The Exclusivity of Christianity

[Trailblazer]

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 never said I don't know if a God exists, I said there is no proof that God exists. There is evidence that God exists, so I know that God exists.
Not knowing the mind of God is consistent with God being a mystery. Nobody knows the mind of God, not even the messengers of God.

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

Proper use of logic would conclude that God uses messengers since there is evidence that messengers are sent by God.
The messengers the direct evidence of God existing.

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

You are saying that God does not exist because nobody could ever understand direct communication from God.
That is illogical because there is no reason to think that if God existed humans could understand direct communication from God.
In other words, God's existence does not depend upon humans being able to understand direct communication from God.

If God exists and nobody ever gets direct communication from God, that means that if God existed nobody would ever get direct communication from God. Why wouldn't God communicate directly to humans if humans could understand God directly?

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

I meant that faith is necessary if you want to believe. If you don't want to believe than faith is not necessary.

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

I do not assume that God exists, I believe that God exists based upon the evidence that God provided, messengers.
I have faith that they represent God based upon the evidence they provided that backs up their claims.

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

Believers who have faith based upon evidence are rational. If you do not recognize the evidence it is rational not to believe.

Either way a God has the power to make itself known to humans in a way that humans can understand.

God made Himself known when He sent messengers.

That you claim it uses messengers, and we see this method highly problematic and unreliable, suggests God, if it exists, is not very powerful and capable, or doesn't exist.

That a few atheists see messengers as highly problematic and unreliable suggests nothing about God, it suggests that a few people in the world don't have spiritual eyes to see what everyone else sees.

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.

Defiant? Who would I be defying? I am not defiant at all. I am just leisurely responding to posts for some of the same reasons you do.
You don't consider that you could be wrong , nor understand the weakness of your non-beliefs.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

Apparently, if God exists, God does not want to be verified to exist such that there would be no doubt that his communication was real.
I think it is an exercise in futility to say what God could do. If God does not do it, what does it accomplish to surmise what God could do?

Moreover, if God exists that means God would not do what it takes to be verified, since God has never done what it would take to be verified.
A logical person might then ask why God does not do what it would take to be verified. An omnipotent God could do what it takes, so if God does not do what it takes there has to be a reason.

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.

I think the fact that even this isn't definitive evidence for the existence of God should be taken as a sign that there is no way to verify that God exists. No matter what kind of sign or communication you got from God, there would be no way to verify it actually came from God.

The fact that God is not verifiable does not mean God does not exist, that is not logical. God either exists or not. Verification is just what nonbelievers want, but verification does not make God exist, nor does lack of verification cause God to cease to exist, if God exists.

What is necessary to justify belief in God varies among people since we all think and process information differently. Some people need verification and some don't. I have no need to label anyone as closed-minded or irrational.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

I did not begin with an assumption that God exists. I looked at the evidence and came to that determination.
The only communication humans have ever received from God is through messengers, so if God exists God uses messengers.

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.

Aside from the fact that people would have no way of knowing that it was from God, I can tell you many things that are absurd about it. Where should I start?

If God wrote in the sky "I am God and I exist" --

1. Would that sign be visible to everyone around the world?
2. How do you think most people would react to that, especauilly the multitudes who already believe in God?
3. How would that affect air traffic?
4. What good would it do except for a few atheists who might come to believe that God exists?

As I have said repeatedly, everything that was written by Baha'u'llah, all 15,000 Tablets, could not be visible in a banner across the sky.
If we don't know the attributes of God and the will of God what's the point of believing that God exists? What does mere belief accomplish?

If God exists God does not use that form of communication, so hopefully you can do the math.
God does not not exist just because God doesn't do what ou think he would do if He existed. Nothing could be more illogical than a God that would do what humans want Him to do just because they want Him to do it.

It is all a matter of opinion. Some of us see the miraculous introduction (Baha'i history) and the message no man could have written (Baha'i Writings).

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.

A tri-omni deity could have completed the task effortlessly and instantly, if He had wanted to. The only logical conclusion we can come to is that if the tri-omni deity exists, He did not want to do that. You never heard that God is patient? Maybe you should review your Bible.

