The Exclusivity of Christianity

[PearlSeeker]

The words of the prophets sound human since humans wrote them. No prophets or Messengers ever wrote their own scriptures before the coming of the Bab and Baha'u'llah. Even the Qur'an was not written by Muhammad, it was written by humans.

That's true. But Baha'i religion is an offshoot of this earlier Abrahamic religions.

God did not create all humans with the ability to understand communication from God since God never intended to communicate to all humans.

If God never intended to communicate to all humans why send the Messengers then?

 

[F1fan]

I cannot explain why God chooses to do anything since I do not know the mind of God.

By your own admission you don't even know if a God exists, so not knowing the mind of God is consistent with there being no God existing despite your devotion. At least you aren't making up experiences with a God like other believers do.

I can only use my logical reasoning to figure out why God uses Messengers.

Well proper use of logic would never conclude such a thing as there is no evidence of Gods existing or messengers being authentic.

It would accomplish absolutely nothing since nobody could ever understand direct communication from God.

So sayeth you. This is the same as no God existing.

Any rational mind would deduce that faith is necessary when proof is impossible.

No they don't, they simply don't believe. Rational minds recognize faith as unreliable and avoid it completely.

God does not prove He exists so proof is impossible.

Then we don't assume a God exists, and avoid using faith to justify bad judgment for belief.

Thus God is either believed on faith - coupled with evidence that God provides - or God is not believed at all. You can choose either.

Rational minds avoid faith since it is unreliable, so the only option is not believing in extraordinary ideas on weak or absent evidence.

It might be more credible to you and some others, but the middlemen are credible to most people, and that is one reason God uses them.

Because they use poor judgment via faith.

I was only joking, but if there was going to be writing in the sky and all it said was "I am God and I exist" that would not accomplish anything.
It was someone else who once suggested that if there was going to be a sign in the sky it should say "I am God and Baha'u'llah is my Messenger."

Either way a God has the power to make itself known to humans in a way that humans can understand. That you claim it uses messengers, annd we see this method highly problematic and unreliable, suggests God, if it exists, is not very powerful and capable, or doesn't exist.

And you and some other atheists have wasted a lot of your time telling believers that we are wrong and why.

That is the perils of debate with people who can't reason, and/or have no interest in truth derived from reason. Belief is eassy, it requires no standards, and it bonds the self to the tribe. All that acts on the non-rational centers of the brain, and it is vastly more influential on belief than skill at thinking.

If I was an athesist I would be out enjoying the one life you believe we have, not on a religious forum talking to believers.

We enjoy debate. It's kind of an exercise of thought, like chess. I learn a lot from those smarter than me. And it is interesting to see how religious people think and react to valid arguments.

It is different for me since I have something I actually believe is the truth, and even if people don't believe me it is my job to share it, although I'd much rather be doing something else with my time.

You have an unusual set of obligations and beliefs. One thing for sure is that the more your claims are criticized the more defiant you get. You don't consider ever being wrong in how you have followed faith to the conclusions you advocate for, nor understand the weakness of your beliefs.

 

[F1fan]

He could if He wanted to, but God chooses for us to become spiritually enlightened partly on our own efforts.

I assert that many atheists have found a veace and balance that many religious do not, and part of the dilemma for the theist is being too deeply absorbed in a dogmatic framwork that is not built on credible evidence. The theistic experience is theater for the ego. Enlightened? No.

Your scenario of a God not wanting to communicate with humans is the same experience as no God existing.

And of course you butt heads with many more believers who claim to have direct experiences with God, so why should we take your word over theirs?

If He communicated with us directly too much of that would be taken away from us.

Only if you are committed to guessing about God.

There has to be the risk that we will be "evil", so to speak, for us to earn our place in Paradise, which is nearness to the Holy Spirit.

I suggest the risk is what you theists are doing, because none of you can confirm that your devotion to religion is based on any sort of reality. All a guess that the ideas you decided are true are indeed true. Atheists have no such uncertainty and burden. We can focus on real and sober realizations as we nagivate life. For example we atheists are free to relate to gay people via our own wits. We are not limited and conflicted by dictates from a guy who says he speaks for God, but maybe he's a fraud. Could be, and that is a risk.

