Evidence

[Trailblazer]

But this isn't true. I think you're creating a straw man, here.
Atheism and reason say that belief is reserved for that which is evidenced.
I don't say God doesn't exist. I say belief is provisional -- pending evidence.

Maybe you don't say that but some atheists say that.

I say that belief is reserved for that which is evidenced and I believe I have evidence.
I am not going to argue what is evidence and what is not evidence for God since that is an exercise in futility since it is only a matter of personal opinion.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I doubt God would do such a lousy job..

An absurdity.
50% of people in the world clearly do not think so.

 

[Trailblazer]

To the well educated on this matter the reincarnation in Buddhism isn't what Westerners tend to believe. there is no personality that passes on to another life. What Buddhism says is that our souls are an essence that makes up the living person. Have you ever heard the terms "young soul" or "old soul"? An old soul is more common, but it means to refer to people who are unusually smart and wise for their age. This would mean their soul has had many incarnations anmd has learned a lot through many lives. Young souls have few incarnations and are tyically unwise and have a lot to learn. Some believe souls reach an end and become part of the universe.

There are many different takes on souls and reincarnation, but this seems to be the most common in my exverience.

I personally don't believe in any of this. In Buddhism we are allowed to reject any ideas we don't think are relevant or true. This is unlike many rigid religions where there is dogma that has to be accepted, and the believers prisoners to it.

Post #2000 - you get the door prize.

 

[John53]

Just out of curiousity -- how on earth do you think you can know what God chooses if God chooses to reveal nothing -- not even what He chooses? Your "belief" on that issue is purely a product of your mind, and your mind alone.

Great question on what has been a glaring contradiction in many posts. I eagerly await the response of backflips, denials, accusations and 101 mentioned several times. I never have worked out what 101 means.

 

[John53]

An absurdity.
50% of people in the world clearly do not think so.

50% clearly do... so what?

 

[Trailblazer]

But there is not evidence in the epistemic sense; no objective, empirical evidence.

There can never be any objective, empirical evidence if God since God can never be seen.
All humanity has ever had are the Messengers who claim to represent God. We either believe them or we do not.

 

[Trailblazer]

But that's usually true, and we are usually criticizing the claim or the proffered support for it. not the claimant.

Only in your opinion do the believers have no evidence.
In our opinion we have evidence.

 

[CG Didymus]

Yes it seems to me it started with the conclusion and then worked backwards to shoehorn everything in to fit it, albeit involving great misappropriation and deceit along the way. I'm perfectly happy that someone thinks Buddhism is a crock if it seems incorrect or whatever, but the Bahai stealing of the name and cherry-picking to use to its own ends is rather galling.

Yes, it didn't matter what it was or what it is now. It's how can the Baha'i Faith make it fit into their concept of progressive revelation. But they do that with all religions. Like with Christianity I think it's clear that the gospels say Jesus came back to life. But that's not something that Baha'is want, so they say the gospels were being symbolic and that Jesus rose "spiritually". I don't know why they bother; they are claiming that they have replaced Christianity and the other religions anyway.

But then they come back with "all religions are one"?

 

[Trailblazer]

Common sense is based on familiarity and experience, not critical analysis or logic. It was only when people began abandoning commonsenical explanations that human knowledge of the how and why of the world worked skyrocketed. Abandoning common sense was behind the scientific and technological revolution.
Religion, on the other hand, hasn't made much progress at all.

I will grant you that most religions have not made any progress at all, but Imo the Baha'i Faith is progress itself.

 

[CG Didymus]

One has to look at the whole, in order to be able to understand what is being taught.
I would say that Gospel of John is a sectarian Gospel.
..well I would, wouldn't I.

One can see from the word go, that it has a very strong "Christology", compared to the others.
We also have to bear in mind that Paul(Saul) was not a disciple .. some people claim he was a prophet .. but then why would the Messiah ascend to heaven, just to be replaced by Paul?
.. makes no sense to me.

I'm okay with people not believing the NT. But Islam and the Baha'i Faith do believe at least some of it. But which parts and why? And how do they explain the parts they don't believe are true?

 

[CG Didymus]

And that is where I don't understand their claims.

No matter how good or special a person is, they can still be mistaken. And their goodness is NOT evidence of a supernatural. They are, after all, natural beings.

