If God existed, would there be any atheists?

[Trailblazer]

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

I never said there was any verifiable evidence for my beliefs about heaven and hell.

So unverifiable subjective opinion.

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

I never said you should take it as a fact, beliefs are not facts.

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

And you see things that are evidence for no God, so you are biased to that conclusion.

 

[Tiberius]

I never said there was any verifiable evidence for my beliefs about heaven and hell.

I never said you should take it as a fact, beliefs are not facts.

So if you admit that you can't verify it, why do you believe?

And you see things that are evidence for no God, so you are biased to that conclusion.

No, I see a lack of evidence for God, not evidence for a lack of God. Subtle but important difference. And since I see no reason to believe in something for which there is no evidence, I see no reason to believe in God.

 

[Trailblazer]

So if you admit that you can't verify it, why do you believe?

I do not need verification of what I know is real.

No, I see a lack of evidence for God, not evidence for a lack of God. Subtle but important difference. And since I see no reason to believe in something for which there is no evidence, I see no reason to believe in God.

Okay, but unless you see what God provides as evidence, you will never see any evidence for God since there will never be any evidence other than what God provides.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

The reason Joseph Smith was ruled out is because He is not considered a Messenger of God by those who carry authority in the Baha’i Faith.

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.

I understand that perspective but there is a reason we do not get anything supernatural, as that would make it too easy to recognize them as Messengers of God. By appearing to us just like ordinary men, we can exercise our free will and accept or reject them

"... While the Manifestations of God all shine with the splendours of God's Revelation, they can reveal themselves in only two ways. The first is to appear in their naked glory. Should this happen, all human beings would witness their awesome power, would bow before their majesty and would submit their will entirely to God's Viceregent on earth. People would thus become puppets of God and lose their free will; all would follow the path of truth, not by their own volition but by capitulating to the irresistible power of the Manifestation of God………

The only other way that the Manifestations of God can reveal themselves, which ensures the preservation of human free will, is to conceal their divine power behind the veil of human characteristics. Although they possess majestic, divine qualities, it is, according to Bahá’u’lláh, against the law of God for them to reveal these to the generality of mankind. Through this method people can exercise their free will to accept or to reject the Message of God, to live in accordance with His teachings or to disobey Him."

Adib Taherzadeh, The Child of the Covenant, p. 17

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.

That sounds like a good process of analysis, but right away I spot a problem. One cannot know who is a Messenger of God by applying logic, since there is nothing logical about Messengers of God, as they are supernatural (even though they hide that side of themselves, as noted above), so their behavior defies logical analysis.

Logic is a good tool but it is not useful for every analysis. Once a Baha’i has determined that they believe that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God, then we accept that everything He wrote was true so we use what He wrote as the criteria for acceptance or rejection of Joseph Smith as a Prophet.

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.

The only thing you would have to determine with alleged Messengers of God is if they are true Messengers of God or false messengers because those are the only two possibilities, but you would have to know what a true Messenger looks like and behaves like and you would also have to know what a false messenger looks like and behaves like in order to make a checklist and do an analysis. There were two good thread on this forum a while back on this subject, one on what we would expect to see if a Messenger was true and then someone started a thread on what we would expect to see if He was false.

 

[Trailblazer]

I haven't specified how that evidence should manifest, but it does need to manifest convincingly to justify a god belief.

Yes, you would have to be convinced in order to believe’ so the question is, what would convince you?
I guess nothing that is presently in evidence or else you'd be a believer.

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?

I like the way you think, logically. How would we know if God was responsible for that arrangement? It could be some extraterrestrials. How could we ever know God exists unless God showed up on Earth, and we knew it was God? But if God cannot show up, we are faced with a conundrum.

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).

Again, I like the way you think, logically. Here is my list of logical possibilities given what we are able to see in the world:

1. God exists and communicates via Messengers, or
2. God exists but does not communicate, or
3. God does not exist

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?

That is a good point. Since the existence of God cannot be proven, there is a risk in believing or in disbelieving. So the question is what do we risk if we choose to believe and what do we risk if we choose to disbelieve and what do we lose or gain by taking either platform?

I have never been a big fan of Pascal’s Wager because I do not think that people should believe in God out of fear; Imo, they should only believe based upon the evidence.

This might sound silly, but my husband has often said I should consider “becoming an atheist” because of the way I sometimes feel about God, since I am not convinced God is All-Loving. But as I tell him, that is not a reason to abdicate my belief, because I know God exists, and knowing that I fear God’s displeasure should I choose to abdicate my belief. So for now I have settled on not believing everything God is cracked up to be by theists but knowing a God exists.

It annoys me to no end when theists insist they know God has certain attributes. I realize they believe that based upon their Scriptures, but they tend to cherry pick and ignore the Scriptures that contradict what they want to believe about God. Then they tell me that this is just something I have to come to realize by prayer. But why would I want to pray to a God I am not too fond of, I would feel like a phoney? Anyway, I digress, but this is a discussion I am having on a Baha’i Forum, so it was on my mind.

You can't eliminate that risk, just choose to ignore it and see how that works out.

It is a lot easier for atheists to ignore the risk and hope for the best. As I said, I cannot ignore the risk because I believe there will be consequences, since I believe/know that God exists. Although I do not know exactly what those consequences will be, I am not willing to take the risk.

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.

They have to say that since they cannot think of any other reason why you would drop out of Christianity. I do not say that because I can think of all kinds of reasons why a person would drop out of Christianity. I can also understand why atheists do not believe in God because I listen to what they say rather than dismissing them with some flippant comment.

That said, I believe that God wants to be known, although God does not need to be known, so God does not barter with humans and what that means is that God can only be known by the evidence God provides.

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 do not think that God expects anything since God already knows why you hold your position, although God might hope you change your mind.

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.

I believe that God intervenes in peoples’ lives but one would have to be a believer I order to be aware of that and if course I could never prove it. But let me give you an example. It is not uncommon that I lose my faith that God gives a darn about a very difficult situation I have been in. Then as if out of the blue, something will happen that completely turns that situation around, often not through my will at all, just through circumstances that involve other people. It is as if God is trying to show me that God is loving after all by sending these people to my aid. It is on this basis that I have concluded that God intervenes when He chooses to do so, at a time when He feels it is necessary and in our best interest.

Regarding a truly phenomenal message that no man could have written, or only containing things people could have written I believe it is the former because I believe that only a Messenger of God could have written what Baha’u’llah wrote. So what we believe about God or no God is contingent upon how we view those Writings. It is on this basis that I have concluded that God is affecting our world through Messengers.

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.

Okay, fair enough. You have to have a reason that makes sense to you.

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

Thanks, I might do that when the time is right.

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.

Regarding the soul and the spiritual world, all I can say is that you will know what they are after you die. I cannot say how NOT knowing about them before you die will affect your afterlife experience, since the afterlife is a mystery for the most part.

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

That’s awfully nice of you, but then I always knew you as a polite person.

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.

If we have evidence to support our hope then it is not just faith. For example, I did not just have faith that the tenants I chose would be good tenants; I checked them out very thoroughly, so I had a good reason to hope they would be good tenants and so far they have been the best tenants I have ever had. I checked out other tenants I have had I knew I was taking a chance on them, and they turned out to not be so good. But sometimes circumstances warrant taking a chance and it is worth the risk.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

By appearing to us just like ordinary men, we can exercise our free will and accept or reject them

Given the way the Abrahamic religions conceive of free will, that is, as the opportunity to make a mistake one would not have made had he had sufficient evidence available to avoid the error, free will is undesirable.

To me, that's like saying that I had the power to teach my children right from wrong and instill in them the desire to always do right, but I didn't, because that would be robbing them of their free will, which is thought of as reducing people to robots in an undesirable sense, but if always knowing what is right and always wanting to do it is called being a robot, then I'm for raising robots and being one myself.

Incidentally, what is free about will? Are we saying that we are free to do what we desire, or are we saying that we are free to choose what we will desire. You desire a god belief, and so have one. I desire to believe what reason applied to evidence reveals and lacking sufficient evidence for theism, am an atheist. We were each free to exercise our wills and go the path we chose, but I doubt either of us will ever choose to want what the other wants in place of what she or he has because we can't, nor are we free to think in the manner each of us has outlined here, meaning that our will is not really free.

You might say that I have the free will to become a believer, but I really don't. I don't want to believe without sufficient reason, nor can I at this stage of my intellectual development.

"... While the Manifestations of God all shine with the splendours of God's Revelation, they can reveal themselves in only two ways. The first is to appear in their naked glory. Should this happen, all human beings would witness their awesome power, would bow before their majesty and would submit their will entirely to God's Viceregent on earth. People would thus become puppets of God and lose their free will; all would follow the path of truth, not by their own volition but by capitulating to the irresistible power of the Manifestation of God ... "

I consider this the desirable state if it were possible. If there is a god and hat god sends messengers, let that messenger be undeniably channeling a deity the way the sun is undeniably sending its messengers, heat and light. Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining, whereas untold millions of sincere seekers find no gods anywhere.

So, since neither of us is free to believe that there is no sun in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, have we been stripped of our free will to not believe and reduced to some inferior status such as a robot or puppet? I simply don't buy that argument. We have been converted to a superior state, one that is correct about the sun being present. That's knowledge, which is desirable. Give the same clear and distinct knowledge of a god's presence if such a god exists and we will all be enlightened, not degraded by losing the chance to be wrong in that area.

"The only other way that the Manifestations of God can reveal themselves, which ensures the preservation of human free will, is to conceal their divine power behind the veil of human characteristics. Although they possess majestic, divine qualities, it is, according to Bahá’u’lláh, against the law of God for them to reveal these to the generality of mankind. Through this method people can exercise their free will to accept or to reject the Message of God, to live in accordance with His teachings or to disobey Him."

This paragraph and the one before it together make another element on the list of examples of restricted choice that I recently described on this thread. If there is such a god, the world could have been more like either of those descriptions, but in a godless universe, only the second is possible. I gave you the loaded coin analogy. This is tails. Again, just like every other flip. With each rendering of tails, the likelihood that the coin is fair decreases and the likelihood that it is perfectly weighted to come up tails every time increases.

One cannot know who is a Messenger of God by applying logic,

There is only one path to knowledge, by which I mean the collection of ideas that can be used to predict outcomes. That's what our minds do for us, but only when we apply reason properly to the evidence of our senses and confirm that our idea can correctly anticipate outcomes, which allows us greater control over our life's experiences. We want to be alive, we want to be comfortable, we want to live free of shame, guilt, and remorse, we want to love and be loved, we want our physical needs met (food, shelter, clothing), we want to be liked and respected by others, we want to experience beauty, etc..

As we develop, we have a chance to learn that these are the things that bring the most satisfaction and the least undesirable experiences like hunger, divorce, being arrested by the police, and humiliation, and how to achieve them.

I define knowledge as the set of one's correct ideas that allow one to accomplish this. Their correctness is tied to their demonstrable ability to achieve one's goals. Other ideas that cannot do this, like astrology, are not knowledge even if believed without doubt. They can't do this because they are not empirically derived. It's really that simple and pure.

And the reason astrology cannot do what say astronomy can do is because the former is a faith-based wrong guess that can be demonstrated to be wrong, and the latter is evidence based and can be shown to be correct by continually correctly anticipating outcomes such as eclipses and finding the cosmic microwave background. Knowledge, or the collection of correct ideas, is also the collection of useful ideas. Other ideas, like astrology, are not knowledge, and treating such ideas as correct is risky. Don't believe your horoscope, because it is not knowledge.

When I was a Christian, I thought I had knowledge of a God, but I didn't. I had a wrong idea accepted by faith that I thought was right. Like all wrong ideas, that belief could be used for nothing except solace.

Likewise, when others refer to spiritual knowledge, I often ask them what makes it knowledge rather than just comforting ideas, and I never get a good answer. What can do with this knowledge that others not possessing it cannot do. Nothing, it turns out, so I don't consider it knowledge.

Likewise with so-called scriptural knowledge. OK, maybe you believe that there was a global flood. What value is that idea, even if true? What value is believing in creationism even if true? If there is no utility to these beliefs, they cannot be called knowledge.

Logic is a good tool but it is not useful for every analysis. Once a Baha’i has determined that they believe that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God, then we accept that everything He wrote was true so we use what He wrote as the criteria for acceptance or rejection of Joseph Smith as a Prophet.

There are no valid analyses without logic. If you chose to believe Baha’u’llah using valid reasoning applied to evidence, then you used logic, although I would say improperly if you concluded that he was a messenger for a deity based on his words, his mission, and the existence of the religion he is known for.

I believe that you have accepted the messengers message because that meets some need you have that people opting for atheism don't have or have met in other ways. Once you did that, you were free to accept Baha’u’llah as a prophet or messenger and reject Joseph Smith.

But somebody choosing Mormonism over the Baha'i faith by the same method - faith - will decide in the reverse : Smith is the prophet and Baha’u’llah the impostor. These conclusions are as arbitrary as the process by which the choice to believe was made.

The only thing you would have to determine with alleged Messengers of God is if they are true Messengers of God or false messengers because those are the only two possibilities, but you would have to know what a true Messenger looks like and behaves like and you would also have to know what a false messenger looks like and behaves like in order to make a checklist and do an analysis. There were two good thread on this forum a while back on this subject, one on what we would expect to see if a Messenger was true and then someone started a thread on what we would expect to see if He was false.

Here's restricted choice again. A true messenger might be channeling superhuman knowledge such as "Go find the Penicillium fungus and extract the substance that makes fevers go down and infections resolve" before penicillin had been discovered, something that a man would not have known without superhuman help. Or he might be saying mundane things that human beings are definitely capable generating.

But in a godless universe, it must be the latter. Tails again.

Here is my list of logical possibilities given what we are able to see in the world:

1. God exists and communicates via Messengers, or
2. God exists but does not communicate, or
3. God does not exist

Agreed. This is what I mean by beginning with an exhaustive list of all logical possibilities, and not deleting any from the list without sufficient cause. I have not been able to eliminate any of them unless by "God" one means the deity of the Christian Bible, who is logically impossible in the same way that the married bachelor is by virtue of being ascribed mutually exclusive qualities at the same time.