If It mattered to God how long it is taking to spread the message then God could do something about it, thus we have ti conclude that it doesn't matter to God, if God exists.
There is no reason to think that if God exists it would matter to God how long it is taking, just because it matters to you.

Many people? Almost nobody knows that name outside of the Baha'i community.

You just made my point. How can someone believe in a religion they never heard of?

That tells us that the combination of the message and the means of distributing it were insufficient to generate much interest.

It tells us exactly what I said before, that the Baha'is are not getting the word out to everyone using whatever means they are using. They either are not trying to get the message out or they are using the wrong methods.

It does not generate much interest for the reasons 2-7 I already listed.

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.

You are correct in saying that the issue is whether that actually happens. The evidence strongly suggests that the answer is yes.

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.

Well, obviously you need to know it came from God. To decide that, I used the available evidence. The quality of the message and the means of its delivery tell me that those are the words of yet another divine messenger.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

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, acting on behalf of it.

OK, but how is that better than an atheistic viewpoint that satisfies the same needs without magical thinking? I get the sense that you are extoling this way of thinking as desirable rather than necessary or helpful for some. I refer you to the eyeglasses analogy again.

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.

None of those other things is useful for deciding what's true about the world except intuition, and that is only a starting place for deciding what to look for in nature empirically.

 

[Trailblazer]

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.

God set it up and humans created the problems. In case you haven't noticed, humans are always creating problems.

What you consider 'problems' are not necessarily problems. If we cannot set our own personal opinions aside then there is no point looking at any religion since God does not pander to human desires.

What's wrong with Adam and Noah being real?

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.

It is not a flawed method because no matter what method God used to reveal information humans would never agree on exactly what it means, but it is not necessary that we agree on everything, as long as we understand the main points.

I disagree with my fellow Baha'is on some things because I interpret what is written differently than they do, given my brain functions differently and I have certain biases just as they do, but often when we discuss what we disagree about we can come to a meeting of the minds because then there is further understanding. That is the value of having written scriptures that we can study and refer back to.

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

It is no different. All written material needs to be interpreted to assign meaning to it.

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

God did do that through Baha'u'llah, who corrected the misinterpretations of the Bible by Christians.

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.

I do not cite most of what Baha'u'llah wrote, mostly Gleanings, because it contains most of what I need to make my points.

I did not used to like Gleanings or that style of language, and I found it very difficult to understand, but now find that style of language very uplifting even though it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge to understand.

The reason I came to understand about God and Baha’u’llah and how they are connected is because of Gleanings. There are so many other Baha’i books but Gleanings covers many different aspects of the teachings of Baha’u’llah in one small book.

It is called Gleanings because it is an extraction of information from various Tablets...
In the Introduction to Gleanings, which is only in the published book and not online, it explains something about Gleanings:

“Gleanings is a book for meditative study. It is not a book of history and facts, but of love and spiritual power. No one can understand the faith of the thousands of martyred followers of the Bab, unless he catches the spirit of this book. No one can appreciate why thousands of Baha’is give up the comfort of settled homes and move into strange countries to tell the people about Baha’u’llah, unless he clearly glimpses the spirit of this book.” Gleanings

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Not knowing the mind of God is consistent with God being a mystery. Nobody knows the mind of God, nit even the messengers of God.

Then why would you read their words? Why should others?

Proper use of logic would conclude that God uses messengers since there is evidence that messengers are sent by God.

You've already been told that that's not the proper use of logic. That's a classic circular argument. The proper use of logic in the matter of gods is leads one inexorably to agnostic atheism. No other position is defensible. No other position doesn't require a leap of faith, which in logic, is known as a non sequitur fallacy.

The messengers the direct evidence of God existing.

No, they are only evidence that they existed and claimed to speak for a deity. The claim is rejected based on the lack of supporting evidence.

You are saying that God does not exist because nobody could ever understand direct communication from God.

You were the one who said the second clause, not him. If by God you mean the Abrahamic god, it's ruled out by other means. Few atheists positively assert that gods in general don't exist, since there is no way to rule out noninterventional gods like the deist god. But that doesn't apply when deities are said to have communicated to us, and the Commnication is incorrect or incoherent (self-contradictory).

That is illogical because there is no reason to think that if God existed humans could understand direct communication from God.

No, it is illogical to assume that a god that can create universes, life, and minds couldn't make itself understood.

I meant that faith is necessary if you want to believe.

Yes, I know, but you keep telling others that you have evidence

I do not assume that God exists, I believe that God exists based upon the evidence that God provided, messengers.
I have faith that they represent God based upon the evidence they provided that backs up their claims.

Back to evidence again I see. If you say that faith is required, you're saying that the evidence you cite as support is insufficient.

Believers who have faith based upon evidence are rational.

No, faith is never rational. It is always a logical error. Always.

That a few atheists see messengers as highly problematic and unreliable suggests nothing about God

I does to me. And it also suggests something about messengers and their messages.

I did not begin with an assumption that God exists. I looked at the evidence and came to that determination.

Then you've misinterpreted your evidence.

If God wrote in the sky "I am God and I exist" -- Would that sign be visible to everyone around the world?

Not if earth is spherical. There'd need to be several iterations for it to be visible everywhere.

How do you think most people would react to that, especially the multitudes who already believe in God?

They'd probably be stunned, since the feat would be considered impossible for man before the twentieth century. That's the point of a miracle, and why a message introduced by a miracle would be more effective than one introduced by a man alone.

How would that affect air traffic?

Probably not at all in the nineteenth century. Trump thought that the founders had airports, but most people know that airplanes are a twentieth century invention. Trump claims 1775 revolutionary army 'took over airports' – video

What good would it do except for a few atheists who might come to believe that God exists?

Your argument is terrible.

As I have said repeatedly, everything that was written by Baha'u'llah, all 15,000 Tablets, could not be visible in a banner across the sky.

Nor need it.

God does not exist just because God doesn't do what you think he would do if He existed.

Nobody claimed that.

Nothing could be more illogical than a God that would do what humans want Him to do just because they want Him to do it.

Why wouldn't a god do things that people want even before they ask? I do things I think my wife and dogs would want me to do even without being asked. We took them out for a ride Sunday as we do every Sunday, because they love it so much. you worship a god that isn't even that nice or caring.

You never heard that God is patient? Maybe you should review your Bible.

Why would I do that? Furthermore, this god is not patient. If it exists, it's indolent. It does nothing.

You just made my point. How can someone believe in a religion they never heard of?

I think I made my point, not yours.

It tells us exactly what I said before, that the Baha'is are not getting the word out to everyone using whatever means they are using. They either are not trying to get the message out or they are using the wrong methods.

Then there must be a better way for a deity to communicate, maybe one that doesn't depend on people.

You are correct in saying that the issue is whether that actually happens. The evidence strongly suggests that the answer is yes.

Not to critical thinkers.

Well, obviously you need to know it came from God. To decide that, I used the available evidence. The quality of the message and the means of its delivery tell me that those are the words of yet another divine messenger.

And they tell me the opposite. We can't both be interpreting that evidence properly. You probably know that a medical education is all about collecting and interpreting evidence. So is contract bridge.

God set it up and humans created the problems. In case you haven't noticed, humans are always creating problems. What you consider 'problems' are not necessarily problems. If we cannot set our own personal opinions aside then there is no point looking at any religion since God does not pander to human desires.

There is no point in worshiping a god that is indifferent to our problems and in all other ways indistinguishable form a nonexistent god and is .

 

[Ella S.]

Apparently, if God exists, God does not want to be verified to exist such that there would be no doubt that his communication was real.
I think it is an exercise in futility to say what God could do. If God does not do it, what does it accomplish to surmise what God could do?

Moreover, if God exists that means God would not do what it takes to be verified, since God has never done what it would take to be verified.
A logical person might then ask why God does not do what it would take to be verified. An omnipotent God could do what it takes, so if God does not do what it takes there has to be a reason.

Doesn't asking why God does not do what it would take to be verified presume the existence of God? Yet if God has not given us sufficient evidence to believe in his existence, we cannot logically make the implicit claim that he exists. So I don't think it would be logical to ask why God does not do what it would take to be verified. It would be logical to not believe in God, because such a belief cannot be logically justified.

