God’s Method of delivering messages, is it flawed?

[PAUL MARKHAM]

@night912 and @PAUL MARKHAM,

I have no intention of getting involved in the debate on whether or not God exists, but I take exception to both of your behaviors in this thread.

If someone claims to have knowledge of something that you don't, and you are making a positive claim that that knowledge is false, the onus is on you to prove that knowledge is false.

That said, you've both made your point here, and rather than belaboring the point and beating a dead horse, I think your unjustified end-zone celebration has gone on long enough. Time to move on and either get back on topic or find another thread to play in.

Your antics have the staff's attention.

I don't have evidence that no god exists. Only evidence that the stories attributed to him never happened or weren't the work of any god and that religions and gods written about are largely false.

Does a god exist? Maybe but not the ones written about.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I don't have evidence that no god exists. Only evidence that the stories attributed to him never happened or weren't the work of any god...

I'd be interested to see your evidence, but this thread is not the venue for it, as such discourse in this thread is off topic.

If you want to present your evidence, please create a thread.

 

[Trailblazer]

So now you telling God what to do?

Yes, that is what some atheists do, order God around like a short order cook, and then when I call them out in that they deny that is what they are doing. Maybe they do not realize that is what they are doing, but when they tell God how He should communicate differently than He does, that is what it amounts to.

Atheists never give me a direct answer to the following question. I ask them: If there was a God wouldn't God know more than any human about *the best way* to deliver messages to humans in order to accomplish His objectives? They cannot answer that without admitting that, logically speaking, an All-Knowing God would know more than they know if such a God existed.

If atheists could prove the points the are making are right and what I am saying is wrong by answering my questions they would answer them. The fact that they will not answer them but instead they deflect and assail my religion or my character is very telling.

I always give credit where credit is due so I give Paul credit for only attacking my religion and not attacking my character. There is always a way to talk to people without insulting and criticizing them. Anyone who attacks the character of others has a serious character flaw of their own. Only if they were looking at themselves instead of other people they could work on their own flaws.

26: O SON OF BEING! How couldst thou forget thine own faults and busy thyself with the faults of others? Whoso doeth this is accursed of Me. The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 10

66: O EMIGRANTS! The tongue I have designed for the mention of Me, defile it not with detraction. If the fire of self overcome you, remember your own faults and not the faults of My creatures, inasmuch as every one of you knoweth his own self better than he knoweth others. The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 45

Thank God I have the teachings of Baha'u'llah to live by, so I know correct behavior, and I know that if I make a mistake all I have to do is look at myself and try not to make it again. This is the value of religion, it gives us a strength greater than ourselves and a code of conduct to live by.

"Our past is not the thing that matters so much in this world as what we intend to do with our future. The inestimable value of religion is that when a man is vitally connected with it, through a real and living belief in it and in the Prophet Who brought it, he receives a strength greater than his own which helps him to develop his good characteristics and overcome his bad ones. The whole purpose of religion is to change not only our thoughts but our acts; when we believe in God and His Prophet and His Teachings, we find we are growing, even though we perhaps thought ourselves incapable of growth and change!"

(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, October 3, 1943)

Lights of Guidance (second part)

 

[Trailblazer]

I'm saying what is the best way to convert everyone to 1 religion. Without that aim the whole thing descends into the mess we have today.

How would you know the BEST WAY to convert everyone to one religion? Are you All-Knowing?

Moreover, how do you know that God's goal is to convert everyone to one religion?
I believe that God has ordained that eventually there will be only one religion, but that is a long way off.
I do not believe one religion will come about by conversions; but rather, in the future all people will choose to adhere to one religion. I do not know what that religion will be called.

I am not saying that one religion is not a solution to the mess, I am only saying there is a time for everything and a way for that to be accomplished when that time comes. I am also saying that God would know more than you know about the best way to bring about one religion since God is All-Knowing and All-Wise.

 

[Trailblazer]

So life on every planet doesn't mean life on every planet. Got it!!!!

It might mean that or not. I don't know because I do not live inside Baha'ullah's head.

 

[Trailblazer]

I believe Bahaullah said they were prophets you now say men with these names existed I think they are modern names.

Manifestation of God - Wikipedia
There is no definitive list of Manifestations of God, but Baháʼu'lláh and ʻAbdu'l-Bahá referred to several personages as Manifestations; they include Adam, Noah, Krishna, Moses, Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad.[19] The Báb, as well as Baháʼu'lláh, were included in this definition.[19] Thus religious history is interpreted as a series of periods or "dispensations", where each Manifestation brings a somewhat broader and more advanced revelation, suited for the time and place in which it was expressed.

These men have been called by various names; Prophets, Messengers of God, and Manifestations of God.

There are also three different kinds of Prophets.

Question: How many kinds of divine Prophets are there?

