"Truth" is a trophy for the fools that think they can possess it. What matters is what works best in the circumstance.
You present yourself as too wise by half, but you offer nothing in support your words. You see yourself as a metric for others with too narrow views to strive to achieve, the only one who isn't a fool in a discussion with critical thinkers who reject your empty claims. It's you playing the fool doing so. Why are you arguing a position with insufficient ammunition? You're in the same unenviable position as the creationist arguing against science unarmed, or those arguing for messengers representing gods with only ordinary words.
Everyone has an ego and everyone succumbs to it eventually.
Do you really want to buy into the Abrahamic trope that ego is necessarily an enemy? That's a self-serving doctrine not said in your interest. It's code for one killing freethinking, doubt, and cognitive dissonance, and conforming to somebody else's agenda for you.
My ego has been an asset. It powered self-confidence and ambition, which are attractive to others and lead to desirable outcomes. "I can do this!" It also powers moral righteousness in many as we see in these religious discussions, where people confidently declare the description of a deity immoral, and are then accused of arrogance (runaway ego) for not being meeker.
And yes, meekness, or too little ego, is the opposite of arrogance, not humility.
I don't "dislike" materialism. I just understand that it's a nonsensical, self-eviscerating concept.
Except that you are wrong. The evidence is staring you right in the face - happy "materialist" everywhere. I'm what you call a materialist, and I'm here to tell you that it has provided a solid foundation for what has been a happy life. On the other hand, not so much for my religious counterparts in the family, dutiful, church-going, tithing, Trump-supporting Americans with lots of kids, lots of debt, lots of grievances, and lots of bigotries. What were you saying about nonsensical and self-eviscerating? These people took the blue pill. I was saved from that by my "materialistic" (godless metaphysics, empiricism, and rational ethics) worldview.
It does not matter what would have been impossible before the twentieth century, it is not impossible now, so there would be no reason to believe it came from God.
Baha'u'llah lived in the nineteenth century. And there was insufficient reason to believe the message he presented came from a god by academic standards for evaluating evidence. No other method can generate sound conclusions, just unsupported beliefs (faith).
Whether Messengers are an effective methodd of communication or not has nothing to do with how many people have accepted Baha'u'llah to date.
Of course it does. The number of people who will become Baha'i will be the fraction who see the message multiplied by the fraction believing it. Do you not understand how advertising and marketing work? It's the same. Sales will be the product of the fraction aware of your product or service times the fraction who want to buy it.
I already listed the seven reasons why not more people believe in Baha'u'llah yet, so I am not going to post those again.
Nor need you. I can list the reasons myself, although my list doesn't look like yours. Few people have seen the message, and many or most who did weren't convinced or attracted to the religion. The same is true for all small religions. And all movements of any kind that don't gain traction.
To compare a message from God to the warning about Covid coming and then arriving is illogical since it is the fallacy of false equivalence.
In both cases, the task was to disseminate an important message to as many people as possible.
News that affects people's life and death cannot be compared to a message from a new Messenger of God. Nobody is going to die if they don't get the message.
Irrelevant. Furthermore, you just compared them when you found the absence of the Covid message potentially lethal but not the other.
it is not possible to get a message from a new Messenger of God out and believed by many people. That has nothing to do with the method of delivery being ineffective, it is all about the message being spread by the Baha'is and the receptivity of people to the message.
Which depend on the efficiency of delivery and the quality of the message.
The message itself is not the evidence that the Messenger is from God because that would be circular reasoning.
Disagree. The message is not evidence that the message is from a deity because it is mundane. Evidence of a deity is something evident to the senses that makes the existence of the deity more likely, which does not include flowery, nonspecific exhortation to follow a god, which anybody can write.
The claims of Baha’u’llah and the evidence that supports the claims of Baha’u’llah are in this post:
And it includes the message, which you early said you don't consider evidence.
I meant that there are multiple Baha'is posting here who are qualified to look at the evidence and see that it supports and sufficiently justifies the belief.
Yes, and I contend that the opposite is true - there are no Baha'i who are qualified to look at the evidence and see that it supports and sufficiently justifies the belief. Of course, your standards and theirs are not those of critical analysis, or they would have come to the same conclusions as the others who use them as their standard for belief.
Citing atheists as the only ones who are qualified to assess the evidence, because they alone are critical thinkers, does not add to the discussion.
The 'us and them' mentality brings nothing but divisiveness.
I disagree that dialectic adds nothing, and I don't find this activity divisive, although I know many of the faithful take personal offense at being disagreed with. Compare at your posting demeanor and mine. You disagree with me, but I'm not complaining about it or having any kind of an emotional reaction, just correcting errors. I never post anything like what you just did. Regarding divisiveness (division) and "us versus them", that depends on one's reaction to disagreement. Yes, I see a distinction between us, but I don't consider you the enemy or attacking.
There is evidence that supports my belief in Baha'u'llah
Only by your lax standards, which require belief by faith despite what you call sufficient evidence. Too bad you can't embrace that. Too bad that you can't say that you believe because you choose to. Nobody could argue with that. You can have that lane all to yourself. But you cross into the world of reason and claim its concepts for yourself. Critical thinkers then feel a need to correct the logical errors and insufficiently evidenced claims.