I neither believe nor disbelieve any of those. I am agnostic about them all.

I believe that God wants to be known

I'm pretty sure that no such god exists. Any sentient agent capable of creating universes, life, and minds is capable of being known if it wants to be.

Regarding the soul and the spiritual world, all I can say is that you will know what they are after you die.

What I believe that you should be saying is that one might or might not know anything after you die. Those are both possible, but one has fallen off of your list of logical possibilities for no apparent reason.

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.

For example, I did not just have faith that the tenants I chose would be good tenants; I checked them out very thoroughly, so I had a good reason to hope they would be good tenants and so far they have been the best tenants I have ever had. I checked out other tenants I have had I knew I was taking a chance on them, and they turned out to not be so good. But sometimes circumstances warrant taking a chance and it is worth the risk.

That's why basing decisions on evidence is superior to just guessing.

 

[Tiberius]

I do not need verification of what I know is real.

How can you know it's real without verification?

Okay, but unless you see what God provides as evidence, you will never see any evidence for God since there will never be any evidence other than what God provides.

Circular logioc - you are assuming that it is God providing the evidence.

Two logical fallacies in the one post.

 

[Trailblazer]

How can you know it's real without verification?

I know because I have verified Baha'u'llah as real and I believe He was a Messenger of God.

Circular logioc - you are assuming that it is God providing the evidence.

Two logical fallacies in the one post.

I am not assuming that. After careful research, I came to believe that God is providing the evidence.

I would not waste your time spouting logical fallacies because logic only applies to what can be proven true or false, and beliefs cannot be proven true or false.

I know that rattling off fallacies makes some atheists feel smart, but if they were so smart, they would know that unknowable things like God and the soul and the spiritual world are not subject to logical analysis since they can never be proven to exist.

 

[Tiberius]

I know because I have verified Baha'u'llah as real and I believe He was a Messenger of God.

And how did you do that? How did you make sure that you weren't being influenced by some personal bias?

I mean, scientists submit their studies for peer review to make sure that doesn't happen. What did you do?

I am not assuming that. After careful research, I came to believe that God is providing the evidence.

I would not waste your time spouting logical fallacies because logic only applies to what can be proven true or false, and beliefs cannot be proven true or false.

So it can't be proven true or false, but apparently it can be verified...

I know that rattling off fallacies makes some atheists feel smart, but if they were so smart, they would know that unknowable things like God and the soul and the spiritual world are not subject to logical analysis since they can never be proven to exist.

If that's the case, then my conclusion that you are plain wrong is just as valid as yours, isn't it?

 

[Trailblazer]

And how did you do that? How did you make sure that you weren't being influenced by some personal bias?

How do you know when you decide who to marry that you are not being influenced by some personal bias?

I mean, scientists submit their studies for peer review to make sure that doesn't happen. What did you do?

I did as much research as I could. Since we are enjoined by Baha'u'llah not to base our beliefs upon what others believe we have to do own independent investigation.

So it can't be proven true or false, but apparently it can be verified.
If that's the case, then my conclusion that you are plain wrong is just as valid as yours, isn't it?

Yes, it is valid for you, but I could still be right -- or wrong.

 

[Trailblazer]

Given the way the Abrahamic religions conceive of free will, that is, as the opportunity to make a mistake one would not have made had he had sufficient evidence available to avoid the error, free will is undesirable.

These definitions represent my view of free will:

Free will: freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention.
Definition of FREEWILL

Free will: If you believe in free will, you believe that people have a choice in what they do and that their actions have not been decided in advance by God or by any other power.
Free will definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

A really important point is that if someone believes that they have free will they will think they have a choice before they act, but if someone does not believe they have free will they will never think they have a choice. The awareness that we have a choice is what enables us to make a choice instead of just acting according to the first thought or emotion that comes to mind.

By virtue of our free will we do have as the opportunity to make mistakes we would not have made if we had sufficient evidence available to avoid the error. Let me give you a non-religious example, one you can probably relate to since you have dogs. Let’s just say that one of your dogs was not feeling well but you made a choice not to take him to the veterinarian because you did not think it was serious. Then he got worse and you took him in and found out that he had a serious medical condition that could have been treated, but by that time it was too late to save him, and he died. That was a mistake you would not have made if you had sufficient evidence available to avoid the error.

You said free will is undesirable but that is a moot point because if we have it we have it. Would you rather have all your actions predetermined by your past or controlled by God? Yes, having free will means we are responsible and this accountable for our choices so we can end up feeling guilty or remorse if we made a bad choice, but that is just part of living. Conversely, we can end up feeling happy about the good choices that we made. The upshot is that we learn from the choices that we make and the consequences of those choices. If we made a bad choice we will learn not to do that again by the consequences we felt. If we made a good choice we learn to repeat that action.

To me, that's like saying that I had the power to teach my children right from wrong and instill in them the desire to always do right, but I didn't, because that would be robbing them of their free will, which is thought of as reducing people to robots in an undesirable sense, but if always knowing what is right and always wanting to do it is called being a robot, then I'm for raising robots and being one myself.

No, that is not what I am saying at all. Children are not robbed of their free will because of what they are taught. Parents should instill moral values in their children and then when they become adults they will be able to choose for themselves between right and wrong and they will probably make good moral choices if they were taught good morals.

Incidentally, what is free about will? Are we saying that we are free to do what we desire, or are we saying that we are free to choose what we will desire.

I am saying that we are free to do what we desire, although free will has constraints. We are not free to choose what we will desire, because what we will desire is determined by past experiences.

Humans have the will/ability to make choices based upon their desires and preferences. Our desires and preferences come from a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. How free we are to choose from various alternatives varies with the situation. Certainly what we refer to as “free will” has many constraints. However, we have the ability to make choices. Otherwise, we would just be at the mercy of our past experiences and our heredity.

You desire a god belief, and so have one. I desire to believe what reason applied to evidence reveals and lacking sufficient evidence for theism, am an atheist. We were each free to exercise our wills and go the path we chose, but I doubt either of us will ever choose to want what the other wants in place of what she or he has because we can't, nor are we free to think in the manner each of us has outlined here, meaning that our will is not really free.

You might say that I have the free will to become a believer, but I really don't. I don't want to believe without sufficient reason, nor can I at this stage of my intellectual development.

I would hang onto your hat if I were you because I do not have a God belief because I desire a God belief; I have it because I see evidence for the existence of God. Conversely, you lack a God belief because you do not see evidence that God exists. This is not about what we each want; it is about what we each see evidence for. I have wanted to be an atheist but I cannot become an atheist because I see evidence for God; you might have wanted to be a believer but you can’t because you see no evidence for the existence of God.

Do not confuse this with free will; although I am not free to change what I think (unless I acquire new information), I am free to choose what I do. I could choose to become an atheist if I wanted to, but I probably wouldn’t because I think that would be foolish, knowing what the consequences could be as well as knowing it is not in my best interest to reject the God I believe in.

I do not think you have the free will to become a believer because you do not see evidence for God’s existence, and unless you changed your thinking about what constitutes evidence you will never become a believer. By contrast, I could become an atheist by rejecting the evidence I know exists. I could also became an atheist if I stopping believing that my evidence is evidence, something I think a lot of atheists did when they dropped out of Christianity.

I have to add that motivation plays a big part in everything we do and it affects our choices. If an atheist has enough motivation they choose to look longer and search harder for evidence of God, they won’t just give up easily. I know such atheists and one of them is on this forum, but I cannot say they are all that common. But the fact remains that atheists have become believers so that proves it is possible.

I consider this the desirable state if it were possible. If there is a god and hat god sends messengers, let that messenger be undeniably channeling a deity the way the sun is undeniably sending its messengers, heat and light. Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining, whereas untold millions of sincere seekers find no gods anywhere.

How do you define a sincere seeker, and what do they do to demonstrate their sincerity?

It is possible but why do you think it would be desirable for everyone to know that the messenger is undeniably channeling a deity? If the messenger was obviously a messenger of God to everyone then some people who were not sincere seekers of truth would know who the messenger was because it would be so obvious, like the sun shining is obvious. How is it fair to the sincere seekers that insincere people who never even made an effort get to know who the messenger is?

So, since neither of us is free to believe that there is no sun in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, have we been stripped of our free will to not believe and reduced to some inferior status such as a robot or puppet? I simply don't buy that argument. We have been converted to a superior state, one that is correct about the sun being present. That's knowledge, which is desirable. Give the same clear and distinct knowledge of a god's presence if such a god exists and we will all be enlightened, not degraded by losing the chance to be wrong in that area.

If the Messenger of God all appeared in all His glory, all human beings would witness their awesome power, would bow before their majesty and would submit their will entirely to the Messenger because they would not be able to deny the obvious, just like they cannot deny that the sun is shining. You might think this is ideal but it is not what God wants because God wants belief to be a choice. By making the Messenger obvious to us we are no longer in a neutral position. Messengers appear as ordinary men because that forces people to look at what is different about them, if they really want to know, but if they do not really want to know then they will not bother to look. This is how God separates the sincere seeker from the other people who really do not care enough to make an effort. There really is no other way to accomplish this.

(Continued on next post)

 

[Trailblazer]

There is only one path to knowledge, by which I mean the collection of ideas that can be used to predict outcomes. That's what our minds do for us, but only when we apply reason properly to the evidence of our senses and confirm that our idea can correctly anticipate outcomes, which allows us greater control over our life's experiences.

I disagree that we can predict outcomes, anticipate outcomes, or control our life’s experiences, or that this is even desirable. I gave up trying to analyze and control things in my life many years ago.

When I was a Christian, I thought I had knowledge of a God, but I didn't. I had a wrong idea accepted by faith that I thought was right. Like all wrong ideas, that belief could be used for nothing except solace.

That was your experience with Christianity but that does not mean all religions are like Christianity. To lump all religions together and say they are all like Christianity would be the fallacy of hasty generalization. Just because Christianity had wrong ideas, that does not mean all religions have wrong ideas. That is illogical. It is also illogical to say that just because a belief offers solace that is all it offers.

If you accepted Christianity solely on faith and you saw no evidence that it was true that is blind faith belief, especially if it did not make sense to you and you believed in spite of that.

Likewise, when others refer to spiritual knowledge, I often ask them what makes it knowledge rather than just comforting ideas, and I never get a good answer. What can do with this knowledge that others not possessing it cannot do. Nothing, it turns out, so I don't consider it knowledge.

Likewise with so-called scriptural knowledge. OK, maybe you believe that there was a global flood. What value is that idea, even if true? What value is believing in creationism even if true? If there is no utility to these beliefs, they cannot be called knowledge.

I agree that if spiritual knowledge and scriptural knowledge have no useful purpose by way of impacting one’s life, they serve no purpose. Even if these stories in the Bible were true why would it matter if we believed them? What utilitarian purpose would our belief serve? How does the Bible even have any bearing on the world we live in today?

There are no valid analyses without logic. If you chose to believe Baha’u’llah using valid reasoning applied to evidence, then you used logic, although I would say improperly if you concluded that he was a messenger for a deity based on his words, his mission, and the existence of the religion he is known for.

What I believe is based upon what I can know about Baha’u’llah through research as well as what I can know about all the other Messengers of God that preceded Him, because I believe they are all part of the eternal religion of God that is revealed in various chapters throughout the ages. This is called progressive revelation and it makes logical sense to me, in contrast to what other religions teach, that they are the only true religion and separate from all the other religions.

I believe that you have accepted the messengers message because that meets some need you have that people opting for atheism don't have or have met in other ways. Once you did that, you were free to accept Baha’u’llah as a prophet or messenger and reject Joseph Smith.

With all due respect, you do not know what I did. Do you know the the story of how and why I became a Baha’i? A Muslim on this forum asked me to post it a couple of days ago so I posted it here:

#535

You say I believe only because I have a need because you do not see the evidence I see as evidence. I have no need to believe in God or Baha’u’llah, I believe because I see the evidence. Maybe you assume that the life of a believer is easy, but my life would be a lot easier if I did not know the truth. The reason I left the Baha’i Faith for 42 years is because I did not want the obligation or the responsibility, so I spent over 15 years in college pursuing other goals and that I believed were worthwhile at the time. But there was always something missing because I was running away from God and my life had no real meaning.

One reason I came back to the Baha’i Faith was because I did not want to run from God anymore but also is that I could see that the world was falling apart and I wanted to be part of the solution, since I believe the Baha’i Faith has the answers for the social and economic problems the world faces. Now we can see everything escalating as everything falls apart all over the world, just as Baha’u’llah predicted it would 150 years ago. I am an idealist personality and that is why I became a Baha’i in the first place, not because I needed to believe in God for solace. For me it was a Cause for peace and justice and social and economic equality, not a religion.

You are making an incorrect assumption if you think everything people so in life is to meet personal needs. That might be true for some people but not for all people, and to assume everyone is the same is illogical. Some people care about society and causes and that is why you see the protestors marching for justice all over the world.

But somebody choosing Mormonism over the Baha'i faith by the same method - faith - will decide in the reverse : Smith is the prophet and Baha’u’llah the impostor. These conclusions are as arbitrary as the process by which the choice to believe was made.

There was nothing arbitrary about my choice of religions. The Baha’i Faith was the only religion that made any logical sense at all and Bahaullah is the only Messenger of God that has any verifiable evidence that can be researched. Not only that, but He fulfilled all the biblical prophecies for the return of Christ and the Messiah, and that is provable with historical and geographical evidence.

Agreed. This is what I mean by beginning with an exhaustive list of all logical possibilities, and not deleting any from the list without sufficient cause. I have not been able to eliminate any of them unless by "God" one means the deity of the Christian Bible, who is logically impossible in the same way that the married bachelor is by virtue of being ascribed mutually exclusive qualities at the same time.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think that the God of the Christian Bible is logically impossible? I hope you realize that the God is the Christian Bible is not the same God as the God of Christianity.

I'm pretty sure that no such god exists. Any sentient agent capable of creating universes, life, and minds is capable of being known if it wants to be.

Truer words were never spoken, God is capable of being known by everyone, but there is no logical reason why God would want to be known by everyone.

What I believe that you should be saying is that one might or might not know anything after you die. Those are both possible, but one has fallen off of your list of logical possibilities for no apparent reason.