Answer: There are three kinds of divine Prophets. One kind are the universal Manifestations, which are even as the sun. Through Their advent the world of existence is renewed, a new cycle is inaugurated, a new religion is revealed, souls are quickened to a new life, and East and West are flooded with light. These Souls are the universal Manifestations of God and have been sent forth to the entire world and the generality of mankind.

Another kind of Prophets are followers and promulgators, not leaders and law-givers, but they are nonetheless the recipients of the hidden inspirations of God. Yet another kind are Prophets Whose prophethood has been limited to a particular locality. But the universal Manifestations are all-encompassing: They are like the root, and all others are as the branches; they are like the sun, and all others are as the moon and the stars.

The Three Kinds of Prophets

 

[Trailblazer]

We care because we don't want a society only ruled by your set of rules. There are numerous examples of why that is wrong and dangerous.

Let's get this out of the way. The Baha'i Faith has no intention of ruling society, now or ever.
The set of rules Baha'is follow only pertain to Baha'is. Nobody else will ever be expected to follow them.

I do hope you realize that if the Baha'i Faith is of God, there is nothing YOU or anyone else can do about that because what God ordains always comes to pass.

“Queen Victoria, it is said, upon reading the Tablet revealed for her remarked: “If this is of God, it will endure; if not, it can do no harm.” The Promised Day Is Come, p. 65

In the future ther might be a Baha'i society, but that will only come about if/when most people willingly choose to become Baha'is. It will never be accomplished by force.

If you want us to stop pointing out the flaws in your argument, then say it.

I never said that I wanted you to stop pointing out 'what you believe' are flaws in my argument. I only ever said that pointing 'what you believe' are flaws in my behavior or character is unacceptable forum behavior and it only distracts from the discussion at hand. I am not accusing you of this because I have not seen you doing it, but there are several other posters who have come on this thread who have done this. I won't mention any names because it is not my style to humiliate other people. They may or may not know who they are, depending upon their levels of self-awareness.

The post to which you are responding was directed at another poster, and I asked some questions to which I never received any answers, just as I expected.

 

[CG Didymus]

When people take only the good things and keep to them religion can be good. The problem as you've said is humans aren't like that. Some will take the bad things and use it to dominate the rest.

The 10 Worst Old Testament Verses by Dan Barker - Freedom From Religion Foundation

Violence in the Quran - Wikipedia

New Testament Cruelty

Nobody likes to think about those Bible verses. I don't know how Jews justify them, but with some of them Christians justify it by saying that those people were totally evil. But then there's verses that have God ordering the killing of his own chosen people too.

I'd like to think that it was just an ancient warrior people justifying doing things to their enemies by saying their God did it or ordered it. Did he? Did that God, the God that all the Abrahamic religions believe in really do those things? Bible literalists would say "yes". Baha'is can always use their "symbolic' answer, but these things aren't parables. They are told as historical fact. If they are not fact, then God's delivery of his message is flawed. One of his greatest and most accepted messages, the Bible, is not true. And that carries over to the Christian NT, when it claims that Jesus came back to life. If not true, then the message is saying that the most incredible miracle ever claimed, the resurrection of Jesus, never really happened.

 

[Trailblazer]

No comment!!!

Great. One less post to answer.

 

[Trailblazer]

So it might have taken over 100 pages, but with everyone working together, we finally found the answer to the title of this thread.

FeaturedGod’s Method of delivering messages, is it flawed? YES

I like to thank EVERY human that helped, especially Trailblazer, the one who figured out the answer. Keep in mind that I'm not thanking all who help, just most of you.

Whatever God's Method of delivering messages actually IS cannot be flawed, because God is Infallible so God is not capable of making a mistake.

So IF God has used Messengers to communicate to humans the answer is NO, God’s Method of delivering messages is not flawed.

This is logic 101 stuff.

 

[CG Didymus]

I said: I consider the Bible "in its entirety" to be evidence of God, evidence that God exists.

No comment!!!

Unfortunately, I don't think she'll read your link to the 10 worst Bible passages. I've quoted or mentioned verses that have God walking with Adam, writing things on a wall and writing the 10 commandments in stone for Moses, speaking from heaven, sending fire from heaven to consume a animal sacrifice for Elijah, stopping the Sun in the Sky for Joshua, parting the seas for Moses, having Moses' walking stick turn into a snake, send plagues to Pharaoh and so many more things. Evidence of God? Well yeah. But Baha'is don't believe those things really happened. So what evidence from the Bible are they talking about?

Now if they said the Bible is evidence of a fictitious God, a mythical God, then I'd agree. Because the stories are very much like the mythical Gods of all the other ancient cultures.

 

[Ancient Soul]

To help settle this dispute, you guys can use me for evidence as a firsthand eyewitnesses account to support Trailblazer as being dishonest, playing avoidance game and making false accusations against those who have presented evidence against her claims.

