Evidence

[The Sum of Awe]

I was thinking they were just evidence that a man named Bahaullah who claimed things, made those statements.

That’s about it. Too bad to OP promised “evidence of the hidden God” but refused to give any

 

[Polymath257]

..maybe so, but it is not generally considered ignorant to believe in God.

Only an ignorant person would think so.

When everyone believed the Earth to be flat, was it ignorant to believe it was?

Yes. But it was not generally considered to be so.

 

[muhammad_isa]

When everyone believed the Earth to be flat, was it ignorant to believe it was?

Yes. But it was not generally considered to be so.

Ah, so are you claiming that we now know that believing in God is unfounded?
..that mankind now know that it is impossible for God to exist?
Of course not ! It is a bad comparison.

 

[Polymath257]

Ah, so are you claiming that we now know that believing in God is unfounded?
..that mankind now know that it is impossible for God to exist?
Of course not ! It is a bad comparison.

Yes, believing in God is currently unfounded. That is the case until there is actual evidence that supports the existence of a God. What that evidence *could* be I do not know.

I have never said it is impossible that a God exists. I have said there is no reason to believe there is one.

I have also repeatedly said that people are free to believe unreasonable things. In fact, most people do.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I have never said it is impossible that a God exists. I have said there is no reason to believe there is one.

..so not equivalent to the world being curved or flat, then..
That would be due to lack of data, and we now have data to prove what it is.

It is not ignorant to believe in God. People have reasons for their belief.
You prefer to disbelieve, unless it is categorically proved to you.
..not how it works.

We choose a path in life, and then reap what we sow.
Sometimes in this life, people do not get justice, despite their honesty and good conduct.

In the next life, nobody will be wronged WHATSOEVER.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

..so not equivalent to the world being curved or flat, then..
That would be due to lack of data, and we now have data to prove what it is.

It is not ignorant to believe in God. People have reasons for their belief.
You prefer to disbelieve, unless it is categorically proved to you.
..not how it works.

We choose a path in life, and then reap what we sow.
Sometimes in this life, people do not get justice, despite their honesty and good conduct.

In the next life, nobody will be wronged WHATSOEVER.

But you see, in the view of many of us, this is just wishful thinking. Yes, it is quite true that life just isn't fair sometimes. Or even a lot of the time! And people who like to believe in a very good God can't square that unfairness with their supposed goodness of God, and so they invent a story where all the loose ends and neatly tied up and everything is just peachy. The End.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

We just keep waiting and waiting and waiting while you guys say "I've god the evidence," and then refuse to present it.

I saw a review of the events of J6 on CNN last night. That was constant complaint regarding the likes of Giuliana and Powell, who were requesting people like Raffensberger and Bowers act on the promise of evidence they claimed to have but never produced. The Baha'i here making the same claims are in good company and are equally credible.

No, that was not just an opinion. But you do say this quite often when you know that you are wrong.

But does she? How can she? I think that she is sincere in her claim that all opinions are the same to her.

What Jesus is reported to have said in the 3 synoptic Gospels is not seriously challenged, for example.

Really? I don't believe that he said anything about the miracles he is said to have done or been, nor being more than another man.

Most atheists say that the proposition "God exists" is false because it has not yet been proven true by the believers' evidence.

No. Most atheists do not say that. Most are skilled critical thinkers. That's the kind of error believers typically make.

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

But your opinion only matters to you. Critical thinkers don't care what you believe, but what you know and can demonstrate.

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

I'd call it a failure to launch. I had never heard of Baha'i before coming to RF.

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

Nothing can be proven to a person unprepared to understand a proof or even evidence.

Who determines what is irrational and why it is irrational? It is only your personal opinion that it is irrational, unless you can *prove for a fact* that it is irrational.

Yes, your beliefs can be demonstrated to be insufficiently evidenced, but not to you. What you describe is a cooperative effort between two people capable of critical thinking - dialectic.

It is impossible to know that God exists first, *before* believing in the Messenger, since it is impossible to know that God exists *without* the Messenger, since the Messenger is the evidence that God exists.

That you cannot see the logical fallacy here is the evidence that your opinions about evidence are of no value to others.

The evidence I have is evidence for me 'beyond any doubt' that God is guilty of existing.

Yes, we know. But that means nothing to others who have seen your evidence.

The only reason you would believe in them is if you looked at the evidence that supports their claim to be a Messenger of God and determined they were telling the truth.

Done. There is no reason to believe that anything in your book is evidence for a god.

Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias,[Note 1] is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.[1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way.

Do you understand what that says? It describes you when you say that evidence that others reject is good enough for you.

I have defined evidence and what is the supporting evidence for my beliefs hundreds of times.

So what? It's been rejected an equal number of times.

When you make accusations you need to support them. What precisely is wrong with my reasoning?

It's not for you to know. You've been told. I just told you again in this post. But you are cut off from understanding.