I have always said that both of those are logical possibilities, I was only stating what I believe will happen.

 

[Tiberius]

How do you know when you decide who to marry that you are not being influenced by some personal bias?

Ah, but there's a big difference, isn't there?

WHo I fall in love with is a very subjective thing. I may love a person, but someone else may completely hate them. I freely admit that love is a subjective thing.

But if we are talking about whether a God exists, then it's not subjective. After all, if God exists in your universe, then he must also exist in my universe, for you and I are in the same universe as each other. The nature of our universe can not be one way for me and a different way for you.

I did as much research as I could. Since we are enjoined by Baha'u'llah not to base our beliefs upon what others believe we have to do own independent investigation.

Doing as much research as you can is not enough to eliminate personal bias. In fact, it would do just about nothing to eliminate it.

Yes, it is valid for you, but I could still be right -- or wrong.

So each of us has nothing more than opinion, and each of our opinions is just as valid as the other's. And yet you claim to KNOW that your opinion is true?

 

[CG Didymus]

"... While the Manifestations of God all shine with the splendours of God's Revelation, they can reveal themselves in only two ways. The first is to appear in their naked glory. Should this happen, all human beings would witness their awesome power, would bow before their majesty and would submit their will entirely to God's Viceregent on earth. People would thus become puppets of God and lose their free will; all would follow the path of truth, not by their own volition but by capitulating to the irresistible power of the Manifestation of God………

The Baha'is believe that after this life our spirits will live on in a spiritual realm. Does everyone know God in that realm? If so, then only on Earth does God hide himself. And do you think God will harshly judge Atheists for having rejected him on Earth?

The only other way that the Manifestations of God can reveal themselves, which ensures the preservation of human free will, is to conceal their divine power behind the veil of human characteristics. Although they possess majestic, divine qualities, it is, according to Bahá’u’lláh, against the law of God for them to reveal these to the generality of mankind. Through this method people can exercise their free will to accept or to reject the Message of God, to live in accordance with His teachings or to disobey Him."

The Bible is full of God showing himself through great miracles. God spoke from heaven. Sent manna from heaven. Gideon and the fleece. And, of course, Jesus... who performed all kinds of miracles. I know that many of those miracles Baha'is say didn't literally happen. Is there any, other than the virgin birth, that they do say happened?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Free will: freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention.

I don't believe in divine intervention, but I do believe that our choices are not being made by the self-aware observer - what we call the self distinct from the phenomena of consciousness surrounding it in the theater of the mind - but by unseen neural mechanisms that deliver a preference to the self, which, if not impeded or conflicted, determines what actions will be taken. Right now I'm thirsty and want a sip of tea. I didn't choose to be thirsty or to want a drink. Those ideas were imposed on the self from without, and if a drink is available and there is not another matter of more pressing importance such as the house being on fire or the phone ringing, I will take a sip presently (just did).

If this is what is meant by free will, then yes, we obviously have the ability to receive impulses that inform us of what we want and often can act on them.

But I don't call that free will. I call that the illusion of free will. Free will would be the ability to choose what you will desire.

Free will: If you believe in free will, you believe that people have a choice in what they do and that their actions have not been decided in advance by God or by any other power.

I believe that our desires are determined by unseen and that our actions will be determined by the sum of relative desires and competing neural revelations. One part of my brain may be desiring a cigarette and instructing me to smoke one, but another telling me that smoking is undesirable and I should resist the urge and quit - don't smoke it. I didn't choose either of those ideas and their attendant desires. Nor will I be choosing which wins out in that tug of war. If I am in the process of quitting cigarettes, sometimes the intellect will prevail over the part of the mind that wants me to smoke, and sometimes, my understanding will be defeated by my urge to smoke.

I don't see a place for free will there, just the illusion that the self had anything to do with any of that apart from witnessing it - a sort of a middle man between desire and action if any, and the entity that receives the sense of satisfaction or shame that results from such decisions whether I made them or not.

A really important point is that if someone believes that they have free will they will think they have a choice before they act, but if someone does not believe they have free will they will never think they have a choice.

You read what I believe. I don't believe that "I" - the self-observant self separate from my thoughts, feelings, sensory phenomena, etc. - have choices. I'm an observer in my mind like an alien able to see what's going on in it, watching the desires and urges play out according to a mental map that has accumulated over the years of experiencing life.

Yet I live as I did before I came to these realizations, the difference being that I no longer credit the self for any of my desires or choices. Knowing that my urges and choices come from elsewhere doesn't change how I deal with them.

You said free will is undesirable but that is a moot point because if we have it we have it.

Would you say the same about polio - being undesirable is a moot point if you have it?

Would you rather have all your actions predetermined by your past

I think they already are.

No, that is not what I am saying at all. Children are not robbed of their free will because of what they are taught.

But you said that if a god "taught" me that it existed by providing compelling evidence of that fact that I would lose my free will and become a puppet. I argued that that is not the case with an analogy involving teaching children. I don't see the difference. If teaching that a god exists by that god would be detrimental to free will and the human condition, why is teaching children not also the same?

unless you changed your thinking about what constitutes evidence you will never become a believer

Evidence is whatever is evident to the senses. Perhaps you meant that I should interpret that evidence to mean that there is a god, but it simply doesn't say that to me, and I don't see a reason to deviate from what I call sound reasoning just to make room for a god that can't get in if I maintain rigorous standards for belief...

How do you define a sincere seeker, and what do they do to demonstrate their sincerity?

A sincere seeker is one diligently trying to find something. They don't need to demonstrate anything,but you might see them reading or talking to others about whatever it is they are seeking.

It is possible but why do you think it would be desirable for everyone to know that the messenger is undeniably channeling a deity?

If that were true, it would be desirable to know it so that one might pay more attention to that messenger than his words suggest he deserves.I've read several passages from your religion's writings through you, and with all due respect, there is nothing there that I consider correct that I don't already know. I don't go to others to be told what to believe. I determine that myself.

What do you think that those writings have to offer somebody like me? What do you think they contain that is valuable but not yet known to me?

Messengers appear as ordinary men because that forces people to look at what is different about them

Actually, it makes me think that they are ordinary men. Why would I believe otherwise if they appear ordinary? Here's an ordinary apple. Should I assume that it is more for no apparent reason? Maybe it's a special apple different from all the rest sent by a deity, but it just looks like a plain old apple.

Sorry, Trailblazer, but I'm simply not willing to think like that. If a messenger channeling a deity wants to be recognized as such, he shouldn't appear as an ordinary man. That's what you do when you want to be thought of as ordinary.

I disagree that we can predict outcomes, anticipate outcomes, or control our life’s experiences, or that this is even desirable.

I have to disagree with you on both points. The difference between living well and living poorly is based on those predictions, and doing it well is very desirable. We've modified our shopping habits to reflect our expectations that some items may become difficult to acquire based on the evidence that there is a pandemic, and businesses are closing, and we don't want to leave the house to maximize the outcome of surviving the pandemic as comfortably as possible. Toward that end, we no longer go to the local bodega to buy fresh milk, but rather, now have the boxed milk that can last months unrefrigerated delivered to our door. In that way, we are expecting to direct the outcome to the one we consider desirable - surviving, and having milk for our coffee all year.

