Reason to Believe

[Trailblazer]

You ask questions that are impossible to answer. I know what I feel, and that's all anyone can know (with respect to spiritual knowledge, that is).

So you do not think that you can know anything from scriptures?

When it comes to spiritual knowledge I do not believe that feelings are a reliable indicator of such, except for the person who has the feelings, but even then feelings can often be misleading.

Just my opinion.

 

[Katzpur]

So you do not think that you can know anything from scriptures?

Sure I do. If I implied that the scriptures are worthless, I certainly didn't mean to.

When it comes to spiritual knowledge I do not believe that feelings are a reliable indicator of such, except for the person who has the feelings, but even then feelings can often be misleading.

I don't know. Maybe "feelings" is the wrong word. I believe you can sense whether something is true or not, and to me, it's something deep in my gut that speaks to me. For instance, someone who does not believe that God exists could give me the best arguments in the world to support his conviction that God is nothing more than a figment of my imagination. But regardless of how articulate and persuasive that person might be, there is something inside me that simply does not allow me to deny His existence.

 

[InChrist]

Anyone who looks to Jesus Christ can have "a real, living relationship" with Him. Members of churches you don't personally like are not disqualified from having this blessing.

I did not say that members of certain churches were disqualified from having the blessing of a relationship with Jesus Christ. I simply know my own experience of being shown a different Jesus and that I was not encouraged to look to Christ as sufficient for salvation /eternal life apart from the organizations claiming to be the true church and their required sacraments or ordinances.

 

[InChrist]

Did finding christ made you more aware of the negative cults in other churches (making your view the true view?) or does christ make you see the good in all christians no matter where they are in their walk with christ?

When I went into the church, I had negative thoughts. It wasnt catholicism it was christianity in general; all denominations. I left because it didnt "feel" right inside.

Finding your true faith should change ones perspective other people more postively, right?

Finding Christ made me aware that all people need a Savior in a very personal way as this reality hit home for me. Jesus Christ has given me a love for others I never knew before.

 

[blü 2]

God is not going to punish nonbelievers. Any punishment they might incur would be because they missed out on what they could have had if they had believed.

“He who shall accept and believe, shall receive his reward; and he who shall turn away, shall receive none other than his own punishment.” Gleanings, p. 339.

That sounds pretty much up-yours to me.

So it would be self inflicted punishment.

What, the rascal hides, never does or says anything, leaves not a trace, and then says, You're a dud at hide-and-seek! No icecream for you! I see no moral basis for such a position after such behavior.

There is a reward for believing but I do not know of a specific punishment for not believing, nor is there anything to indicate that God is doling out the rewards and punishments.

Why should there be a reward? That's just buying votes, no?

And what about respect for the individual's right of choice ─ not least, in this case, informed choice?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Finding Christ made me aware that all people need a Savior in a very personal way as this reality hit home for me. Jesus Christ has given me a love for others I never knew before.

Can you have that without thinking others are in a cult based on your experiences and not their individual relationship with Christ?

 

[Katzpur]

I did not say that members of certain churches were disqualified from having the blessing of a relationship with Jesus Christ. I simply know my own experience of being shown a different Jesus and that I was not encouraged to look to Christ as sufficient for salvation /eternal life apart from the organizations claiming to be the true church and their required sacraments or ordinances.

As far as I'm concerned, there isn't more than one Jesus Christ. I'm glad you've found Him, but so have I. We just found Him in different ways.

 

[Trailblazer]

That sounds pretty much up-yours to me.

I can see how it could sound rather harsh as a standalone sentence and that is why it is not a good idea to quote out of context. The context is that it is not the fault of the message bearer if the recipient rejects the message. Obviously, there are myriad reasons why it might be rejected. I believe that God takes all that into consideration. I have conversed much more with nonbelievers than with believers over the last five years so I know there are myriad reasons why they do not believe in God. Why would a just God lump them all together? Even believers are not lumped together. What matters most is sincerity and effort so if a nonbeliever sincerely sought the truth about God and did not find it, I do not think that is blameworthy. Those atheists who shun God and call God evil are in another category.

What, the rascal hides, never does or says anything, leaves not a trace, and then says, You're a dud at hide-and-seek! No ice cream for you! I see no moral basis for such a position after such behavior.

I get it, I really do. I was not searching for God when I stumbled upon my religion over four decades ago, so why did I believe it? I was not raised in any religion such as Christianity so I had no basis to believe in God, no preconceptions about God, and that may well be the reason I believed it.