OOPS. Was the witness leading the councilor?

Annoying isn't it?

The one that really gets to me is how one time I tried to get her to see how her religion teaches nothing truly spiritual. And I had a list of purely spiritual matters/concepts, and wanted to see what her religion had on the matters. I wanted clear and concise descriptions that everyone could understand, not bombastic gobbledygook WTF, including the source writings with a link so that I could check to see if she just made it all up. At the top of the list was asking a description of "Soul". And since she could not come up with ANYTHING, we had the usual round and round as she threw out every avoidance tactic she could invent. So after a couple of weeks or longer of trying to get SOMETHING from her, I gave up. I then described the basics of what a soul really is, given from MY OWN first hand experience. Which she now plagiarizes and goes around using it as HER OWN description of a soul!!!

 

[CG Didymus]

Assuming there is a god sending us messages via selected people I ask. Is the method of sending messages flawed?

1. If you want the world to follow one god you don't send messages to nobodies in nothing tribes. You send messages to leaders of great empires.

2. You don't send messages to only one nobody, you send it to all the great leaders at once.

Don't claim an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipotent, etc god can't do that. He's supposed to be god,

3. You send it in a form that can be easily explained, not in some way that only 1 nobody can understand and probably just dreamed. Even the devout are stumped on this.

The mess we are in now shows the confusion that results, charlatans, fake mystics, nobodies, different messages, etc all saying they are right.

So is there a god sending anything or a bunch of nobodies dreaming it up and trying to convince the world they are right? I'll leave that to the individual to decide. This is a criticism of all religions and not directed at one.

If we flip it around, is their evidence that people have made up their own Gods and religions? We already asked the Baha'is about the religions of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hawaiians, the Aztec and others. There are some religions that have false Gods and false beliefs. Like any religion believing in multiple Gods should already be rejected as being false and made up by the people.

But, one of those, Hinduism, is made to fit into the "progression" of "true" religions. So how do they explain away the problematic beliefs? Krishna is not an "incarnation". He is a "manifestation". There is no "reincarnation". We live once and go to a spiritual world. The many Gods and incarnations of Gods and anything else that contradicts the Baha'i beliefs are then, again, explained away by saying people added things into the religion or misinterpreted the "original" teachings. And how do they know this? Because Baha'u'llah said so, and he is the mouth-piece of the infallible God, so he can't be wrong. But all the other Scriptures of all the other religions are wrong... that other word.... flawed?

So message giver, God? Not flawed. He knows exactly how to best get his message out there. He tells it to a messenger who also is not flawed. The message is clear? Who knows? Because the messenger let other tell the story. So the message is flawed. Then his followers make flawed interpretations of the flawed story about the unflawed message. People argue and break away and start flawed sects of the flawed religion. Then later, in another place, same thing happens again.... and again. Finally God thinks, "I'll have Muhammad dictate it to the people writing it". Still Islam has people take over the leadership and other break away and start different sects.

God then thinks, "Hmmm, I'll have Baha'u'llah write it all down, have his son and grand-son interpret and explain it all. And, I won't let people form flawed sects this time." Problem is... he's speaking to flawed people that believe in many flawed religions, and most believe they are the only ones right. God could have spoke from heaven or made an appearance. Destroyed all the wicked like he said he was going to do in the Book of Revelation, but no... He wants people to go through all kinds of turmoil until they finally realize that the only solution... the only way out of the mess... is to follow the message from God that Baha'u'llah has brought. Gee, thanks God . That's such a good way to do it.

 

[Vinayaka]

Annoying isn't it?

So after a couple of weeks or longer of trying to get SOMETHING from her, I gave up. I then described the basics of what a soul really is, given from MY OWN first hand experience. Which she now plagiarizes and goes around using it as HER OWN description of a soul!!!

You're smarter than me. I lasted for about 8 months a couple of years ago. It does go nowhere ... like some toy train just going round and round and round and .....

 

[Trailblazer]

Either

1. You're so desperate right now and just trying to make any excuses don't matter if dumb or not.

2. You're irrational, and think "every" = "most"

3. Your supposed infallible messenger of god was too dumb to not know the difference between "every" and "most."

4. You think you're some "special" messenger that know more than your own scripture written by a "TRUE" messenger of God.

Or.........the correct answer to the title of this thread #5

5. It's a flawed method and your ego is just too big to admit that.

That is completely illogical. The entire method that God uses to communicate to humans is not flawed simply because of one passage that Baha'u'llah wrote.

First, one passage that can have more than one translation and more than one interpretation does not prove that God using Messengers is a flawed method.

Second, it has never been proven by scientists that there is no life on every planet so to claim that there are planets with no life is an argument from ignorance.