I obey the law to determine outcomes (not getting arrested or fined). I don't drive drunk to determine outcomes (avoiding an accident while intoxicated). I censor myself when interacting with others to control outcomes (not offend, not reveal sensitive information that could hurt us such as a social security number). We make such decision continually, and they influence how life will unroll, which is desirable if one can do it well.

You say I believe only because I have a need because you do not see the evidence I see as evidence. I have no need to believe in God or Baha’u’llah, I believe because I see the evidence.

You might be offended by my opinion on this. If so, I apologize. But I don't believe that anybody applying reason to evidence properly can come to a theistic position, and that those who do will do so because they want to - some need is addressed that I don't have - and then report that they came to this conclusion by applying reason to evidence anyway.

The reason I left the Baha’i Faith for 42 years is because I did not want the obligation or the responsibility, so I spent over 15 years in college pursuing other goals and that I believed were worthwhile at the time. But there was always something missing because I was running away from God and my life had no real meaning.

There are your needs motivating you first to leave the religion, then when your needs changed, to reenter it. The same was true with me first entering Christianity when I was one kind of person with specific needs that I hoped that that change would address, needs that later disappeared and with it, my religion.

You are making an incorrect assumption if you think everything people do in life is to meet personal needs. That might be true for some people but not for all people, and to assume everyone is the same is illogical. Some people care about society and causes and that is why you see the protestors marching for justice all over the world.

They are meeting a need to serve.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think that the God of the Christian Bible is logically impossible?

It's described in contradictory terms. This god is said to be perfect in but also to have made a mistake that it regretted and attempted to remedy with a global flood. It is the imperfect perfect god, just as impossible as the married bachelor.

God is capable of being known by everyone, but there is no logical reason why God would want to be known by everyone.

I'm fine with that. Such a god will understand that if makes that choice, no well-trained critical thinker will believe in it. There is no logical reason for me to be otherwise.

 

[Trailblazer]

Ah, but there's a big difference, isn't there?

Who I fall in love with is a very subjective thing. I may love a person, but someone else may completely hate them. I freely admit that love is a subjective thing.

It is no different with Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i Faith. I may love Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i Faith whereas other people might hate Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i Faith. I freely admit that my love for Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i Faith is a subjective thing. However, my belief in Baha’u’llah is not a subjective thing; it is objective, since it is based upon the evidence that indicates that He was a Messenger of God.

Humans have free will, which is the will/ability to make choices based upon their desires and preferences, and this is subjective. Our desires and preferences come from a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. These desires and preferences will always determine what we choose.

I think we have free will to accept Baha’u’llah, but that does not that everyone will be “able” to accept Baha’u’llah because if what He taught and stood for is not something that appeals to them subjectively, or if they have another religion they are emotionally attached to, no amount of objective evidence will ever convince them that Baha’u’llah was who He claimed to be, a Messenger of God.

Believers in the older religions who already believe that God reveals Himself through men, what I call Messengers, have reasons for not accepting Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i Faith and all of these are subjective reasons. They are not based upon the objective facts about Baha’u’llah, for if they were based upon objective facts, those believers would accept Baha’u’llah as a Messenger of God, since that is what the objective evidence indicates. (Incidentally, I have an advanced degree in psychology so I have some knowledge as to how the human mind works.)

But if we are talking about whether a God exists, then it's not subjective. After all, if God exists in your universe, then he must also exist in my universe, for you and I are in the same universe as each other. The nature of our universe can not be one way for me and a different way for you.

You are absolutely correct. This is what I have been saying to atheists for the last six years and you are the first atheist who has understood this. Logically speaking, God either exists or not, and that is an objective reality, it is not a matter of belief or opinion.

Doing as much research as you can is not enough to eliminate personal bias. In fact, it would do just about nothing to eliminate it.

You are right about that, but there is no way to eliminate personal bias; it will always exist, for reasons noted above, because we all have our desires and preferences. All we can so is gather as much information as we can and make an informed decision, hopefully applying logic and reason rather than acting on emotion. For example, if I acted on emotion I might become a Christian because Christianity appeals to me emotionally, but Christianity is not in accord with reason and logic so I cannot believe it. Half the battle is self-awareness; if we know how we feel and know that our emotions could lead us astray, we can combat our emotions with reason and logic.

So each of us has nothing more than opinion, and each of our opinions is just as valid as the other's. And yet you claim to KNOW that your opinion is true?

You have a personal opinion, I have a religious belief. Your opinion is based upon an absence of information about God, but my belief is based upon a Revelation from God to Baha’u’llah, and logically speaking if God communicated to Baha’u’llah, then everything He wrote is the Truth from God. Obviously it is no small thing if Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God and it is not something anyone should accept without doing much research and investigation.

I figured this out as soon as I started to think about it as the result of posting to people on forums about Baha’u’llah. As I have been saying on various forums for the last seven years, the only thing that has to be determined is whether Baha’u’llah was (a) a true Messenger of God, or (b) a false prophet (which would have to mean he was either a con-man or delusional.) Those are the only two logical possibilities. Some people have suggested a third possibility, that Baha’u’llah was just a good man with good ideas, but that is not a logical possibility, because a good man would not lie about something as important as being a Messenger of God. Do you understand what I mean?

 

[Trailblazer]

The Baha'is believe that after this life our spirits will live on in a spiritual realm. Does everyone know God in that realm? If so, then only on Earth does God hide himself. And do you think God will harshly judge Atheists for having rejected him on Earth?

I do not know if everyone will know God in the spiritual realm, nobody knows.

I do not know if God will harshly judge Atheists for having rejected him on Earth. I think that will be handled on a case by case basis.

I think it might be worse for those of other religions who rejected Baha'u'llah, if they knew of Him... That is just my opinion coupled with what Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha wrote. Here, take a look, there is a lot of good information on this website: Non-believers

The Bible is full of God showing himself through great miracles. God spoke from heaven. Sent manna from heaven. Gideon and the fleece. And, of course, Jesus... who performed all kinds of miracles. I know that many of those miracles Baha'is say didn't literally happen. Is there any, other than the virgin birth, that they do say happened?

Baha'is all have different opinions and there is no official stance:

Introduction

Although Bahá'ís universally share a great respect for the Bible, and acknowledge its status as sacred literature, their individual views about its authoritative status range along the full spectrum of possibilities. At one end there are those who assume the uncritical evangelical or fundamentalist-Christian view that the Bible is wholly and indisputably the word of God. At the other end are Bahá'ís attracted to the liberal, scholarly conclusion that the Bible is no more than a product of complex historical and human forces. Between these extremes is the possibility that the Bible contains the Word of God, but only in a particular sense of the phrase 'Word of God' or in particular texts. I hope to show that a Bahá'í view must lie in this middle area, and can be defined to some degree.

Conclusion

The Bahá'í viewpoint proposed by this essay has been established as follows: The Bible is a reliable source of Divine guidance and salvation, and rightly regarded as a sacred and holy book. However, as a collection of the writings of independent and human authors, it is not necessarily historically accurate. Nor can the words of its writers, although inspired, be strictly defined as 'The Word of God' in the way the original words of Moses and Jesus could have been. Instead there is an area of continuing interest for Bahá'í scholars, possibly involving the creation of new categories for defining authoritative religious literature.

