came on the clouds of heaven.
“O kings of Christendom! Heard ye not the saying of Jesus, the Spirit of God, “I go away, and come again unto you”? Wherefore, then, did ye fail, when He did come again unto you in the clouds of heaven, to draw nigh unto Him, that ye might behold His face, and be of them that attained His Presence? In another passage He saith: “When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”
Bahá'í Reference Library - Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Pages 246-249
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Not really. As you said, ruach means breath, wind, or spirit. In the Tanakh the expression is used to denote the power and might of God, power to inspire the prophets, power to create and sustain, etc. But it is not an entity. In Christianity, the Holy Spirit is an entity, the third person of the Trinity.
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Not because of evidence. If there was evidence then rational minds would believe it too. Muslims believe in the Quran for the same reason you believe in the Bible.
What's God waiting for? As we see your God doesn't have a problem creating new borns that will develop cancer before they hit puberty.
Given your God creates cancer in some folks, in a sort of lottery, you shouldn't have very much confidence that "what comes after" will be good. It's almost as if your God doesn't exist and what people encounter in their lives is the random lottery of life as governed by nature. But you claim a God exists and is in control, so it gets the blame for every case of cancer, and for the deaths it causes.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Baha'is believe basically the same thing.
We believe that the Holy Spirit is the Bounty of God whose luminous rays flow from God to man through the prophets.
Brian2
Veteran Member
In the OT and NT God's Spirit can be see to be alive and have qualities that a living being has. eg. Isa 63:10 But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit. So He turned and became their enemy, and He Himself fought against them.
In both the OT and NT the Spirit is seen to carry and/or be the presence of God.
Isa 63:8 He said, “Surely they are my people,
children who will be true to me”;
and so he became their Savior.
9 In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
10 Yet they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he turned and became their enemy
and he himself fought against them.