Trailblazer
Veteran Member
No, the video says nothing about our beliefs being reviewed by others.This contradicts what was being said in the video. If Bahai believes that the truth is the truth is the truth, then your beliefs should be reviewed by others.
Individual investigation of truth means it is an individual investigation and it involves nobody else.
It does not matter what other people think because the beliefs have to be our own beliefs because we alone are responsible to God for our beliefs.
If not, then your personal beliefs are nothing more than you personally wanting non-truths to be truth.
There is no reason to think that what we determined in our individual investigation would be what we wanted to be true. That has no basis in logic.
There is no reason to think that it would not be possible to determine the truth by doing an individual investigation of the facts related to the religion.If you put all your knowledge (unbeknownst to yourself that they are all untrue) into the box, no matter how much you have investigated, you will never be get to or near the truth.
There is no reason to think that bias has anything to do with missing any of the facts related to the religion.Due to your bias, you've missed an important factor here, which is, individual investigations. Note that it is plural. For you, the investigation stops once you have fulfill your personal wants and decided to call them "truths."
There is no reason to think that wants has anything to do with what is found in the independent investigation. That is just your personal opinion and it has no basis in reality.
That is not new knowledge about the religion in question; it is just another person’s opinion of the religion. That would get us no closer to the truth. The truth about the religion comes from the facts related to the religion. Facts are facts, opinions are opinions. Nobody else's opinions carry any more weight than our own opinions.When peer review is allowed, the investigator does not end there. After obtaining the recently gained new knowledge, you do more investigations in order to be closer to the truth.
Did you watch the video? If you did you would know that is false, because prior to the investigation one has not accepted any beliefs as true.That investigation is only performed to determine whether you genuinely believe your beliefs, and nothing more.
There is no reason to think anyone is afraid of anything or that anyone is seeking comfort rather than truth. That is just your personal opinion and it has no basis in reality.Fear has played a part in this. Fear of knowing the truth have turned your quest for that knowledge into a quest of comfort, regardless of you actually finding the truth.
Rather than rewriting what I already said to Tiberius, here were my parting thoughts:
And I have explained countless times that if something is checked and verified by others, then we should not believe it because it is not our own belief if we have to have it checked and verified by other people.
I think we are at the end of this road because there’s never going to be any agreement and you cannot understand why I am saying what I do. I do not just pull these things out of my hat; they come from the Writings of my religion. So I will leave you with a very important passage that says it all, and makes it perfectly clear why we would never want out beliefs checked and verified by anyone else.
“Suffer not yourselves to be wrapt in the dense veils of your selfish desires, inasmuch as 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
In brief, what that passage means is that everyone has the capacity to believe in God... If they didn’t, God could not hold anyone accountable for not believing... It goes on to say that we cannot blame anyone else for not believing in God. If not one single person believed in God we are still accountable because no man’s faith can be determined by anyone except himself.
In brief, what that passage means is that everyone has the capacity to recognize God in the Person of the Messenger... If they didn’t, God could not hold anyone accountable for not believing in Him... It goes on to say that we cannot blame anyone else for our failures. If not one single person recognized the Messenger of God (which equates to recognizing God) we are still accountable because no man’s faith can be determined by anyone except himself.... That is why I cannot prove anything to you or to anyone else... You have to look at the evidence and decide for yourself. That is also why peer review of beliefs is completely out of the question, because then we would be involving other people and putting our eternal life in someone else’s hands.
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. We are all responsible for our own belief in God, so we cannot look to other people for their opinions or blame other people for why we chose not to believe.
Last edited: