If God existed, would there be any atheists?

[Trailblazer]

Then a messenger for God A is evidence for God A, and a messenger for God B is evidence for God B, correct?

No, because there is only one God, there is no God A and God B.

All the Messengers were sent by God and God sends Messengers in every age. That is called Progressive Revelation. Maybe this diagram will help.

Which is what we'd also expect to find from a being that doesn't exist. So we're going to need something extra so we can determine which case it is.

Why would we expect a God that does not exist to not prove that He exists?

In other words, why would we expect a God that does exist to prove that He exists?

And for absolutely no reason.

No reason that you can understand or that makes sense to you, but if God designed it that way there had to be a reason.

The evidence for Baha’u’llah is everything that surrounds His Life, including His early life; His character as demonstrated by His works; what He did during His mission on earth; the scriptures that He wrote; prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming; the predictions He made that have come to pass; the religion that was established as the result of His Revelation.

So the story of him? The story can't serve as evidence that the story is true.

And people of many different faiths have made identical claims about their beliefs. I see no reason to doubt them but believe you.

One reason is that what we know about Baha’u’llah can be verified by contemporary history. The other faiths cannot make that claim. Another reason is that we have the original scriptures that Baha’u’llah wrote in His own pen. No other religion has any original scriptures that were written by the Prophet Founder (Messenger) of their religion, all they have is what others wrote about what the Messenger said. In Christianity that is called oral tradition.

You have provided no specific claim and provided no evidence to support that claim outside the story.

There is no story. There is a claim Baha’u’llah made and there is evidence to support that claim by way of the verifiable evidence I mentioned above. What cannot ever be verified is that He got communication for God. That is why we have to verify everything else we can verify, to try to determine if he was telling the truth, thus if His claims were valid.

But the difference is that when you have many people checking it and examining it, it's not just opinion.

That is true, if you are referring to the verifiable evidence I mentioned above, everything that surrounds His Life, including His early life; His character as demonstrated by His works; what He did during His mission on earth; the scriptures that He wrote; prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming; the predictions He made that have come to pass; the religion that was established as the result of His Revelation. You don't need to just accept someone's word for it and you should not believe what other people say because you can do the research and check all that out for yourself.

What I was referring to before was the belief that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God. Other people’s opinions should have no bearing on our final decision of what to believe about that, we have to make our own decision. Here is what Baha’u’llah wrote about that:

“……. I have perfected in every one of you My creation, so that the excellence of My handiwork may be fully revealed unto men. It follows, therefore, that every man hath been, and will continue to be, able of himself to appreciate the Beauty of God, the Glorified. Had he not been endowed with such a capacity, how could he be called to account for his failure? If, in the Day when all the peoples of the earth will be gathered together, any man should, whilst standing in the presence of God, be asked: “Wherefore hast thou disbelieved in My Beauty and turned away from My Self,” and if such a man should reply and say: “Inasmuch as all men have erred, and none hath been found willing to turn his face to the Truth, I, too, following their example, have grievously failed to recognize the Beauty of the Eternal,” such a plea will, assuredly, be rejected. For the faith of no man can be conditioned by any one except himself.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 143

Pay close attention to the last sentence. What Baha’u’llah is saying is that the faith of no man should be determined by anyone except himself. In that passage above He is also saying that we are all responsible for our own faith in God, so we cannot blame other people for why we chose not to believe. That is why Baha’u’llah urged us to do our own research and investigation of Him.

“Bahá’u’lláh asked no one to accept His statements and His tokens blindly. On the contrary, He put in the very forefront of His teachings emphatic warnings against blind acceptance of authority, and urged all to open their eyes and ears, and use their own judgement, independently and fearlessly, in order to ascertain the truth. He enjoined the fullest investigation and never concealed Himself, offering, as the supreme proofs of His Prophethood, His words and works and their effects in transforming the lives and characters of men.” Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, p. 8

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Faith - complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

You're conflating two meanings of faith there - complete trust with justification, and complete trust without it. I only use the word faith when describing the latter, so-called religious or unjustified belief or trust, or confidence). These two radically different methods for deciding what is true about the world give very different and mutually exclusive results, at least one of which must be incorrect. It is very different to say that I have faith that Jesus will come again based on no evidence, and faith that my car will probably start the next time I test it as it has the last several hundred times it was tested (as I said, I don't the word faith in such situations because of the ambiguity, but if I did, I would be understood so long as I indicated that my belief was evidence-based and justified).

The latter, faith in the car starting, is supported by the evidence that successful starts are very likely - radically different from believing by faith that a clinically dead person (not brain death, which is not clinical death as long as the heart is still beating, or sudden death, which people recover from with CPR) can live again, given the lack of even a single well-documented example of such revivification.

We should seek methods of learning that generate only correct ideas, by which I mean useful ideas capable of accurately predicting outcomes better than competing ideas. That only comes by testing these ideas in the world and seeing that they perform as hoped.

To call these two meanings - justified and unjustified belief - by the same word, faith, and to use them interchangeably is to commit an equivocation fallacy, such as, "You have faith in the car starting and the output of science, and I have faith that Jesus will come again - same thing, faith is faith." That's as invalid as changing meanings for the word banks mid-syllogism: "Your money is safer in banks than under your mattress, rivers have banks, so put your money in a river rather than under your mattress" - a classic equivocation fallacy.

I am rational skeptic, and I think Bible God is the only intelligent reason for this world to exist.

How did you rule out the multiverse hypothesis? By faith? If so, you are not the rational skeptic you think you are.

To claim He doesn’t exist, would mean to me that I should reject critical thinking.

To claim that no god exists is a leap of faith, and is already a rejection of critical thinking.

The proper position for any matter that cannot be ruled in or out is agnosticism - "I don't know" Believing either way as if you do know when you can't is unjustified belief - faith. And that applies not just to god beliefs, but any belief. It should never be more or less than the quality and quantity of the available relevant evidence supports. The belief that man will encounter alien life some day is less certain than the belief that the sun fuses hydrogen, but both are more likely than not, and both are supported by evidence, albeit less robust evidence for extraterrestrial life..

But notice that I also cannot rule out vampires or leprechauns by any observation, experiment, argument, or algorithm, so I must also be agnostic about those things, but here, unlike my expectation that life will be found elsewhere some day given that the same physics and chemistry apply and have applied on countless heavenly bodies for eons, the evidence is that these two kinds of creatures are very unlikely to exist.

But to say that I know that they don't exist is to creep outside of the limits of justified belief and take a leap of faith.

The only Messengers of God that wrote their own scriptures were the Bab and Baha’u’llah. Some people believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet who heard from God but I do not believe that.

How did you rule out Joseph Smith? This pronouncement seems arbitrary. All I will say is that your prophet is more likely to be channeling a god than Joseph Smith, but we are comparing unlikely to very unlikely, meaning I don't reason enough to believe that either has any knowledge of gods.

Baha’u’llah explained how we are supposed to establish the truth of His claim. First, we examine His own Self (His character); then we examine His Revelation (everything that surrounds His Mission on earth); and then after that we look at His words (His Writings). As part of the evidence, I also consider the prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming, the predictions He made that have come to pass, and the religion that was established as the result of His Revelation.

OK, but wise words, tepid predictions, and the advent of a new religion are not evidence of a god. These are things that ordinary human beings can do. As I said, evidence for a god is that which is better explained by invoking supernatural agents than naturalistic processes such as people being people

So what you are willing to believe is objective evidence, that which you can see, feel, hear, touch, and smell; but the real evidence is to be found by study, by using your intellect and your logical mind, exercising critical thinking, but looking at all the possibilities.