I think the fact that even this isn't definitive evidence for the existence of God should be taken as a sign that there is no way to verify that God exists. No matter what kind of sign or communication you got from God, there would be no way to verify it actually came from God.

The fact that God is not verifiable does not mean God does not exist, that is not logical. God either exists or not. Verification is just what nonbelievers want, but verification does not make God exist, nor does lack of verification cause God to cease to exist, if God exists.

What is necessary to justify belief in God varies among people since we all think and process information differently. Some people need verification and some don't. I have no need to label anyone as closed-minded or irrational.

A "justified belief" is a technical term in epistemology. It is not subjective, but rigorously and formally defined. A "logically justified belief" aka a "rationally justified belief" is a belief that is justified via the specific epistemology of rationalism, which is even narrower in use. Under rationalism, there can only ever be one correct conclusion so long as you share the same set of data.

Differences in conclusions can therefore only be accounted for by different sets of data. In practice, this is usually incomplete data, including misinformation since misinformation is incomplete in the sense that the misinformed does not know that it is misinformation.

Any other method of justifying belief is literally illogical because it does not adhere to the inference rules of logic. Even if I grant that we can't say that God does not exist for the sake of argument, that doesn't matter because it's shifting the burden of proof to a claim I haven't made in this thread. I'm asking about your evidence for justifying your assertion that God exists, but you have not provided sufficient evidence to logically justify that assertion. Thus, your assertion is illogical by definition, and I don't mean that as an insult but in the technical sense.

Which doesn't mean you have to give up your belief necessarily. There are two ways you can approach this. First, you can either attempt to justify your belief through sufficient evidence as defined by some form of epistemology, which doesn't necessarily have to be rationalism even if that's the epistemology that I advocate for. It could be empiricism, positivism, fideism, reformed epistemology, or something else. Or you can accept that your belief is unjustified by epistemology and logic, but affirm the belief, anyway, for sentimental or pragmatic reasons which logic could never broach.

A third option, I suppose, would be to embrace radical skepticism and deny that it's possible to justify beliefs at all or to really know anything. That's a difficult position to argue, but not impossible. The problem is that, to hold this position consistently, you would also have to rescind your claim that God exists or at least that you're justified in believing that God exists.

You seem to be waffling a bit between the first option and the third option, simultaneously holding that your belief is justified but that it cannot be "verified" (which is how you refer to what I call "justified"). If your belief is justified, then under what theory of epistemology is it justified? Can you make a valid argument from that epistemic standpoint for the conclusion that God exists? Or, is it as you say, there cannot be definitive evidence either way, and so neither position can be justified in the technical sense?

Those are my questions for you and my reasons for asking them.

 

[F1fan]

I never said I don't know if a God exists, I said there is no proof that God exists. There is evidence that God exists, so I know that God exists.
Not knowing the mind of God is consistent with God being a mystery. Nobody knows the mind of God, not even the messengers of God.

The evidence for any god in human loire is woefully inadequate for a rational human to conclude it exists. Your standard is low, as is the case with all believers.

Proper use of logic would conclude that God uses messengers since there is evidence that messengers are sent by God.
The messengers the direct evidence of God existing.

Youy don't understand logic, nor use reason. You rely way too heavily on assumptions to make your conclusions, and that is illogical.

You are saying that God does not exist because nobody could ever understand direct communication from God.

False. I reject the claims by theists that any of the many, many gods they claim exists, and I reject these claims because they rely heavily on assumptions learned by social experience, and lack adequate evidence as required by critical thinkers. There is nothing in my experience, nor the claimed experiences of theists, that lead me to suspect any sort of supernatural exists. We should see some fragments of a supernatural in certain ways, and to my mind that would be some extraordinary events where the innocent were spared negative experiences. If a child was abducted and going to suffer sexual abuse I would expect the sort of God you and other theists claim exists to do something about it. But these Gods, if existant, have no interest in what happens to any human.

That is illogical because there is no reason to think that if God existed humans could understand direct communication from God.