Nobody has ever explained WHY anything is wrong with my reasoning, they have just claimed that. Claims count for nothing unless they can be proven. Otherwise they are nothing more than personal opinions. We all have those.

Nothing can be shown to a person with a vested interest in not seeing it. That's what confirmation bias means. You can't tell the difference between knowledge and opinion, because you have no criterion for knowledge that is different from opinion.

God's Laws are far above men's personal opinions.

No. Your claims of what some unseen god says and calls law is not beyond critical analysis. Nothing is. Sometimes the conclusion is "not even wrong," but it will be sound.

Why would it matter if there are few Baha'is?

Really? You can't make a connection between your claim that your book is convincing evidence of a god and the small number of people who agree with that?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Luckily there is evidence of the Quran and the Baha'i Writings, they in turn confirm the Bible.

This OP has offered we need to consider all the evidence available, not just some aspects of it.

Regards Tony

And now you are just being silly. Anybody who had the capacity to write the Qur'an or Baha'i writings also had the capacity to read the Bible -- and there were sufficient Bibles available for both to read. The fact that they could read and cite the Bible says precisely zero about the provenance of the Bible.

 

[muhammad_isa]

But you see, in the view of many of us, this is just wishful thinking..

Wishful thinking?
I don't know about that..
You might be a "saint", but I'm not.

..so they invent a story where all the loose ends and neatly tied up and everything is just peachy. The End.

Some people do that .. they claim that a subsequent life is guaranteed to be a "cotton wool world".
I see it as more complex.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Critical thinkers don't care what you believe, but what you know and can demonstrate..

Well, I feel sorry for "critical thinkers", who cannot think outside the box.
People like Einstein would have knocked your "critical thinking " for six!

Eternity just a dream, eh..

 

[muhammad_isa]

And now you are just being silly. Anybody who had the capacity to write the Qur'an or Baha'i writings also had the capacity to read the Bible -- and there were sufficient Bibles available for both to read. The fact that they could read and cite the Bible says precisely zero about the provenance of the Bible.

Yeah, yeah..
Some people claim that Apollo 11 didn't land on the moon. It was all done in a TV studio etc.

Some conspiracy theories might be credible, but most of them aren't.
..and that the Bible and Qur'an were produced as a conspiracy by all concerned is quite ridiculous, I would say.

Oh, but you will probably say then that they are all deluded.
Yeah, sure. We're all deluded.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yeah, yeah..
Some people claim that Apollo 11 didn't land on the moon. It was all done in a TV studio etc.

Some conspiracy theories might be credible, but most of them aren't.
..and that the Bible and Qur'an were produced as a conspiracy by all concerned is quite ridiculous, I would say.

Oh, but you will probably say then that they are all deluded.
Yeah, sure. We're all deluded.

What are you talking about? There is no need for conspiracy when a strong belief in myths will do.

 

[F1fan]

What we need to consider is that we did not meet the Messengers, but other people have and left their testimonials about those meetings and what they experienced.

Yet those people could be as biased as you are, so we can't trust followers as reliable witnesses. If what Baha'u'llah wrote was extraordinary that alone would impress critical thinkers in 2023. It doesn't. Critial thinkers in 2023 are vastly more educated and skilled at thinking than any religious follower in the 19th century. So your appeal here is irrelevant.

Using reason and justice we are able to conclude many of those those testimonials are reliable. Early people lost their lives when embracing these radical changes from the current practices, they had nothing to gain.

No, people change all the time for various, mundane reasons.

The Quran is supported by the Revelation and Muhammad, it changed the direction of humanity.

Any mass movement will. Notice how early Christianity and Islam were forced on massive regions through military power. The masses either conform, or be killed. What would you do? And don't ignore that part of this "direction of humanity" includes islamic terrorism, and then American/British political responses (highly influenced by Christianity) that caused more instability and death.

The Bab and Baha'u'llah and their Revelations had the same result.

Albeit less effective, and less military power, if any. Baha'i has how many global followers, 5 million? How many are aware that they are expected to accept bigotted views against gays?

 

[F1fan]

..so not equivalent to the world being curved or flat, then..
That would be due to lack of data, and we now have data to prove what it is.

Science through critical thought gives humans knowldge to know what is true about the universe, and also what can be discounted as likely true. Thus far Gods are less and less likely as science makes progress.

It is not ignorant to believe in God. People have reasons for their belief.
You prefer to disbelieve, unless it is categorically proved to you.
..not how it works.

I will agree that believers who simply adopt their cultural religious beliefs without subjecting them to any critical analysis can escae being classified as ignorant since they don't know any better. It is those who engage with critical thinkers and exposed to arguments against tyical religious belief, but ignore and reject this revelation of reason, ARE indeed ignorant. They appear to struggle through the inner conflict of irrational faith in irrational religious ideas, and the revelation of truth via critical thought. We observe those suffering inner conflict the most as they repeat irrational claims over and over despite being shown that kind of thinking illogical, non-factual, irrational, and self-serving.