I suppose if He communicaed directly with us, we could turn from Him, but it would be much less, in my opinion. Let us let God determine what the level of risk of being "evil" would be.

You have all sorts of speculative excuses to justify your belief. The thing is it could be fear by theists who would be wrong about how they imagined God, and for atheists, well, we would just be aware of a part of the universe we did not know about. Would atheists be too far from what a God wants? Not if we are Humanists, and God decent. That wouldn't include God being a bigot against gays, so you have that fear.

 

[Aupmanyav]

"Exclusivity of Bahais"
One God. One manifestation of Allah who has the latest message.

The real non-exclusive religions are the pagan religions like Hinduism. One God, Three Gods, Three Gods and a Mother Goddess, Five deities including a Mother Goddess, Many Gods and Goddesses, no Gods or Goddesses. Take any position.

 

[Trailblazer]

He could if He wanted to, but God chooses for us to become spiritually enlightened partly on our own efforts. If He communicated with us directly too much of that would be taken away from us. There has to be the risk that we will be "evil", so to speak, for us to earn our place in Paradise, which is nearness to the Holy Spirit. I suppose if He communicated directly with us, we could turn from Him, but it would be much less, in my opinion. Let us let God determine what the level of risk of being "evil" would be.

According to my understanding of the Writings, if God communicated to an ordinary human, that human could never understand God, becaue we do not have a divine mind. Only Messengers of God have a divine mind so only they can hear God speaking through the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, even of God could communicate directly to us and we could understand, there would be no way to verify that it was God speaking to us and rather than an auditory hallucination.

 

[Trailblazer]

See #317 above for my answer to this, which differs. I believe that God could "whisper in our ear" or something like that.

See how I just responded to that post #317.
God cannot whisper in our ear because God is not a man. Anyone can hear voices in their head, lots of people do.

I recall I story now where Thomas Breakwell heard a voice say "Christ has returned. Christ has returned".

Well, maybe he thought he heard something. I think God can communicate to our minds in some way, and might do that under certain circumstances, when it is called for.

 

[F1fan]

Even the Baha'i don't agree. See the problems and murkiness that using Messegers cause? And the writtings are not so clear that the believers have clarity.

 

[Trailblazer]

I described a more effective way of communicating than what was used. People might listen to a prophet if he could tell them in advance that his source would be writing something in the sky to validate his claim.

I can hardly think of anything more absurd that God writing a message in the sky. I guess that's why God never did it.
Only a human could think of something that absurd. God knows better and that is why He uses Messengers to communicate.

Why do you keep posting this kind of thing to unbelievers? I asked you before about your not seeming to be able to assimilate that I am an atheist. You say you know that, but then you present me with words that only another Baha'i would find meaningful.

You are like the pot calling the kettle black. You present me with ideas that only another atheist would find meaningful.
Why do you keep posting things like God writing in the sky to believers who know that God would never do such a thing? Have you not assimilated the fact that I am a believer, so I already know how God communicates?

A discussion goes back and forth, not just one way. If you can post your ideas to me I can post my beliefs back. If you don't want to know what I believe, then I will assume that you just want to use me as a platform to preach your atheist ideas so that you can pat yourself on the back and think you are smarter than me. Furthermore, if you don't want to know what I believe then you do not have to post to me in which case I don't expect I will post to you.

I don't read these passages, and I doubt that any other skeptics do, either, since they also don't consider it authentic (I'm referring to the deity now and not the messenger, who I don't doubt is the author of the words).

I know you don't think they are authentic (as in coming from the deity), but I do, and if I am trying to explain something I believe, I am not going to paraphrase Baha'u'llah, since the meaning can be lost when I explain it in my own words. That is why I post the passage and then explain what I think it means in my own words.

Yes it does. Since I'm on an etymology roll, effective is related to efficient. The more of the intended audience reached, the more effective the means of communicating, and vice versa.

It absolutely does not mean that God was not efficient in delivering the message via Baha'u'llah. The Tablets are all there for people to read. If it did not have an effect on humans that is all on humans, 100%, because it is humans who have to receive the communication.

I have already made the list and I post it often.

Below are the seven reasons why more people have not recognized Baha’u’llah yet.
None of them have anything to do with God or Baha'u'llah. All of them are related to human behavior.

1. Many people have never heard of Baha’u’llah, so they do not know there is something to look for. It is the responsibility of the Baha’is to get the message out, so if that is not happening, the Baha’is are to blame. However, once the message has been delivered the Baha’is are not to blame if people reject the message.

2. But even after people know about Baha’u’llah, most people are not even willing to look the evidence in order to determine if He was a Messenger of God or not.

3. Even if they are willing to look at the evidence, there is a lot of prejudice before even getting out the door to look at the evidence.

4. 84% of people in the world already have a religion and they are happy with their religion so they have no interest in a “new religion” or a new Messenger of God.

5. The rest of the world’s population is agnostics or atheists or believers who are prejudiced against all religion.

6. Agnostics or atheists and atheists and believers who have no religion either do not believe that God communicates via Messengers or they find fault with the Messenger, Baha’u’llah.

7. Baha’u’llah brought new teachings and laws that are very different from the older religions so many people are suspicious of those teachings and/or don’t like the laws because some laws require them to give things up that they like doing.

That doesn't work.

It works fine for most of the people in the world. Why should God change His time-honored method of communication just because atheists, who comprise only 7% of the world's population, don't like it?

But that's the question being decided - whether this god exists. If it doesn't, then logically, it didn't use any method.

That's true. A nonexistent god did not use any method, but if God exists and God communicates to humans then God used Messengers who established all the great religions.

Incidentally, a fellow Baha'i recently wrote, "If the omnipotent God wanted to show a sign that convinces everyone, He can. How could He not be able?" What would you say to him? What you wrote to me above? I'd link you to it, but that might be a forum infraction.

That is essentially what I said in my previous post, that if God had wanted to prove to everyone that He exists, He could have done so, but since you did not read the quote you missed that. Here it is again. You only have to read the first two sentences of the quote in order to see why it is saying "If the omnipotent God wanted to show a sign that convinces everyone, He can."

“He Who is the Day Spring of Truth is, no doubt, fully capable of rescuing from such remoteness wayward souls and of causing them to draw nigh unto His court and attain His Presence. “If God had pleased He had surely made all men one people.” His purpose, however, is to enable the pure in spirit and the detached in heart to ascend, by virtue of their own innate powers, unto the shores of the Most Great Ocean, that thereby they who seek the Beauty of the All-Glorious may be distinguished and separated from the wayward and perverse. Thus hath it been ordained by the all-glorious and resplendent Pen…” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 71

In the context of the passage above, If God had pleased He had surely made all men one people means that God could have made all people int believers, which means that God could show a sign that convinces everyone that He exists.

if God has pleased implies that God did not want to make all people into believers, so God did not show a sign that convinced everyone that He exists, which is why all people are not believers.

 

[Trailblazer]

Even the Baha'i don't agree. See the problems and murkiness that using Messegers cause? And the writtings are not so clear that the believers have clarity.

The Messengers did not cause those problems, humans caused them.
Every human mind is different so no matter what method was used no two people are going to agree exactly what something means.

So if God communicated a message directly to John and delivered the exact same message directly to Mary, John and Mary would not interpret that message exactly the same way. Exactly the same thing happens when a Baha'i reads the same scripture, they interpret it differently, according to their own understanding. However, it is close enough such that they can agree on the gist of it.

 

[Ella S.]

According to my understanding of the Writings, if God communicated to an ordinary human, that human could never understand God, becaue we do not have a divine mind. Only Messengers of God have a divine mind so only they can hear God speaking through the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, even of God could communicate directly to us and we could understand, there would be no way to verify that it was God speaking to us and rather than an auditory hallucination.

Actually, there is! It would be rather laborious, but we have methods for double-checking our observations. Chief among these is peer-review and intersubjective agreement. So if God is directly communicating with several people at once, that is unlikely to be an auditory hallucination, because generally large groups of people do not have shared "group hallucinations" in that way. They might all witness similar ambiguous sensory information, like with the "Fatima miracle of the sun," but they would not all be able to give rigorous details about what God said when asked with intersubjective agreement.

There is a side issue to this, which is confabulation. There are many occultists, mediums, and spirit workers who have had experiences where spirits appear to them during ritual and give incredibly specific, verifiable information. It is completely understandable that these people take these experiences as genuine encounters with spirits.

However, when these experiences are recorded, we discover something else is going on. Everyone was expecting to see a specific apparition and they do disagree on some details at the time the experience happened. The actual details the spirit gives are often incredibly vague, only becoming more precise according to the collective swarm intelligence and subconscious cold readings of those present. Even then, everything that the "spirit" gets wrong is forgotten about, and much of what it gets right tends to be Barnum statements or only half-right and merely near enough to being true for the spiritualists to accept it.

Then, as time passes and they begin to reinforce the experience with one another, they begin to misremember more. They exaggerate how much the spirit said, how vivid its presence was, how much agreement there was on the details of what it said or how it looked, and so on. What starts out as a Ouija board guessing the first letter of someone's grandmother turns into an apparition that told everyone present their entire family trees, including relatives they didn't know they had. It becomes an unintentional tall tale.

Something very similar happens with all of the urban legends about various miracles being performed in a variety of religions. This is a known flaw with the human mind.

So if God wants his experiences verified, he needs to communicate in a way that can be measured and recorded, such as generating sound waves. Then there would be no doubt that his communication was real. And I don't mean the ambiguous EVP data we get, either; he would have to speak clearly so that unaltered recording equipment could pick it up.

Now, verifying that this communication is actually from God is a different matter, but if God were to do something like this then it would be far stronger evidence for his existence than anything else I've ever encountered. I think the fact that even this isn't definitive evidence for the existence of God shouldn't be taken as a sign that non-believers are closed minded, though. You should take it as a sign that messengers and their scriptures are even worse evidence and cannot epistemologically justify a belief in God.

 

[Truthseeker]

According to my understanding of the Writings, if God communicated to an ordinary human, that human could never understand God, becaue we do not have a divine mind. Only Messengers of God have a divine mind so only they can hear God speaking through the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, even of God could communicate directly to us and we could understand, there would be no way to verify that it was God speaking to us and rather than an auditory hallucination.

I haven't helped any. I was trying to help. Sorry. See F1fan's response. It's useless before it began, anyway.

 

[PearlSeeker]

The experience of deity is an incredibly common human experience. Every culture in every time has this ideological experience. As do the huge majority of humans alive today.

No, it isn't. Most people have faith. This is believing things without experience. Beliefs can be true or false. The most common understanding of truth is the correspondence theory of truth.

 

[Trailblazer]

What has the Messenger method achieved? Only half of the believers are monotheist. And only half of the the monotheists have the same concept of God, his will, salvation...

The reason that only half of the believers are monotheist, and only half of the the monotheists have the same concept of God, his will, salvation is because most people cling to the older religions, which are the religions they grew up with or came to believe later, and most people do not change their religious beliefs if they are happy with them.

My point was that most people have some concept of God (or gods) becaue of Messengers, holy men, or whatever you want to call them - thye are intermediaries between God and man, middlemen.

Yes, believers have faith but they don't know God personally. 99,99 % don't have a personal experience. Is this good communication?

Who needs a personal experience with God? I certainly don't. Moreover, I don't believe anyone knows God personally, because I believe that is impossible.

It is good communication when we get a message from God that delineates God's will for us and God's attributes, since that is all we need to know.

 

[Trailblazer]

That's true. But Baha'i religion is an offshoot of this earlier Abrahamic religions.

No, it is not an offshoot, it is considered an Abrahamic religion because Baha'u'llah's lineage goes back to Abraham.

The Baha'i Faith is no more an ofshoot from Islam than Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew and Baha'u'llah was a Muslim, but both Jesus and Baha'u'llah broke away from their roots and established new religions.

If God never intended to communicate to all humans why send the Messengers then?

Sorry, what I meant to say was that God did not create all humans with the ability to understand direct communication from God since God never intended to communicate directly to all humans.