A Baháí View of the Bible

 

[Trailblazer]

If this is what is meant by free will, then yes, we obviously have the ability to receive impulses that inform us of what we want and often can act on them.

But I don't call that free will. I call that the illusion of free will. Free will would be the ability to choose what you will desire.

I do not believe we can choose what we presently desire but we can change what we will desire by replacing that desire with something else we desire more. I could give you one excellent example but I do not care to expose my personal life on a public forum. Suffice to say, my desires used to be a lot different from what they are now. It is what we think or believe that controls what we will desire, so if we change what we are thinking or believing than our desires will change.

Here is an example most people can relate to. Let’s say that a man desires to drink alcohol all the time so he becomes an alcoholic. He is going to continue to desire alcohol unless something changes and he starts to think differently about alcohol. As long as he thinks he needs a drink, he will probably drink. So let’s just say that man goes to a 12 step program and learns from other people that he can live and be happy without drinking. He has substituted his need for a drink with something different, the program and the fellowship it provides.

I believe that our desires are determined by unseen and that our actions will be determined by the sum of relative desires and competing neural revelations…. If I am in the process of quitting cigarettes, sometimes the intellect will prevail over the part of the mind that wants me to smoke, and sometimes, my understanding will be defeated by my urge to smoke.

I believe that our desires are determined by unseen and that our actions will be determined by the sum of relative desires and competing desires. For example, I desired to go out for a bike ride today but I also desired to answer posts on this forum and another forum, but I had many posts to answer so I never got out for the bike ride. I used my free will to choose and then I acted on my decision – I answered posts instead of going out for the bike ride. I chose to do that because I thought it was more important to answer posts than to go out for a bike ride. I make these kinds of decisions every day, as there is only so much time in a day.

As I think I said in the previous post, if we are aware that we have free will then we are also aware of these choices we make. If we are not aware we will still make choices but they might not be informed choices because we won’t think much about other choices we could have made. We will just be on automatic, doing what we desire to do, letting our body choose instead of using our mind. I know all about that because I used to live that way because I did not think about alternatives so I did not think I had a choice.

I don't see a place for free will there, just the illusion that the self had anything to do with any of that apart from witnessing it - a sort of a middle man between desire and action if any, and the entity that receives the sense of satisfaction or shame that results from such decisions whether I made them or not.

If you used your intellect to make a choice not to smoke then that was your rational mind making that decision, what Baha’is call the rational soul, since we believe that the soul working through the brain is responsible for the functioning of the mind. We believe that our soul is our true identity, the sum total of out personality, our self, and the body is just a vehicle that carries the soul around and allows it to function while we are alive in a body.

You read what I believe. I don't believe that "I" - the self-observant self separate from my thoughts, feelings, sensory phenomena, etc. - have choices. I'm an observer in my mind like an alien able to see what's going on in it, watching the desires and urges play out according to a mental map that has accumulated over the years of experiencing life.

Yet I live as I did before I came to these realizations, the difference being that I no longer credit the self for any of my desires or choices. Knowing that my urges and choices come from elsewhere doesn't change how I deal with them.

Interesting, obviously, you look at the self very differently than I do, since I believe that the self is the rational soul which, working through the brain and mind, determines our actions.

I don't believe that "you" - the self-observant self - is separate from your thoughts. I believe that your self is your thoughts, and you make choices according to your thoughts.

So the chain of events goes like this: Knowledge (thought) --- > Volition (will) ---> Action

Would you say the same about polio - being undesirable is a moot point if you have it?

Polio is not a given since it can be prevented by a vaccine, whereas free will cannot be prevented. That is the difference. Why is the ability to make choices undesirable, because you might make the wrong choice? We all make wrong choices whether we attribute those choices to free will or not. Making choices is unavoidable as even not making a choice is a choice.

I think they already are.

I agree that present actions are predetermined by our past, but since every day is a new day we add to the past by what we do in the present and by doing so we can create a different the future. In other words, what we do in the present has the potential to determine our actions in the future.

But you said that if a god "taught" me that it existed by providing compelling evidence of that fact that I would lose my free will and become a puppet. I argued that that is not the case with an analogy involving teaching children. I don't see the difference. If teaching that a god exists by that god would be detrimental to free will and the human condition, why is teaching children not also the same?

The difference is that children do not lose their free will because they would be free to choose to follow what they are taught or not follow it, but if God made Himself known to you would not be free to choose to follow God since nobody will reject a God they know exists. So knowing unequivocally that God exists takes your choice to believe or not believe away.

Evidence is whatever is evident to the senses. Perhaps you meant that I should interpret that evidence to mean that there is a god, but it simply doesn't say that to me, and I don't see a reason to deviate from what I call sound reasoning just to make room for a god that can't get in if I maintain rigorous standards for belief...

I would rather say that evidence is whatever your mind tells you is evidence since it is the mind that thinks and determines what to interpret as evidence. If your mind does not say to you that something is evidence then it doesn’t say that, so unless you acquire new information that changes what is in your mind, you will continue thinking as you do now.

And here is the thing: You just put a clamp on your mind as soon as you said “I don't see a reason to deviate from what I call sound reasoning just to make room for a god that can't get in if I maintain rigorous standards for belief.” By setting specific criteria by which you are willing to believe (what you call sound reasoning) and setting a standard by which God should operate in order to ‘get in’ you just boxed yourself into a corner and made it impossible for you to ever believe in God, unless you decided to reconsider your reasoning is and how God should operate to ‘get in.’ That’s fine to maintain your standards, but I just want you to realize what you just did.

A sincere seeker is one diligently trying to find something. They don't need to demonstrate anything, but you might see them reading or talking to others about whatever it is they are seeking.

Fair enough, I consider reading or talking to others about whatever it is you are seeking to be making a sincere effort. For example, I talk to other Baha’is about the issue I have with not loving God, so even if I did not ever am able to love God, I still made a sincere effort to love God. God is well aware of the efforts we make, as God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, or so I believe, according to Baha’u’llah.

If that were true, it would be desirable to know it so that one might pay more attention to that messenger than his words suggest he deserves. I've read several passages from your religion's writings through you, and with all due respect, there is nothing there that I consider correct that I don't already know. I don't go to others to be told what to believe. I determine that myself.

God does not want you to pay attention to Baha’u’llah because He made sure you know He is a Messenger of God because obviously that would bias your decision and interfere with your ability to choose by virtue of your own free will. If you do not think His words are worthy of being from a deity I am not surprised because not all people relate to His Writings that way. When I first read them I never thought to myself that they were from a deity, I only read them for content and I liked what they said, the teachings. But since His language style was so difficult for me to understand I preferred to read the other Writings of the Baha’i Faith, what His son Abdu’l-Baha wrote, because it was so much easier to understand, which is one reason he was appointed by Baha’u’llah to be an interpreter.

I was always much more interested in the spiritual and social teachings than in God so only about six years ago, did I connect the dots so to speak and realize that Baha’u’llah was speaking on behalf of God. That was a turning point in my life because I was now connected with God by those Writings whereas I had spent most of the previous 42 years just believing God existed but not really knowing the implications and significance of belief in God.