So, even if their prophet is good, wise, and wonderful, it would *still* not come anywhere close to showing they are a 'messenger' from a deity.

For me, I also have to wonder how accurate the stories are that tell us how wonderful he was. At least with Bible characters, they had character flaws, even the ones Baha'is claim were "perfect" reflections of God, manifestations.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

I just posted this on another thread but I think it also belongs on this thread.

We are all arguing from ignorance, since there is no proof that God exists, but we are not all committing the fallacy of "argument from ignorance."

Argument from ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,

1. true
2. false
3. unknown between true or false
4. being unknowable (among the first three).[1]

Argument from ignorance - Wikipedia

Most atheists say that the proposition "God exists" is false because it has not yet been proven true by the believers' evidence.
If they do this they commit the fallacy and their argument is illogical.

As a believer I do not claim that the proposition "God exists" is true because it has not yet been proven false, since the proposition cannot be proven true or false. I simply say that the proposition "God exists" unknowable.
I believe that "God exists" but I do not claim it because I cannot prove it is true.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This can also be applied to whether Baha'ullah was a Messenger of God or not.

Most atheists say that the proposition "Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God" is false because it has not yet been proven true by the believers' evidence.
Thus they commit the fallacy and their argument is illogical.

As a believer I do not claim that the proposition "Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God" is true because it has not yet been proven false, since the proposition cannot be proven true or false. I simply say that the proposition "Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God" unknowable.

I believe that "Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God" but I do not claim it because I cannot prove that Baha'u'llah ever got messages from God. Nobody can prove that. We either believe or disbelieve that based upon the evidence. The evidence I have presented IS the evidence, although there might be more evidence I have not thought of. Thus people are welcome to look for more evidence.

Proofs and Arguments for the Existence of God

Regards Tony

 

[Polymath257]

That is the main definition..
Abrahamic belief is not founded on ignorance .. on the contrary.

Look at the second definition. I would also say that faith in a supernatural deity is a type of trust in magic, so even that part of the first definition applies.

 

[Polymath257]

Only in your opinion do the believers have no evidence.
In our opinion we have evidence.

Well, if you say that anything can be evidence of anything, then everything is evidence of everything. But it isn't evidence that actually supports any conclusions or beliefs.

It seems to be a drastic lowering of standards of evidence to allow for the types of evidence you promote.

 

[Polymath257]

There can never be any objective, empirical evidence if God since God can never be seen.
All humanity has ever had are the Messengers who claim to represent God. We either believe them or we do not.

OK, good.

Now what reason do we have to believe them? Especially in matters like the existence of a deity?

 

[CG Didymus]

If they don't fit into his narrative then they are obviously false messengers. It must be nice. Having an irrational belief can make reasoning effortless. Almost as if little to no reasoning was involved at all.

Like you said, he pretty much just makes claims and thinks he's done his job.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Proofs and Arguments for the Existence of God

Regards Tony

Are humans supposed to "Know" God?
What I find a bit difficult to say is "God i can not see you or hear you, but I KNOW you are there"
To me, it would be more wise to say, God, I believe in you and even i can not see you, I have faith because you tell me to be strong in faith through the teaching.

Not sure this make sense to others.

 

[Trailblazer]

Let us return, then, to your OP, and the "evidence," as you put it.

The Person

What do you know about this "Person?" All you can ever know, about anyone (any one of the thousands of humans who have claimed to come wih "messages from God") is what they say there are. You cannot observe them getting this message. You have no ability, no means, of testing whether they have "qualities of two separate natures," the human and the divine or spiritual. Only what they say. Such men have included, as I have pointed out before, Joseph Smith, David Koresh, Sun Myung Moon, Marshall Applewhite, Jim Jones, and many others.

These "Persons" have also included the virtually certain-to-be mythical, like Abraham and Moses. And if they are mythical, then their "message" was actually written by somebody else, who you do not claim to have been a "messenger."

What you do NOT have is any corroborating evidence whatever to indicate that these "persons" are who and what they say they are. So, the "evidence" that you accept as evidence of the divine is your own predisposed selection of what and who to believe. In other words, you are all the evidence you need of the "Person."