God always intended to communicate to humans through Messengers, not directly.

 

[Trailblazer]

I haven't helped any. I was trying to help. Sorry. See F1fan's response. It's useless before it began, anyway.

That's okay Duane. I don't have time to read his response tonight, I will read it tomorrow. I am backed up on posts and I still have two posts from today to read and answer, one from @F1fan and one from @Ella S. but I have to eat and go to bed now.

 

[PureX]

No, it isn't. Most people have faith. This is believing things without experience. Beliefs can be true or false. The most common understanding of truth is the correspondence theory of truth.

Faith is an experience. It's a mostly positive experience that people use routinely. Deities provide the focus for that faith, but deities are just conceptual representations of the unknown and uncontrollable forces that we have to live with, and that we need to trust in, to live. Faith is an essential part of the human condition, because we do not control our own fates. Trying to gain that control through acts of faith in 'the gods' is a universal human behavior. Has been from the beginning, and still is today.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I can hardly think of anything more absurd that God writing a message in the sky. I guess that's why God never did it.

Faith has you in a corner. You begin with the assumption that your god exists, uses messengers, and that makes it the most effective form of communication available to a god that create universes and human beings. And so, you find your self like many other apologists, feeling forced to defend an indefensible position.

Only a human could think of something that absurd.

You haven't explained what makes it absurd except by saying that people would have no way of knowing that it was from a god. It's still better than a human messenger without a miraculous introduction or a message no man could have written. It's your position that is absurd - that somehow, it is more effective to communicate a message allegedly of divine origin by having a man wandering about with a very human message that he tells others a god told him to tell them.

God knows better and that is why He uses Messengers to communicate.

I find the other explanation for that more compelling. It's far more parsimonious to just drop the god from the narrative. It's not needed. It adds nothing. It explains nothing not already better explained without it.

I am not going to paraphrase Baha'u'llah, since the meaning can be lost when I explain it in my own words. That is why I post the passage and then explain what I think it means in my own words.

That's fine. I'll still skip to your interpretation, since it doesn't matter to me whether I agree that you interpreted the words the way I would have or not.

It absolutely does not mean that God was not efficient in delivering the message via Baha'u'llah. The Tablets are all there for people to read. If it did not have an effect on humans that is all on humans, 100%, because it is humans who have to receive the communication.

Disagree. The word efficient has a meaning. It can be paraphrased using its definition. Here's one example: "achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense." The Baha'i are still trying to spread this message over a century later. A tri-omni deity could have completed the task effortlessly and instantly. Now THAT's efficient.

Below are the seven reasons why more people have not recognized Baha’u’llah yet. None of them have anything to do with God or Baha'u'llah. All of them are related to human behavior. 1. Many people have never heard of Baha’u’llah, so they do not know there is something to look for.

Many people? Almost nobody knows that name outside of the Baha'i community. That tells us that the combination of the message and the means of distributing it were insufficient to generate much interest.

That's true. A nonexistent god did not use any method, but if God exists and God communicates to humans then God used Messengers who established all the great religions.

Agreed, but so what? It's tautologically correct that if God uses messengers, then God uses messengers. And even if that is the case, it doesn't make any religion the result of a god except the one based in its message. The issue is whether that actually happens. The evidence strongly suggests that the answer is no.

It is good communication when we get a message from God that delineates God's will for us and God's attributes, since that is all we need to know.

I need more. I need to know that it came from a god. To decide that, I use the available evidence. As I said, the quality of the message and the means of its delivery tell me that those are just the words of yet another usurper of divine authority.

The Baha'i Faith is no more an offshoot from Islam than Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism.

The Abrahamic religions begin with Judaism. The others are derived from that one. If Judaism is Happy Days, then Christianity is Laverne and Shirley, Islam is Mork and Mindy, and Bahaism is Joannie Loves Chachi - series of spinoffs. Some of the characters cross over, which is what makes the shows all Fonziehamic if you will. Joannie was Ritchie's little sister in Happy Days.

Jesus was a Jew and Baha'u'llah was a Muslim, but both Jesus and Baha'u'llah broke away from their roots and established new religions.