Agree. We look at the available evidence and attempt to understand what it signifies. We do that by compiling an exhaustive list of logically possible explanations and see if there is any way to rule one in or all but one out. If one's candidate hypotheses list is incomplete, or if one drops elements from it unjustifiably, he is not thinking critically. I asked another poster how he ruled out the multiverse hypothesis for the source of our universe, and I asked you how you ruled out the Joseph Smith was channeling a god. These are both logical possibilities that each of you have just dismissed.

Let me illustrate with a medical example. The evidence is that a person has reported chest pain to you. At this point, we have a very long list of possible explanations, a so-called differential diagnosis, which includes heartburn and esophageal spasm, coronary artery disease with angina, a panic attack, pleurisy, a broken rib, and more.

So, we begin to seek additional evidence to help us winnow the list down to one possibility. Was the pain dull or sharp? Was it continuous or intermittent? Was it accompanied by other symptoms such as shortness of breath, cough, fever, or a flutter in the heart? Does taking a deep breath exacerbate the pain? Is the chest tender to touch? How do the heart and lungs sound or appear in diagnostic studies such as bloodwork, a cardiogram, chest X-rays and an angiogram? What is the response to nitroglycerine, antacids, and sedatives (empirical tests)?

Hopefully, by accumulating and properly interpreting relevant evidence, we eventually make a definitive diagnosis - just one possibility. Often, we can eliminate all but two or three possibilities, a shortened differential diagnosis. You can see that it would be a mistake to just drop any possibility unjustifiably. That's faith, not critical thought.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I think atheists are asking for more than is reasonable if they want God or Jesus to show up on earth.

I haven't specified how that evidence should manifest, but it does need to manifest convincingly to justify a god belief. It's an interesting topic considering what display would convince us that we were not experiencing some extremely powerful but naturalistically evolved extraterrestrial presence. Frankly, even if somebody arranged the visible stars to read from earth, "I am your god who created," how could I tell what kind of great presence did that, a god capable of creating our universe, or advanced extraterrestrials that arose naturally within a godless universe?

it won’t be so funny if there is actually a God. The thing is that atheists are willing to take that risk because they are so sure there is no God.

Being sure that there is no god is not the position that the evidence supports. As I've said before, atheists that do that have taken a leap of faith by dropping a logical possibility from the list of possibilities without justification (disproof of gods).

And risk is unavoidable whatever position one comes to. That's the basis of the refutation of Pascal's Wager, or "What do you have to lose by falsely believing in God ad sin and salvation?" What if there actually is a god who is offended by that? You can't eliminate that risk, just choose to ignore it and see how that works out.

I consider that foolish unless they sincerely and earnestly looked at all the possibilities for God and still came up empty-handed. In that case, there is no more they can do, and I really believe God understands this.

You're more charitable there than most Abrahamic monotheists. As an ex-Christian, I am usually told that my faith was inferior, or I never really was a Christian, or some other answer that shifts my failure to find God from a god that I am told wants to be known but can't be found, to me.

As I told Tiberius, God can only be detected in His Messengers, because that is how God set it up.

If that is true, the God knows that I can't be reached that way and should not expect me to be other than an atheist.

I've shared my restricted choice argument against the existence of an interventionalist god before, the one that says that if there is such a god, the world could have been this way or that, such as either containing a truly phenomenal message that no man could have written, or only containing things people could have written - but if there is no such god, only the latter is possible.

Here is another example of that. If there were such a god, that god could have set it up as you describe or in ways that require an intelligence, but here we see once again what is imposed on a godless universe.

The argument goes that if condition 1 were the case (a god in this example), we might see either A or B, but that if condition 2 were the case, we would only see B over and over, and that if this is what we see, condition B is much more likely than condition A.

If my coin is fair, I should see close to 500 heads and 500 tails after 1000 flips, but if the coin is perfectly loaded, it will be tails all 1000 times. Admittedly, this does not rule out the possibility of a fair coin, but it makes the possibility of a loaded coin much, much greater than a fair coin. It is on this basis that I have concluded that no god is affecting our world through messengers or by any other means.