The Revelation

How many of the "Revelations" that you claim have been given to man by God have you studied, and how have you compared one to the other in order to determine if they are in any way cohesive -- something that one would certainly expect if they are all coming from the same, omniscient source. God cannot, surely, be expected to be "more omniscient today than yesterday," as this would absolutely deny the meaning of the word omniscience itself.

Now, let me ask you to consider whether many of these "Revelations" have set humans against each other, resulting in untold war, misery and death? Can it really be that this is what God wanted to accomplish? Or is it possible God did not know that would be the result of asking one culture, in one place and time, to believe something absolutely for centuries or millenia, and then sending along a new "Revelation" to say, "okay, stop that and believe something else now."

But let me assure you, religious dispute has, throughout human history, been a terrible reality, and has resulted in exactly what I said: war, misery and death.

The Message

This is going to be your hardest challenge, because here's what we can say with certainty about any "Message" enjoining us how to live, worship and engage with one another for the purpose of improving human future: that you cannot and will not know whether it is a "Message" of real value until that future has arrived. Thus, you must take that 100% on trust.

Unless, of course, you reflect that if the "Message" has changed many times (as you yourself affirm that it has), that previous "Messages" have indeed been failures. And if you assume, as you have suggested, that at some remove in the future some new "Messenger" will come with a new "Revelation" and a new "Message," that this one will be, by that time, known to have not been all that it was cracked up to be either.

Can you see why some of us remain sketical?

You raise some good points. No, we cannot know much about the Person, Revelation, and Message of the Messengers of the past, in the sense that we cannot verify anything that has been written about them.

However, we can know about the Person, Revelation, and Message of Baha'u'llah, since that has all been recorded and it modern history.

Imo, the older Revelations from God really do not matter now, since they have been superseded by the Revelation of Baha'u'llah.

“All that lives, and this includes the religions, have springtime, a time of maturity, of harvest and wintertime. Then religion becomes barren, a lifeless adherence to the letter uninformed by the spirit, and man’s spiritual life declines. When we look at religious history, we see that God has spoken to men precisely at times when they have reached the nadir of their degradation and cultural decadence. Moses came to Israel when it was languishing under the Pharaoh’s yoke, Christ appeared at a time when the Jewish Faith had lost its power and culture of antiquity was in its death those. Muhammad came to a people who lived in barbaric ignorance at the lowest level of culture and into a world in which the former religions had strayed far away from their origins and nearly lost their identity. The Bab addressed Himself to a people who had irretrievably lost their former grandeur and who found themselves in a state of hopeless decadence. Baha’u’llah came to a humanity which was approaching the most critical phase of its history.”
(Udo Schaefer, The Light Shineth in Darkness, p. 24)

 

[Trailblazer]

No, because you have three concepts that do not correspond to fact.

• Messengers aren't known to be authentic.
• No God is known to exist.
• A Holy Spirit is not known to exist.

You can't name these three things as evidence for each existing when none of them are factual as claimed.

I never claimed that any of those are facts. When I stated it I stated it as a belief.

Yet there is no evidence that suggests he had divine communication. In fact his writings have errors, and that is evidence that he is not what he claims to be.

There is evidence but there is no proof, and that is why it is not a fact.

You cannot say that His Writings have errors unless you can prove they are in error. Your personal opinion will not do.

 

[CG Didymus]

But there is not evidence in the epistemic sense; no objective, empirical evidence. There is, at best, anecdotal evidence.
People accept religion because it's taught them before they're capable of evaluating or analyzing it. It's installed as ROM or part of their intellectual operating system. Society and confirmation bias reïnforce it, and logic and reason aren't applied, or are misused, for various reasons.

I looked up whether or not there were "scientific" studies about the existence of God, and several turned up...

While Intelligent Design skeptics may claim there is no evidence of God, the actual scientific evidence for God's existence is overwhelming, scientifically answering the question, "does God exist?".​

Then this one,

What does the evidence show?
Ironically, as scientific discovery has progressed, the evidence for God’s existence has actually grown stronger rather than weaker...​

Then this book,

Science Proves That God Exists
William Schonfelder​

Maybe not Baha'is, but Christians think that science shows proof and evidence for God. I wonder what Baha'is think about those studies. Especially if they claim to prove Jesus is God.