Why do Christians believe that Jesus is evidence of God? Why do Jews believe that Moses is evidence and why do Muslims believe that Muhammad is evidence? Why don’t nonbelievers believe that Messengers of God are adequate evidence that God exists? I have never been able to get an answer to this question in five years, except that there is n o way to prove these Messengers actually got a message from God so they could be frauds. The most logical next step seems to be to determine if they are or not, if one wants to know, since these are the only evidence God has ever provided. The other two logical possibilities is that God exists but does not communicate at all, or that God does not exist, but if God ever provided evidence it is what the Messengers revealed about God.

Why should there be a reward? That's just buying votes, no?

Why would God need votes? God is fully self-sufficient, above the need for any of His creatures.

Why do people get rewarded if they get an advanced degree in college and thereby get a really good job that pays a lot of money? Why is it rewarding when people have children and reap the benefits of that? Everything that we do in this life is based upon rewards and punishments. That is the basis of justice.

“As to thy question regarding the sayings of the leaders of past religions. Every wise and praiseworthy man will no doubt eschew such vain and profitless talk. The incomparable Creator hath created all men from one same substance, and hath exalted their reality above the rest of His creatures. Success or failure, gain or loss, must, therefore, depend upon man’s own exertions. The more he striveth, the greater will be his progress.” Gleanings, pp. 81-82

And what about respect for the individual's right of choice ─ not least, in this case, informed choice?

All choices should be informed. Nobody should just believe. That is the first principle of the Baha’i Faith.

“The first principle Baha’u’llah urged was the independent investigation of truth. “Each individual,” He said, “is following the faith of his ancestors who themselves are lost in the maze of tradition. Reality is steeped in dogmas and doctrines. If each investigate for himself, he will find that Reality is one; does not admit of multiplicity; is not divisible. All will find the same foundation and all will be at peace.” – Abdu’l-Baha, Star of the West, Volume 3, p. 5.

“What does it mean to investigate reality? It means that man must forget all hearsay and examine truth himself, for he does not know whether statements he hears are in accordance with reality or not. Wherever he finds truth or reality, he must hold to it, forsaking, discarding all else; for outside of reality there is naught but superstition and imagination.” – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 62.

 

[Trailblazer]

As far as I'm concerned, there isn't more than one Jesus Christ. I'm glad you've found Him, but so have I. We just found Him in different ways.

I do not believe there is more than one Jesus either... We Baha'is call it the eternal Christ Spirit, the Alpha and the Omega.

 

[arthra]

Believe that all religions are essentially correct in their own way - with of course reservations.

Baha'is believe that all the major religions have a Divine origin and each has appeared at crucial stages in the advancement of humanity so there are unique challenges each has met and of course varied social ordinances for the occasion and circumstances.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Nothing you've said contradicts my position. We've assessed the evidence and reached a conclusion. We didn't choose what conclusion to reach, it was an inevitable consequence of that evidence and how our minds happen to work. We couldn't decide that we're going to be a committed Hindu this week (for example), even if we really wanted to. For the idea that theological belief (or the lack thereof) is a choice to be true, that would have to be possible.

Except it is a choice as to whether you accept any evidence or not. I have little 'faith' in such evidence from so long ago. Because surely it is down to whether you do believe what is written and espoused or you just don't, as many like myself fail to do.

 

[Mock Turtle]

At one time I used to believe (#4) that there was one true religion somewhere and I was searching for this true religion. I was raised Catholic and the Catholic church claims to be the true religion with the pope, God's representative on earth. Later after becoming disillusioned with the Catholicism and trying out a few eastern religions or often ignoring religion for a period of years, I joined the Mormon church which also claims to be the true church. After leaving Mormonism, I looked into another group claiming to be the true church. The spiritual tension in my life was becoming intense as I continued attempting to find this true church wherever it was. Then at one point, a light came on and I knew I needed to know the true God and met Jesus Christ. I realized then that any church claiming to be the true church was simply a false religion or cult. It was not a religion I needed, but a real, living, relationship with the Person of God, the Creator of heaven and earth

But presumably you will grant that a Muslim might have come to the same conclusion about their religious belief, or a Hindu, or a Mormon, etc., and isn't this a bit like shopping around for a belief that suits oneself rather than any more rational decision-making?