Anyone can easily imagine it just as you avoid imagining it. Your fellow Christians and Muslims often claim to hear God, so again, why take your word over theirs? Maybe the problem is you being closed to hearing God.

In other words, God's existence does not depend upon humans being able to understand direct communication from God.

What it means is that humans can never be sure any god exists. It's always going to be a guess. Logic and reasoning needs more.

If God exists and nobody ever gets direct communication from God, that means that if God existed nobody would ever get direct communication from God. Why wouldn't God communicate directly to humans if humans could understand God directly?

Humans hear as much as if no god existed.

I meant that faith is necessary if you want to believe. If you don't want to believe than faith is not necessary.

We atheists use reason and have no need for religious belief. That allows us a lot of freedom and no inner conflict.

I do not assume that God exists, I believe that God exists based upon the evidence that God provided, messengers.

Why assume messengers are truthful? Notice none of what you consider evidence is adequate for critical thinkers. Is it possible your thinking abilities are not up to par, and you are biased by your need to believe?

I have faith that they represent God based upon the evidence they provided that backs up their claims.

Faith is unreliable, but you can't use reason as the evidence is inadequate.

Believers who have faith based upon evidence are rational. If you do not recognize the evidence it is rational not to believe.

I understand that this is how you want to see it. Rational minds avoid using faith.

God made Himself known when He sent messengers.

That is what messengers claim, which isn't valid without adequate evidence.

That a few atheists see messengers as highly problematic and unreliable suggests nothing about God, it suggests that a few people in the world don't have spiritual eyes to see what everyone else sees.

Until the problems are resolved with adequate evidence there is no point in mentioning their claim of a God.

Defiant? Who would I be defying? I am not defiant at all. I am just leisurely responding to posts for some of the same reasons you do.

Alright. Calm down.

You don't consider that you could be wrong , nor understand the weakness of your non-beliefs.

How can I be wrong to ask for adequate evidence for the claims believers make, and then not get it? You appeal to faith as a way to believe but I understand that is a shortcut to a bad conclusion that avoids reason.

 

[Trailblazer]

Doesn't asking why God does not do what it would take to be verified presume the existence of God?

Not necessarily. I said "if God exists."

Yet if God has not given us sufficient evidence to believe in his existence, we cannot logically make the implicit claim that he exists. So I don't think it would be logical to ask why God does not do what it would take to be verified. It would be logical to not believe in God, because such a belief cannot be logically justified.

It is only a hypothetical -- if God exists.
I don't think religious beliefs are subject to logic since they can never be proven true or false.

Any other method of justifying belief is literally illogical because it does not adhere to the inference rules of logic. Even if I grant that we can't say that God does not exist for the sake of argument, that doesn't matter because it's shifting the burden of proof to a claim I haven't made in this thread. I'm asking about your evidence for justifying your assertion that God exists, but you have not provided sufficient evidence to logically justify that assertion. Thus, your assertion is illogical by definition, and I don't mean that as an insult but in the technical sense.

Again, I do not think religious beliefs are subject to logic since they can neither be proven true or false.
I believe I have offered sufficient evidence to justify my belief in Messengers and thus in God.

You seem to be waffling a bit between the first option and the third option, simultaneously holding that your belief is justified but that it cannot be "verified" (which is how you refer to what I call "justified"). If your belief is justified, then under what theory of epistemology is it justified? Can you make a valid argument from that epistemic standpoint for the conclusion that God exists? Or, is it as you say, there cannot be definitive evidence either way, and so neither position can be justified in the technical sense?

Those are my questions for you and my reasons for asking them.

I do not know about epistimology. I do not think a religious belief needs to be verified in order to be justified. The reason I say this is becaue God cannot ever be verified to exist thus Messengers can never be verified to have spoken for God. But that does not mean belief in God and the Messengers is not justified. It is justified by the evidence, not by proof.

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid: https://www.google.com/search

Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened.
Objective evidence definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

Verifiable evidence is proof because it establishes something as a fact.