It is a logical possibility that God does not exist but the primary problem with believing that is that you would then have to explain how entire cultures were built up around the great religions throughout all of history. No other single factor has influenced human behavior and society as has religion. To say that all came from man is a real stretch because no men other than the Messengers of God/Prophets have has that kind of enduring influence. I am trying to appeal to logic here.

I don't deny that religions exist. I also don't deny that gods exist. I just don't have a reason to affirm that they do.

I sure wish other atheist would tell him that because he will never listen to me.

Link him to my comment if you like: If God existed, would there be any atheists?

immaterial things can and do exist and some of them can even be detected by scientific methods

Immaterial is a problematic word, since it suggests that something is not matter, but some other physical manifestation such as energy or force. Only things that are detectable through their physical properties such as known to exist, even if that message is immaterial such as the starlight that informs us of the presence, composition, and rate of relative motion toward or away from earth of distant stars and galaxies.

That which is indistinguishable from the nonexistent by virtue of generating no physical manifestation evident to the senses is properly treated as nonexistent until it does manifest itself. What if dark matter didn't have the effect on the integrity of rotating galaxies that it does, or any other detectable effect? Then even though it exists, it is no more relevant than the nonexistent, and not only no way to know about it, no value in knowing about it.

God is not going to be detected though, because He chooses to stay under the radar.

I'm good with that. If a god doesn't want to be found, it would be impolite to disregard that desire for privacy.

I have to believe many things I cannot prove on faith in everyday life. For example, could not prove my husband would be what I hoped, so I had to believe that if was I to marry him. I have to have faith whenever I rent one of my houses to a new tenant because I cannot prove they will be a good tenant. I could not prove the septic company was going to be honest and do only what was necessary, so I had to trust him…. The list goes on. My point is that this insistence that we cannot believe anything on faith is not reasonable.

There is a difference between hope and faith. Sometimes, we can only hope for a good outcome. If we choose to believe that it will occur rather than may occur, we've crossed into what I am calling faith - guessing without sufficient evidentiary support.

 

[Tiberius]

I was quoting scripture....

you fit the quote

So what?

From my point of view, the quote applies to you.

All the passage amounts to is saying that people are blind if they don't agree with your own viewpoint. The difference is that you were impolite enough to say it.

 

[Thief]

So what?

From my point of view, the quote applies to you.

All the passage amounts to is saying that people are blind if they don't agree with your own viewpoint. The difference is that you were impolite enough to say it.

quoting scripture is not impolite

too bad if you don't like it

and I reiterate.....
at the end of all of this......the believers will continue in spirit
and the nonbelievers are dust

no atheists

 

[Tiberius]

No, because there is only one God, there is no God A and God B.

All the Messengers were sent by God and God sends Messengers in every age. That is called Progressive Revelation. Maybe this diagram will help.

View attachment 40492

And again you seem incapable of understanding my point.

Let me make it as abundantly clear as I can so hopefully you will understand.

I claim to be a messenger for Zeus. Zeus is not the God you believe in. He is entirely separate. I claim your God is false and My God, which is entirely different to yours, is the only true God. Since I am a messenger for Zeus, I am evidence that Zeus exists.

Why would we expect a God that does not exist to not prove that He exists?

In other words, why would we expect a God that does exist to prove that He exists?

Your second statement is NOT a rephrasing of your first.

Let me turn your question around: Why should we expect that a God who does exist to NOT prove that he exists?

No reason that you can understand or that makes sense to you, but if God designed it that way there had to be a reason.

Sounds like you are just saying that it makes no sense but you believe it anyway.

The evidence for Baha’u’llah is everything that surrounds His Life, including His early life; His character as demonstrated by His works; what He did during His mission on earth; the scriptures that He wrote; prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming; the predictions He made that have come to pass; the religion that was established as the result of His Revelation.