Third, even if Baha'u'llah was a false prophet, that would not mean that God using Messengers is a flawed Method since there have been Messengers the predate Baha'u'llah. Maybe you should try to prove how Jesus and Muhammad failed and how they are false prophets because that would at least give you a fighting chance of winning this argument.

84 percent of the world population has a faith.

Because most faiths have a religious Founder or what I call a Messenger that means most people believe in God because of a Messenger, holy man, etc. We know that Christians and Muslims believe in a Messenger and they comprise 55% of the world population. Hindus and Buddhists comprise most of the rest of believers and they also have a Messenger (or messengers) they believe in. It does not matter if you call them a Messenger; they are men who founded the religions, so they are Mediators between God and man. Sure, there are a few stragglers, believers who believe in God but not a Messenger; this comprises about 9% of the world population, but that is not the norm. The point is that with no Messengers, very few people would believe in God.

According to sociologists Ariela Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera's review of numerous global studies on atheism, there are 450 to 500 million positive atheists and agnostics worldwide (7% of the world's population), with China having the most atheists in the world (200 million convinced atheists). Demographics of atheism - Wikipedia

You opened the door, why not walk through it and explain why 84% of people having a religion and 93% of people believing in God would not be acceptable to God. If you cannot prove it is unacceptable to God then you do not know it is unacceptable to God. Then you would need to answer the question: Why is it unacceptable to some atheists that everyone does not believe in God?

Regarding everyone not believing in God, there are only two possibilities:

1. It is acceptable to God
2. It is unacceptable to God

If 1., then there is no problem with using Messengers to communicate.
If 2., then an omnipotent God could use another Method of proving He exists in order to garner 100% belief.

Since God has never used another Method that has garnered 100% belief, and since the only evidence we have of God has come to us by way of religion established by Messengers, then there are only three logical possibilities:

1. God exists and uses Messengers to communicate to humans, or
2. God exists but does not communicate to humans, or
3. God does not exist

If God used Messengers to communicate it cannot be a flawed method, because God is infallible, so God cannot make a mistake. Maybe you are unable to admit that God knows more than you know, but whenever you say that God should have used *a different Method* to communicate that is what you are saying. However, if God exists God is All-Knowing, which means God knows more than any human being, which means God would know *the best way* to communicate in order to accomplish His goals.

This is not about me being right and you being wrong, it is about logic, so please try to stay on task and not get personal.

I am not saying that using Messengers to communicate did not cause problems for humans throughout history. I would be really illogical if I tried to deny that because the evidence is everywhere. All I am saying is that, based upon logic, there could not have been *a better way* accomplish what God wanted to accomplish because had there been a better way God would have used it.

As an aside, Baha'u'llah wrote that God could have made all men one people (meaning God could make everyone believe in Him) and then Baha'u'llah went on to explain why God chose not do that.

 

[Trailblazer]

You're smarter than me. I lasted for about 8 months a couple of years ago. It does go nowhere ... like some toy train just gong round and round and round and .....

Yep...

 

[CG Didymus]

Let's get this out of the way. The Baha'i Faith has no intention of ruling society, now or ever.
The set of rules Baha'is follow only pertain to Baha'is. Nobody else will ever be expected to follow them.

So, God has his perfect laws for all of humanity. But is not going to have all of humanity live by those laws? So the UHJ will rule over only Baha'is. And all Baha'is will still be subject to the secular laws of the country that they live in? So there is no "One planet of people"? And we are going to live in peace and harmony? What good are God's laws if not everybody is going to have to abide by them?

 

[Trailblazer]

Nobody likes to think about those Bible verses.

It's a real mess isn't it?

All the more reason why God had to reveal a new religion through Baha'u'llah.

God allowed men to make that mess in the kitchen because God honors free will, even allowing men to write stories of the heinous things God did, which of course can never be proven to have happened.

Another reason God allowed the Bible to be written that was because God knew that Baha'u'llah would be sent in the future to clean up the mess in the kitchen, but the unfortunate fact is that most people still prefer to eat off dirty dishes instead of eating off clean dishes. That is certainly NOT God's fault.

 

[Trailblazer]

Unfortunately, I don't think she'll read your link to the 10 worst Bible passages.

I read those immediately -- bad God!

 

[Trailblazer]

So, God has his perfect laws for all of humanity. But is not going to have all of humanity live by those laws? So the UHJ will rule over only Baha'is. And all Baha'is will still be subject to the secular laws of the country that they live in?

People would have to choose to become Baha'is and live by the Baha'i Laws were that to happen.

The UHJ will rule only over Baha'is but the Baha'is will still be subject to the secular laws of the country in which they live.

So there is no "One planet of people"? And we are going to live in peace and harmony? What good are God's laws if not everybody is going to have to abide by them?

Eventually I believe there will be one planet and one people and we will all live in peace and harmony. By that time people will gladly abide by God's laws because they will be so spiritual that nothing that is prohibited will be a sacrifice for them.