Proof: evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement: https://www.google.com/search

Fact: something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information:
fact

Fact: a thing that is known or proved to be true.
what is a fact - Google Search

There is no proof that God exists, since there is no verifiable evidence of God's existence.
There is no proof that Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God, since there is no verifiable evidence that He received any communication from God. There is only evidence that 'indicates' that was the case.

 

[Trailblazer]

Anyone can easily imagine it just as you avoid imagining it. Your fellow Christians and Muslims often claim to hear God, so again, why take your word over theirs? Maybe the problem is you being closed to hearing God.

You don't have to take my word for it. You can believe or disbelieve whatever you want to and I will do likewise.
Anyone can imagine they hear God.

What it means is that humans can never be sure any god exists. It's always going to be a guess. Logic and reasoning needs more.

I am sure based upon my evidence. God belief is not subject to logic since it can never be proven true or false.

How can I be wrong to ask for adequate evidence for the claims believers make, and then not get it?

We tell you what the evidence is and you say "that's not evidence." That is not our problem.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Who needs a personal experience with God?

All who don't want just take someone's word for it. And all who want a personal relationship with God. Count me in.

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.

All Abrahamic religions are offshoots of Jewish religion.

Christianity was at first just a small Jewish sect. Jesus didn't broke away. Paul (and some others) made a less Jewish version only for pagans to convert to. This version prevailed and distanced itself from Judaism. Even this version is a Jewish offshoot.

Baha'u'llah also relies on the same Abrahamic mythology and prophets although there was some demythologization.

 

[PearlSeeker]

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.

Yes, faith is an experience of many things, just not God. It's an experience to trust in God you have no direct experience of. I admit I had mostly positive experience with it (faith).

 

[F1fan]

You don't have to take my word for it. You can believe or disbelieve whatever you want to and I will do likewise.
Anyone can imagine they hear God.

And anyone can imagine their messengers are genuine. This is why extraordinary evidence is so crucial and necessary.

I am sure based upon my evidence. God belief is not subject to logic since it can never be proven true or false.

None of it is believable becasuse there isn't adequate evidence. So you decide that a God exists for alternative reasons.

We tell you what the evidence is and you say "that's not evidence." That is not our problem.

It is when you are debating us and fail to justify what you believe. You have decided a God exists despite the lack of adequate evidence. Critical thinkers can't believe because we follow evidence to sound conclusions.

 

[Trailblazer]

All who don't want just take someone's word for it. And all who want a personal relationship with God. Count me in.

You and others can want whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you are going to get it.
How could you ever know it was God you were experiencing rather than just your imagination?
Thus the problem of verification still exists.

 

[PureX]

OK, but how is that better than an atheistic viewpoint that satisfies the same needs without magical thinking? I get the sense that you are extoling this way of thinking as desirable rather than necessary or helpful for some. I refer you to the eyeglasses analogy again.

It's not "either/or". The way of thinking that works best for the person in the circumstance is what matters. Sometimes "magical thinking" works best. Sometimes not. Materialist, atheist, scientism is a stupid intellectual choice because it denies so many other effective possibilities. Just as literal religious theism is a stupid choice because it denies so many other effective possibilities.

None of those other things is useful for deciding what's true about the world except intuition, and that is only a starting place for deciding what to look for in nature empirically.

Existence is not contained nor defined by anyone's concept of "empirical nature". It's WAY more than that. And we need to use all the conceptual tools we have available to us to cognate it effectively. Even then, we will be left mystified much of the time.

 

[PureX]

Yes, faith is an experience of many things, just not God. It's an experience to trust in God you have no direct experience of. I admit I had mostly positive experience with it (faith).

If we already had all the answers, we wouldn't need faith. We'd have knowledge, instead. But we don't have all the answers. Especially the answers to the questions that really matter to us. So we have to invent the answers that we hope to be so, and then trust in them enough to act on them. That's how we get through this life on the blind. "God" isn't just the conceptual embodiment of the unknown, it's also the embodiment of the infinite possibility that comes with the unknown. And so too the hope we can find in all that possibility.

 

[Ella S.]

Not necessarily. I said "if God exists."

It is only a hypothetical -- if God exists.
I don't think religious beliefs are subject to logic since they can never be proven true or false.