One reason is that what we know about Baha’u’llah can be verified by contemporary history. The other faiths cannot make that claim. Another reason is that we have the original scriptures that Baha’u’llah wrote in His own pen. No other religion has any original scriptures that were written by the Prophet Founder (Messenger) of their religion, all they have is what others wrote about what the Messenger said. In Christianity that is called oral tradition.


There is no story. There is a claim Baha’u’llah made and there is evidence to support that claim by way of the verifiable evidence I mentioned above. What cannot ever be verified is that He got communication for God. That is why we have to verify everything else we can verify, to try to determine if he was telling the truth, thus if His claims were valid.

That is true, if you are referring to the verifiable evidence I mentioned above, everything that surrounds His Life, including His early life; His character as demonstrated by His works; what He did during His mission on earth; the scriptures that He wrote; prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming; the predictions He made that have come to pass; the religion that was established as the result of His Revelation. You don't need to just accept someone's word for it and you should not believe what other people say because you can do the research and check all that out for yourself.

What I was referring to before was the belief that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God. Other people’s opinions should have no bearing on our final decision of what to believe about that, we have to make our own decision. Here is what Baha’u’llah wrote about that:

“……. I have perfected in every one of you My creation, so that the excellence of My handiwork may be fully revealed unto men. It follows, therefore, that every man hath been, and will continue to be, able of himself to appreciate the Beauty of God, the Glorified. Had he not been endowed with such a capacity, how could he be called to account for his failure? If, in the Day when all the peoples of the earth will be gathered together, any man should, whilst standing in the presence of God, be asked: “Wherefore hast thou disbelieved in My Beauty and turned away from My Self,” and if such a man should reply and say: “Inasmuch as all men have erred, and none hath been found willing to turn his face to the Truth, I, too, following their example, have grievously failed to recognize the Beauty of the Eternal,” such a plea will, assuredly, be rejected. For the faith of no man can be conditioned by any one except himself.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 143

Pay close attention to the last sentence. What Baha’u’llah is saying is that the faith of no man should be determined by anyone except himself. In that passage above He is also saying that we are all responsible for our own faith in God, so we cannot blame other people for why we chose not to believe. That is why Baha’u’llah urged us to do our own research and investigation of Him.

“Bahá’u’lláh asked no one to accept His statements and His tokens blindly. On the contrary, He put in the very forefront of His teachings emphatic warnings against blind acceptance of authority, and urged all to open their eyes and ears, and use their own judgement, independently and fearlessly, in order to ascertain the truth. He enjoined the fullest investigation and never concealed Himself, offering, as the supreme proofs of His Prophethood, His words and works and their effects in transforming the lives and characters of men.” Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, p. 8

I'm not very familiar with your faith, but it seems to me that Baháʼu'lláh was a religious leader, and I have no problem with accepting that. Doesn't mean he was divine or anything.

 

[Thief]

I believe there is only ONE Almighty

choose any name you care to

 

[MonkeyFire]

You're conflating two meanings of faith there - complete trust with justification, and complete trust without it. I only use the word faith when describing the latter, so-called religious or unjustified belief or trust, or confidence). These two radically different methods for deciding what is true about the world give very different and mutually exclusive results, at least one of which must be incorrect. It is very different to say that I have faith that Jesus will come again based on no evidence, and faith that my car will probably start the next time I test it as it has the last several hundred times it was tested (as I said, I don't the word faith in such situations because of the ambiguity, but if I did, I would be understood so long as I indicated that my belief was evidence-based and justified).

The latter, faith in the car starting, is supported by the evidence that successful starts are very likely - radically different from believing by faith that a clinically dead person (not brain death, which is not clinical death as long as the heart is still beating, or sudden death, which people recover from with CPR) can live again, given the lack of even a single well-documented example of such revivification.