We choose a path in life, and then reap what we sow.

The path of faith that theists chose over the option of reason is definately a harsh fate.

Sometimes in this life, people do not get justice, despite their honesty and good conduct.

This is often due to not following facts and reason. Those who are conviced of crimes they didn't do were tyically due to prosecutors and police who were baised against individuals, not them being rigorous in following facts and using reason. This mirrors the flaws of religious people who attempt to debate their beliefs.

In the next life, nobody will be wronged WHATSOEVER.

Only the greedy and selfish would expect another life. This seems to be an excuse to use flawed thinking in this life as if you get a do-over in the next. Why not try to make this life truthful and reliable via reason?

 

[Alien826]

I do not know what you mean by "use the existence of something."
If you mean claim the existence of something, I am not claiming the existence of anything I cannot prove exists, but that does not mean I cannot believe it exists.

I'm pretty sure he means use it in a logical chain of argument. It's like trying to build the walls and roof of a house before you have constructed the foundation. Of course, in an argument something can be provisional in a way a real life house cannot be. The point is that if you can't establish fact A in an argument and go on to have facts B, C and so on dependent on it, you have to understand that all the following conclusions are provisional, and you need to say "if" a lot.

 

[leroy]

You've never looked for any information on this subject, have you?

Yes and the consensus among scientists is “we don’t know”……… no paper concludes that organism evolve through the Darwinian mechanism ……

Can't you imagine a series of small steps each conferring survival advantage? The Wiki article on the subject has illustrations.

yes but I can also imagine a “dead end” where there is not a path where Each step (or most steps) is beneficial .

I answered, "I don't know that the eye formed that way [naturalistically]." Why did you want to make it? What larger point do you think it supports?

I don’t have a larger point

1 we know that eyes evolved form simpler organs

2 we don’t know by which mechanism it happened, (many have been proposed, being the Darwinian mechanism just one among many possibilities)


This is not supposed to be controversial, no serious scientists would deny the points above ………… only fanatic atheist forms this forum seem to have problems with them, because that would imply doubting their beloved Darwinian mechanism

 

[muhammad_isa]

Science through critical thought gives humans knowldge to know what is true about the universe..

The scientific method is a good tool to establish the truth about the physical universe, yes.

, and also what can be discounted as likely true. Thus far Gods are less and less likely as science makes progress..

Well, that's nonsense.
The existence of God is not affected by our knowledge of the physical universe.

The path of faith that theists chose over the option of reason is definately a harsh fate..

Your sweeping brush again. Not everybody discards reason, in order to believe in God.
Muslim Doctors do not, for example.
We are not all uneducated.

Only the greedy and selfish would expect another life..

That's absurd.
A person who believes that their soul does not die at death has no choice in the matter.

 

[Trailblazer]

Agreed. So what was the point of the population data?

The context of my comment was this:

Valjean said: Yet people do agree that germs cause disease and the Earth is round. How did this common data come about? I'd say evidence.
If there is evidence for God, why does a similar consensus not obtain?

Trailblazer said: Regarding the consensus, even though the existence of God cannot be proven, most people in the world believe in God, around 93% of people. The fact that all these people don't have the same conceptions of God is irrelevant to the point. The point is that they believe in a God or gods, so they are not atheists or agnostics. Only 7% of the world population is atheists and agnostics.

So, my only point was that there is a ''consensus' among most of the people in the world that God exists. I never said "God exists" is true because many or most people believe that God exists since that would be the fallacy of ad populum.

Faith is, by definition, unfounded belief. Faith with good evidence is knowledge.

Faith is necessary for belief when something cannot be proven. God cannot be proven to exist so we can have faith that God exists in the absence of proof or we choose not to believe.

Although there is no proof that God exists, when we have faith coupled with good evidence we know that God exists.
I know that God exists.

You faithful keep repeating that, but I have yet to see any. Every time one of you posts purported evidence we point out the flaws, only to have you keep repeating the assertion and posting the same evidence again, later.

There is a simple solution to that. Don't ask for evidence again and you won't see 'our evidence' posted again.

 

[Trailblazer]

No! We've explained why the evidence is not good; pointed out the errors. Proper evidence is not opinion, it's epistemic fact, just as 2+2=4 is fact.

What would be 'proper evidence' for God is only your personal opinion. I have a different personal opinion.
In my opinion religion is the proper evidence for God. In fact, religion is the only evidence for God!
Take it or leave it.

 

[leroy]

What discovery? You learned all this in high school biology, didn't you? There's nothing new here.

Aja,

And do you honestly believe that these are literal steps?......... do you think that one can con from Point 1 to Point 2 (using your video as reference) after one simple mutation?