Just like the sitcom spinoffs.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Faith is an experience. It's a mostly positive experience that people use routinely.

I think you are using terms improperly here. The positive experience can be called a spiritual experience if it is accompanied by a sense of awe, mystery, gratitude, connectivity, and inclusion, but the word faith doesn't describe that experience or any other. It's the name for belief without sufficient evidentiary support, which is how we all begin and most remain. The faith comes in when we assume that we are experiencing a god.

Deities provide the focus for that faith, but deities are just conceptual representations of the unknown and uncontrollable forces that we have to live with

You don't see that as childlike? That can be done without using symbols for those forces. Man has a natural proclivity to personify these things, but we can leave that kind of thinking behind without loss with reason.

Faith is an essential part of the human condition, because we do not control our own fates.

It's not part of my life or the lives of millions of others who have learned critical thinking and apply it in all cases when trying to decide what is true about the world. It is possible and desirable to give up belief by faith.

Trying to gain that control through acts of faith in 'the gods' is a universal human behavior. Has been from the beginning, and still is today.

Once again, that's not necessarily an endorsement. Trying to gain control by murder is also found in all societies and has been from the beginning. It may be a useful scaffolding for a young person to build a naturalistic worldview on, like Santa, which embodies the naughty-nice reward system like the religions, but is later removed from the narrative leaving the moral instruction behind - like training wheels. But with the right education, one can learn to eventually remove all of the magical thinking. Those who continue to use those symbols will still find benefit in them if they have not learned how to live without them, but they're not better off for it as those who extol faith as a gift or virtue seem to think, just as those who rely on prescription glasses to see clearly benefit from them. but that doesn't make needing glasses a virtue or an advantage.

 

[PureX]

I think you are using terms improperly here. The positive experience can be called a spiritual experience if it is accompanied by a sense of awe, mystery, gratitude, connectivity, and inclusion, but the word faith doesn't describe that experience or any other. It's the name for belief without sufficient evidentiary support, which is how we all begin and most remain. The faith comes in when we assume that we are experiencing a god.

You focus only on the religious definition of faith because you're obsessed with negating religion. I'm not talking about religion or whatever objects people use to focus their faith (God, science, their own intellect, the human collective, 'Mother Nature", or whatever). I'm just talking about the act of trusting in the unknown and uncontrollable enough so that we can function within it. 'Faith' as in trusting in the unknown, and hoped for, and then acting on behalf of it.

You don't see that as childlike?

No. I see it as a necessary way of moving through the world when we are not omniscient beings.

That can be done without using symbols for those forces. Man has a natural proclivity to personify these things, but we can leave that kind of thinking behind without loss with reason.

Humans have not yet decided that such a perspective is best. Probably because it's not. The better perspective will be to include intuition, superstition, anthropomorphism, wishful and magical thinking, and so on; as and when they are found to be the more effective course of action.

 

[F1fan]

The Messengers did not cause those problems, humans caused them.

Yet it is the system your version of God set up.

And there are serious problems with your messenger and what he writes, among them wrong claims about the Bible (like Adam and Noah being real), let alone the excesively religious language. And let's not forget my biggest complaint, the bigotry.

Every human mind is different so no matter what method was used no two people are going to agree exactly what something means.

Then God is using a flawed method. The messenger hears from God and passes on a message. Then tghe followers of the messenger pass on what they hear. And then those followers pass on what they hear, and so on. It's the gossip game, and it is played by all theists. It is unreliable. No wonder you disagree with your fellow Baha'i.

So if God communicated a message directly to John and delivered the exact same message directly to Mary, John and Mary would not interpret that message exactly the same way.

And how is it different when a messenger tells you, and then you all walk away with your own interpretations of the messenger?

At least a God would presumably correct incorrect interpretations, if it existed.

Exactly the same thing happens when a Baha'i reads the same scripture, they interpret it differently, according to their own understanding. However, it is close enough such that they can agree on the gist of it.

That is the problem with religious texts. Baha'u'llah's writings are translated, yes? And the translations are overly wordy and lack coherent and precise meanings. I find the texts you all reference tedious, and fairly useless objectively.