We should seek methods of learning that generate only correct ideas, by which I mean useful ideas capable of accurately predicting outcomes better than competing ideas. That only comes by testing these ideas in the world and seeing that they perform as hoped.

To call these two meanings - justified and unjustified belief - by the same word, faith, and to use them interchangeably is to commit an equivocation fallacy, such as, "You have faith in the car starting and the output of science, and I have faith that Jesus will come again - same thing, faith is faith." That's as invalid as changing meanings for the word banks mid-syllogism: "Your money is safer in banks than under your mattress, rivers have banks, so put your money in a river rather than under your mattress" - a classic equivocation fallacy.



How did you rule out the multiverse hypothesis? By faith? If so, you are not the rational skeptic you think you are.



To claim that no god exists is a leap of faith, and is already a rejection of critical thinking.

The proper position for any matter that cannot be ruled in or out is agnosticism - "I don't know" Believing either way as if you do know when you can't is unjustified belief - faith. And that applies not just to god beliefs, but any belief. It should never be more or less than the quality and quantity of the available relevant evidence supports. The belief that man will encounter alien life some day is less certain than the belief that the sun fuses hydrogen, but both are more likely than not, and both are supported by evidence, albeit less robust evidence for extraterrestrial life..

But notice that I also cannot rule out vampires or leprechauns by any observation, experiment, argument, or algorithm, so I must also be agnostic about those things, but here, unlike my expectation that life will be found elsewhere some day given that the same physics and chemistry apply and have applied on countless heavenly bodies for eons, the evidence is that these two kinds of creatures are very unlikely to exist.

But to say that I know that they don't exist is to creep outside of the limits of justified belief and take a leap of faith.



How did you rule out Joseph Smith? This pronouncement seems arbitrary. All I will say is that your prophet is more likely to be channeling a god than Joseph Smith, but we are comparing unlikely to very unlikely, meaning I don't reason enough to believe that either has any knowledge of gods.



OK, but wise words, tepid predictions, and the advent of a new religion are not evidence of a god. These are things that ordinary human beings can do. As I said, evidence for a god is that which is better explained by invoking supernatural agents than naturalistic processes such as people being people



Agree. We look at the available evidence and attempt to understand what it signifies. We do that by compiling an exhaustive list of logically possible explanations and see if there is any way to rule one in or all but one out. If one's candidate hypotheses list is incomplete, or if one drops elements from it unjustifiably, he is not thinking critically. I asked another poster how he ruled out the multiverse hypothesis for the source of our universe, and I asked you how you ruled out the Joseph Smith was channeling a god. These are both logical possibilities that each of you have just dismissed.

Let me illustrate with a medical example. The evidence is that a person has reported chest pain to you. At this point, we have a very long list of possible explanations, a so-called differential diagnosis, which includes heartburn and esophageal spasm, coronary artery disease with angina, a panic attack, pleurisy, a broken rib, and more.

So, we begin to seek additional evidence to help us winnow the list down to one possibility. Was the pain dull or sharp? Was it continuous or intermittent? Was it accompanied by other symptoms such as shortness of breath, cough, fever, or a flutter in the heart? Does taking a deep breath exacerbate the pain? Is the chest tender to touch? How do the heart and lungs sound or appear in diagnostic studies such as bloodwork, a cardiogram, chest X-rays and an angiogram? What is the response to nitroglycerine, antacids, and sedatives (empirical tests)?

Hopefully, by accumulating and properly interpreting relevant evidence, we eventually make a definitive diagnosis - just one possibility. Often, we can eliminate all but two or three possibilities, a shortened differential diagnosis. You can see that it would be a mistake to just drop any possibility unjustifiably. That's faith, not critical thought.

Again faith is defined as absolute trust.

 

[Tiberius]

quoting scripture is not impolite

too bad if you don't like it

and I reiterate.....
at the end of all of this......the believers will continue in spirit
and the nonbelievers are dust

no atheists

No, quoting scripture by itself is not rude.

But when you use it in order to call someone blind just because they don't share your viewpoint, and when you use scripture so you can hide behind the excuse, "But I was just quoting the Bible!" excuse when you get called out on it, that is very rude.

 

[Tiberius]

I believe there is only ONE Almighty

choose any name you care to

And again, this doesn't work.

If Person A believes in God and and disbelieves in God B, and Person B believes in God B and disbelieves in God A, then you can't side with them both.

 

[Trailblazer]

No, quoting scripture by itself is not rude.

But when you use it in order to call someone blind just because they don't share your viewpoint, and when you use scripture so you can hide behind the excuse, "But I was just quoting the Bible!" excuse when you get called out on it, that is very rude.

Thief said...... and I reiterate.....
at the end of all of this......the believers will continue in spirit
and the nonbelievers are dust

no atheists

I felt the need to interject something because that is just not true. Atheists will not be dust, they will continue in spirit. Everyone continues in spirit, no matter what they believe or disbelieve because the soul (spirit) is immortal, so it cannot die.

 

[Trailblazer]

And again you seem incapable of understanding my point.

Let me make it as abundantly clear as I can so hopefully you will understand.

I claim to be a messenger for Zeus. Zeus is not the God you believe in. He is entirely separate. I claim your God is false and My God, which is entirely different to yours, is the only true God. Since I am a messenger for Zeus, I am evidence that Zeus exists.

Okay, now I understand your point. Thanks for your patience.

Your second statement is NOT a rephrasing of your first.

Let me turn your question around: Why should we expect that a God who does exist to NOT prove that he exists?

Okay, why should we expect that a God who does exist to prove that He exists?

Sounds like you are just saying that it makes no sense but you believe it anyway.

It makes sense to me because I understand it, since Baha’u’llah explained it.

I'm not very familiar with your faith, but it seems to me that Baháʼu'lláh was a religious leader, and I have no problem with accepting that. Doesn't mean he was divine or anything.

Baha’u’llah was not a religious leader; He was the Founder of a new religion. I never said He was divine, but He was different from an ordinary man because He had a twofold nature. The following passage explains the nature of a Messenger of God.

“Unto this subtle, this mysterious and ethereal Being He hath assigned a twofold nature; the physical, pertaining to the world of matter, and the spiritual, which is born of the substance of God Himself. He hath, moreover, conferred upon Him a double station. The first station, which is related to His innermost reality, representeth Him as One Whose voice is the voice of God Himself. To this testifieth the tradition: “Manifold and mysterious is My relationship with God. I am He, Himself, and He is I, Myself, except that I am that I am, and He is that He is.” …. The second station is the human station, exemplified by the following verses: “I am but a man like you.” “Say, praise be to my Lord! Am I more than a man, an apostle?” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 66-67

 

[Tiberius]

Thief said...... and I reiterate.....
at the end of all of this......the believers will continue in spirit
and the nonbelievers are dust

no atheists

I felt the need to interject something because that is just not true. Atheists will not be dust, they will continue in spirit. Everyone continues in spirit, no matter what they believe or disbelieve because the soul (spirit) is immortal, so it cannot die.

I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about this:

again....none so blind as those who will not see

That was rude.

 

[Tiberius]

Okay, now I understand your point. Thanks for your patience.

I'm glad to hear it.

Okay, why should we expect that a God who does exist to prove that He exists?

Does it sound rational to you that God would demand belief and punish non-believers and yet refuse to allow evidence for his existence? Sounds like he's setting us up to fail.

It makes sense to me because I understand it, since Baha’u’llah explained it.

So God explained to you why he made sure that spiritual matters were entirely uncheckable, despite such things being essential to get right?

Baha’u’llah was not a religious leader; He was the Founder of a new religion. I never said He was divine, but He was different from an ordinary man because He had a twofold nature. The following passage explains the nature of a Messenger of God.