(Continued on next post)

 

[Trailblazer]

What do you think that those writings have to offer somebody like me? What do you think they contain that is valuable but not yet known to me?

I don’t know, because I do not know what you already know. I think you might know some of the moral teachings from having been a Christian, since they are the same as Jesus taught, but there are many new things that Jesus did not teach. Not all people value the same things.

I also do not know what you value but as a humanist I would be willing to bet you value equity and justice for all, and caring for the poor, and this is some of what Baha’u’llah revealed. For example, when Baha’u’llah wrote to the kings and rulers of the earth in the latter part of the 19th century, He ordered them to take care of the poor, but they did not heed His call.

“Tell, O ‘Alí, the loved ones of God that equity is the most fundamental among human virtues. The evaluation of all things must needs depend upon it.” Gleanings, p. 203

“Say: Observe equity in your judgment, ye men of understanding heart! He that is unjust in his judgment is destitute of the characteristics that distinguish man’s station.” Gleanings, p. 204

“The Great Being saith: O ye children of men! The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity. This is the straight Path, the fixed and immovable foundation. Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 215

Actually, it makes me think that they are ordinary men. Why would I believe otherwise if they appear ordinary? Here's an ordinary apple. Should I assume that it is more for no apparent reason? Maybe it's a special apple different from all the rest sent by a deity, but it just looks like a plain old apple.

That is exactly what you are supposed to think until you look beneath the surface and -find out more about them. Of course there has to be a reason why you would consider them more than ordinary, and that would be related to their character, and what they accomplished and what they wrote.

Sorry, Trailblazer, but I'm simply not willing to think like that. If a messenger channeling a deity wants to be recognized as such, he shouldn't appear as an ordinary man. That's what you do when you want to be thought of as ordinary.

The Messenger wants to be considered ordinary by people who are not able to recognize His divine station. That is why He appears as ordinary. If He appeared as divine then everyone would eb able to see that, even people who never searched for Him.

There you go again, setting parameter for how God should reveal Himself. Does that even make logical sense that a human would set parameters for an omnipotent/omniscient God? But yes, you need to be able to understand why God reveals Himself the way He does, you should not just believe without understanding.

I have to disagree with you on both points. The difference between living well and living poorly is based on those predictions, and doing it well is very desirable.

I agree that we can predict some outcomes, anticipate some outcomes, and control some of our life’s experiences, and that is desirable. I was going so far in the other direction to make a point that we cannot control everything. Has anyone been able to control everything during this pandemic?

Please do not get it I your mind that I represent the Baha’i stance, because I am quite different from the average Baha’i. Most Baha’is who are actively involved in the organization are about as organized as Catholics, if you know what I mean, and they plan everything right down to the last detail. That drives me crazy because I am not a planner. That is probably because my life is not conducive to being in control, given we have 10 cats and 3 houses.

We've modified our shopping habits to reflect our expectations that some items may become difficult to acquire based on the evidence that there is a pandemic, and businesses are closing, and we don't want to leave the house to maximize the outcome of surviving the pandemic as comfortably as possible.

There is nothing wrong with planning for possible outcomes and acting wisely. We do not have to alter very much because we already live very simply and only go to the grocery store twice a week, and they are not short of any commodities we need, although the price of meat has gone through the roof. Those stores are immaculate and set up for social distancing so it is not a risk especially with a mask. But I had to plan ahead for our cats that have CRF. Because of the pandemic Costco cannot order any more lactated ringers which are the only thing that is keeping two of our CRF cats alive so I made sure they would sell me the boxes they had in stock. I even managed to get a second script from our veterinarian sent to another Costco so we will have a huge supply that will last a very long time. I do plan ahead for things that really matter to me.

I obey the law to determine outcomes (not getting arrested or fined). I don't drive drunk to determine outcomes (avoiding an accident while intoxicated). I censor myself when interacting with others to control outcomes (not offend, not reveal sensitive information that could hurt us such as a social security number). We make such decision continually, and they influence how life will unroll, which is desirable if one can do it well.

I do understand your point and I do the same. I am pretty careful overall.

You might be offended by my opinion on this. If so, I apologize. But I don't believe that anybody applying reason to evidence properly can come to a theistic position, and that those who do will do so because they want to - some need is addressed that I don't have - and then report that they came to this conclusion by applying reason to evidence anyway.

You have a right to your opinion and I am not offended because I know it is not personal. After all, I have been posting almost exclusively to atheist for the also six years, day and night. I am probably better able to understand the atheist position than atheists are able to understand the theist position.

You might be offended by my opinion on this. If so, I apologize. But I don't believe that anybody applying reason to evidence properly can come to an atheist position, and that those who do will do so because they refuse to seriously consider the only evidence that has ever been provided by God, Messengers.

Everyone has personal needs, so some need is always addressed by taking a particular position, theist or atheist. I believe that atheists have a need not to compromise their rigid standards of evidence. Atheists also have a need to not be subject to the laws set forth by the Messenger of God, which prohibit consumption of alcohol and having sex out of wedlock. We all have needs.

There are your needs motivating you first to leave the religion, then when your needs changed, to reenter it. The same was true with me first entering Christianity when I was one kind of person with specific needs that I hoped that that change would address, needs that later disappeared and with it, my religion.

But my needs were not personal needs; they were needs to serve humanity by being part of the only religion I believe has the answers to the problems the world faces in the present age. When I rejoined I did not know what that would entail, what I would have to sacrifice of my personal needs. I have sacrificed just about everything I used to enjoy doing, but now that I can clearly see what is going on in the world I know I did it for a good reason and I will never regret it even though it is anything but easy being a Baha’i. The Baha’i Faith is not Christianity, where people go to Church once a week and look forward to the day they will go to heaven, saved and forgiven.

They are meeting a need to serve.

And what is wrong with a need to serve others? Would it be preferable if all I cared about was meeting my own selfish needs – eat, drink and be merry and have sex? Sorry… been there done that, no thanks.

It's described in contradictory terms. This god is said to be perfect in but also to have made a mistake that it regretted and attempted to remedy with a global flood. It is the imperfect perfect god, just as impossible as the married bachelor.

If you believe the Bible stories I can understand why you might come to that conclusion. I am so glad I was not raised as a Christian. What you just said about God making a mistake is just humorous to me. Why would anyone believe that God would be imperfect or make a mistake? That is so illogical.

I'm fine with that. Such a god will understand that if makes that choice, no well-trained critical thinker will believe in it. There is no logical reason for me to be otherwise.

Such a God will understand that if He makes that choice, no atheists who believe that they are well-trained critical thinkers will believe in Him. That is no skin off God’s nose because God does not need the belief of anyone, including those atheists who believe they are too smart to believe in His Messengers.

To say that no well-trained critical thinker will believe in God is as much as saying that none of the 93% of people who believe in God are well-trained critical thinkers, that only the 7% of atheists are well-trained critical thinkers. I do hope you realize how arrogant that is, but I am used to hearing it because that is what the bulk of atheists say.

 

[Shia Islam]

If God existed, would there be any atheists?

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

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

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

Thanks, Trailblazer

Yes. Some people tend to deny all types of things: The historic Jesus, moon landing, spherical earth..You name it!!