 

[Mock Turtle]

Many non-religious say they live by the golden rule. I just think the word religion throws most of them off not so what it represents at its core. It gets too political when religion does not need to be so. Everyone sees things differently.

Quite. I've just never felt a need for religion.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I'm a 5.

I've always had the wish to know how reality works. (Curiosity is built into our genes.) In my case the result has been placing the question, What's true in reality? at the top of my list. I'm also reasonably skeptical by nature.

At first I regarded the lack of evidence for God, or anything supernatural, as decisive. Absence of evidence on such a scale is evidence of absence, no matter what anyone says.

More lately it's occurred to me that I don't know what a real god is. I've never seen a definition of 'god' or 'God' such that if we found a candidate, we could tell whether it was a god / God or not. In fact all the definitions carefully avoid making 'god' real, and call [him] 'spiritual', 'immaterial', 'incorporeal' and so on. The trouble with those adjectives is that there's no objective test that can distinguish the 'spiritual' or the 'immaterial' (&c) from the imaginary.

So as far as I can tell, not only does no one else know a useful definition of 'god', but none of the believers is interested in finding one.

It follows that all gods, all supernatural phenomena, and for that matter all claims of ESP, exist only as things imagined in individual brains.

Since that's a conclusion from evidence, it can be refuted by evidence. A satisfactory definition of a supernatural being, followed by a satisfactory demonstration of one, would do the trick. But then it wouldn't be faith, would it.

As you've mentioned, curiosity and perhaps a search for meaning in all things, has probably been why religions have developed in the first place. I think such things as the inability to explain external events (thunder, lightning, tsunamis, etc.) along with a primitive understanding of internal thought processes were involved in positing the existence of an external agent, and the developed religions that we know today evolved from these early beginnings.

For me, religions just don't place first in the answers to life the universe and everything, to quote Douglas Adams.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Truth can be intricately connected to survival. In the case of the Christian beliefs, this is said:

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; 15 that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him. 18 He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.​

Like our knowledge about the truth of the workings of our technology permits us to open a car, turn the key that turns the engine on and drive to work, this way, the truth about what is real and what is a lie, can lead to life if a person follows the rules, obeys the edicts, do what we were told to do.

As my old dead father said, doing nothing will get you nothing.

Sorry, quoting religious dogma is not going to persuade me.

 

[Grandliseur]

Sorry, quoting religious dogma is not going to persuade me.

As if I expected it to.

Just don't come running later in a panic over your own choices.

I am sure normal common sense affects you not at all, so that if I say, my house made itself, this you find impossible, but when it is said that all other things, including our amazing bodies - made themselves, this is quite possible in your mind.

In this we have a gulf of a paradox separating our realities.

 

[Mock Turtle]

It certainly seems to me you left out the single most important reason that almost (not quite) all human beings believe in whichever faith they do: because they were taught to from before they could begin to reason, by those they were genetically predisposed to believe and trust most. In other words, the most complete and effective form of brainwashing imaginable.

Strong enough, in fact, to overcome even the ability to reason independently that they achieve later in life.

True, lol. I didn't even want to get into that territory, where children are effectively deprived or cobbled of their freedom of thought by any religious teaching or indoctrination. Fortunately I had none, apart from incidentally having to appear in church occasionally or to yawn regularly during RI lessons at school. The RI teacher made it quite easy to form a negative view towards religion when I caught him sexually abusing at least one teenage girl - not overly, but it would be regarded as such now - and he apparently abused himself occasionally too. But that hardly counted on the Richter scale for not believing.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Baha'is believe that all the major religions have a Divine origin and each has appeared at crucial stages in the advancement of humanity so there are unique challenges each has met and of course varied social ordinances for the occasion and circumstances.

Yes, I can see how this could be quite beneficial as a belief, certainly in perhaps causing less friction between the various religions, but presumably many could never conceive of their religion as being so.

 

[Mock Turtle]

As if I expected it to.

Just don't come running later in a panic over your own choices.

I am sure normal common sense affects you not at all, so that if I say, my house made itself, this you find impossible, but when it is said that all other things, including our amazing bodies - made themselves, this is quite possible in your mind.

In this we have a gulf of a paradox separating our realities.

Well, I won't, but thanks for being so caring.

And we do seem to have a gulf between what we regard as being common sense (or reality) - evidence versus faith - eeny, meeny - the first wins.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Quite. I've just never felt a need for religion.

The actual definition Religion or the political definition of the word?