“Unto this subtle, this mysterious and ethereal Being He hath assigned a twofold nature; the physical, pertaining to the world of matter, and the spiritual, which is born of the substance of God Himself. He hath, moreover, conferred upon Him a double station. The first station, which is related to His innermost reality, representeth Him as One Whose voice is the voice of God Himself. To this testifieth the tradition: “Manifold and mysterious is My relationship with God. I am He, Himself, and He is I, Myself, except that I am that I am, and He is that He is.” …. The second station is the human station, exemplified by the following verses: “I am but a man like you.” “Say, praise be to my Lord! Am I more than a man, an apostle?” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 66-67

And he led this religion, yes? That makes him a religious leader.

Also, the fact that your religious story says he was holy, or whatever you want to call it doesn't make it true.

 

[Trailblazer]

That was rude.

I agree.

 

[Trailblazer]

Does it sound rational to you that God would demand belief and punish non-believers and yet refuse to allow evidence for his existence? Sounds like he's setting us up to fail.

Who said anything about punishment?

So God explained to you why he made sure that spiritual matters were entirely uncheckable, despite such things being essential to get right?

They are not ununderstandable, and that is the important point, that you can understand them.

And he led this religion, yes? That makes him a religious leader.

Yes, He led it, but that was not His most important job.

Also, the fact that your religious story says he was holy, or whatever you want to call it doesn't make it true.

No, it cannot be prove to be true, as it is a belief. So it could be either true or false.

 

[Willamena]

If God existed, would there be any atheists?

This is a yes or no question, so please answer yes or no.

Yes or no.

If you answer yes, please explain why there would still be atheists if God existed.

The atheists (like I) would recognize the manner of existence, hence the manner in which god neither exists nor does not exist.

If you answer no, please explain why there would be no more atheists if God existed.

Because the atheists (like I) would be recognizing god.

 

[Tiberius]

Who said anything about punishment?

So God doesn't punish people for not believing? You don't believe that non-believers go to Hell?

They are not ununderstandable, and that is the important point, that you can understand them.

I'm not talking about if they can be understood or not.

I'm talking about whether they can be verified as correct or not.

Yes, He led it, but that was not His most important job.

Then he was a religious leader.

No, it cannot be prove to be true, as it is a belief. So it could be either true or false.

But not equally so.

I can't prove that my bed ceases to exist when I am not looking at it, that doesn't mean it's a 50/50 chance though.

 

[Trailblazer]

So God doesn't punish people for not believing? You don't believe that non-believers go to Hell?

Baha’is do not believe that there is a ‘place’ called hell but rather that hell is a state of the soul that is distant from God, and conversely heaven is a state of the soul that is near to God. Nearness to God involves knowing and loving God. The following short video does a good job of explaining this:

I'm not talking about if they can be understood or not.
I'm talking about whether they can be verified as correct or not.

Spiritual things are experiential so they are not verifiable except by the person who experiences them.

But not equally so.

I can't prove that my bed ceases to exist when I am not looking at it, that doesn't mean it's a 50/50 chance though.

The existence of God or lack thereof cannot be measured in percentages. But I would say that there is a greater chance that God does exist than that God doesn’t exist, but of course I say that because I see the evidence for God’s existence.

 

[Tiberius]

Baha’is do not believe that there is a ‘place’ called hell but rather that hell is a state of the soul that is distant from God, and conversely heaven is a state of the soul that is near to God. Nearness to God involves knowing and loving God. The following short video does a good job of explaining this:

A lot of argument from incredulity there, with no real evidence to back up the claims.

Spiritual things are experiential so they are not verifiable except by the person who experiences them.

So unverifiable subjective opinion.

Tell me again why I should take this as a fact?

The existence of God or lack thereof cannot be measured in percentages. But I would say that there is a greater chance that God does exist than that God doesn’t exist, but of course I say that because I see the evidence for God’s existence.

No, you see things that you interpret as evidence for God, so you are biased to that conclusion.