Again, I do not think religious beliefs are subject to logic since they can neither be proven true or false.
I believe I have offered sufficient evidence to justify my belief in Messengers and thus in God.

I do not know about epistimology. I do not think a religious belief needs to be verified in order to be justified. The reason I say this is becaue God cannot ever be verified to exist thus Messengers can never be verified to have spoken for God. But that does not mean belief in God and the Messengers is not justified. It is justified by the evidence, not by proof.

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid: https://www.google.com/search

Evidence is anything that you see, experience, read, or are told that causes you to believe that something is true or has really happened.
Objective evidence definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

Verifiable evidence is proof because it establishes something as a fact.

Proof: evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement: https://www.google.com/search

Fact: something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information:
fact

Fact: a thing that is known or proved to be true.
what is a fact - Google Search

There is no proof that God exists, since there is no verifiable evidence of God's existence.
There is no proof that Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God, since there is no verifiable evidence that He received any communication from God. There is only evidence that 'indicates' that was the case.

Verification refers only to deductive proofs, like in mathematics. I am not asking for verification. I am asking for justification. I want you to demonstrate that you have sufficient evidence to form a logically strong argument justifying a conclusion that God exists.

Currently, all you've said is that the messengers have done some impressive things. There is no way to extrapolate the conclusion that God exists from people doing impressive things. It doesn't logically follow.

I'm guessing you have some implicit premises getting you from "the messengers are impressive" to "God is real" but if they rely on the ideas about God that the messengers reveal then it's a circular argument and therefore fallacious and therefore illogical. You cannot use properties of God to prove that the messengers are genuine in the same argument that you're using the messengers to prove that God exists, because God has not been demonstrated to be true yet. That's affirming the consequent, which is another fallacy.

Because you cannot even give a logical argument showing why the messengers being impressive leads to the conclusion that God exists, you technically haven't even provided any evidence for the existence of God. You don't even have a strong argument for one, much less a cogent argument for one.

I'm not asking you to verify your conclusion. I'm asking you to justify it.

ETA: Sorry for the terseness of my reply. Cloudflare ate my previous one and I had to write this quickly while getting ready for my day

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Materialist, atheist, scientism is a stupid intellectual choice because it denies so many other effective possibilities.

You keep making the claim, but you don't even try to support it. Having an empirical approach to reality denies zero possibilities except false belief by faith. Navigating life effectively is what opens doors, and to do that, one must understand how one's world works. Finding equanimity requires a certain amount of control over one's world as well as rightmindedness, or wisdom, which is also acquired empirically. I don't know just what you propose adding to that, but I can't see it making an improvement.

Not necessarily. I said "if God exists."

Yes, if this tri-omni god exists and it chooses messengers to communicate, then that is its preferred method (but still no to that being an effective method). But that's as far as others are willing to go with you. You've been using that as part of an argument that this god actually did those things because you have a message, which you also offer as your evidence that the god exists. In so doing, you've gone off the reason reservation into the world of faith.

I don't think religious beliefs are subject to logic since they can never be proven true or false.

Any statement can be subjected to logical analysis including the one I'm answering. Beliefs that can never be confirmed or disconfirmed are beliefs about metaphysical reality, or that which logically precedes and underlies experience, and specifically, some proposed aspect of reality beyond the senses with no projection into the theater of consciousness, hence no chance to comment on them at all. We have a lot of language to describe such ideas - unfalsifiable, unscientific, metaphysical, and "not even wrong." And philosophy has much to say about such ideas, beginning with the logical positivists of a century ago and the ideas of Popper.

Are you familiar with Plato's cave metaphor? People are confined to looking at shadows of things behind them on the cave wall and trying to decide what's out there from the shadows. We are now talking about whatever is outside the cave that casts no shadow. What can you say about such things? Nothing that can ever be shown to be wrong (hence, unfalsifiable) or right, and nothing useful.

Anyway, that's in part what a logical analysis of your comment about unfalsifiable (metaphysical) religious beliefs looks like.

I have what I have decided must be a false memory of Wittgenstein saying that such ideas should be cast into the fire, but I've never found anything similar to that from him or anybody else, so I don't know why I think I remember that.

I believe I have offered sufficient evidence to justify my belief in Messengers and thus in God.

You should already know by now that that evidence doesn't support your beliefs by the standards of rational, empirical inquiry. Multiple qualified posters have told you that. You seem to have a private standard for belief that is not theirs, and all other standards for belief are some variation of faith (insufficiently justified belief).

You and others can want whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you are going to get it.

I think many people already realize that they'll never get anything from this god or any of the others. The Baha'i neither, apparently. It won't lift a finger to help spread Baha'ism. If only you had been provided an exceptional holy book or a miraculous occurrence such as sky writing all over the world's skies in the local language before it was technically feasible. Here's where you probably want to come to the defense of this inaction. Somehow, it must be what a tri-omni god would do, because it's what's happened.

 

[F1fan]

You don't have to take my word for it.

Then why do you keep repeating your beliefs when you can't offer adequate evidence? We debate because we can argue for the rationality of whatever position we have, and that success is dependent on the evidence we have.

If you claimed to eat a ham sandwich for lunch we moght take your word for it. Ham sandwiches actually exist and sandwiches are a common thing to eat at lunch. But when the claim is something not known to exist or be true, like gods and messengers for gods, then that is an extraordinary claim and we require extraordinary evidence.

You can believe or disbelieve whatever you want to and I will do likewise.

This is a freedom I take seriously. I refuse to believe in fantastic ideas that are unlikely, and lack evidence.

Anyone can imagine they hear God.

And what you believe is likely imagined true since your evidence is insufficient and relies heavily on assumptions. You offer no rational process for how you came to a sound conclusion. You keep repeating your beliefs as if that means something.

I am sure based upon my evidence. God belief is not subject to logic since it can never be proven true or false.

I see you write posts that look logical, but then claim god concepts are exempt from logic. Who says? Is it an excuse to brush away logical rebuttals to your posts? That is my suspicion.

You made judgments based on what you think is adequate. But for critical thinkers your evidence is insufficient. That you admit belief in God is not subject to logic admits no one should believe and claim to be rational. You claim to have evidence, which is required in logic, but then say your judgment can't be logical. So why mention evidence if you aren't going to be logical in how you assess ideas about a god?

We tell you what the evidence is and you say "that's not evidence." That is not our problem.

It is when you engage in debate and make claims about what you believe. We explain how we require higher levels of evidence that you don't have, and that is why we reject your position. Being stuborn isn't a debate tactic.

 

[F1fan]

It's not "either/or". The way of thinking that works best for the person in the circumstance is what matters. Sometimes "magical thinking" works best. Sometimes not.

It's like a 10 yesr old that still believes in Santa claus because by doing so might result in getting more presents on Christmas. The magic only works as an illusion that isn't likely to happen. It suggests a sort of greed and desperation.

Materialist, atheist, scientism is a stupid intellectual choice because it denies so many other effective possibilities. Just as literal religious theism is a stupid choice because it denies so many other effective possibilities.

It's like saying the successful cake recipe is stupid because it ignores the possibilities of adding broken glass.

If your "effective possibilities" were true and reliable they would be applied in materialism, science, and reasoning. But you are bluffing. Materialists use what is known to exist. Your side reluctantly makes full use of the results of materialism, but suggests imagined options would make it better. You can't show the options are real, nor how they could make anything better (unless illusion is the highest goal for humans, which it isn't).

Existence is not contained nor defined by anyone's concept of "empirical nature". It's WAY more than that. And we need to use all the conceptual tools we have available to us to cognate it effectively. Even then, we will be left mystified much of the time.

Science is the reliable and accurate descriptions of what exists and is real. That is not acceptable for those who believe in religious lore. You claim it is "WAY more than that" but offer nothing more than fiction you believe in. I wonder how much inner turmoil theists feel when they read rebuttals to claims like this. Certainly there is some awareness that religious belief has no basis in reality, but the ego is committed and it supercedes understanding and doubts.

Theists are created by society, they aren't special, enlightened beings who are magically tapped into some divine. If that were the case we would see fragments of wisdom and knowledge that is observed and verifiable. We don't.