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).
Academic standards are not the standards used for evaluating a Messenger of God.
Sound conclusions can only be generated by carefully evaluating the evidence that Baha'u'llah told us to look at.
Of course it does. The number of people who will become Baha'i will be...
Oh, so now you can see into the future. I thought only God has foreknowledge.
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.
That's true, but nobody is trying to market or sell the Baha'i Faith.
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.
That's true, but so what?
In
argumentation theory, an
argumentum ad populum (
Latin for "
appeal to the people") is a
fallacious argument that concludes that a
proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so."
This type of argument is known by several names,
[1] including
appeal to the masses,
appeal to belief,
appeal to the majority,
appeal to democracy,
appeal to popularity,
argument by consensus,
consensus fallacy,
authority of the many,
bandwagon fallacy,
voxpopuli,
[2] and in
Latin as
argumentum ad numerum ("appeal to the number"),
fickle crowd syndrome, and
consensus gentium ("agreement of the clans"). It is also the basis of a number of social phenomena, including
communal reinforcement and the
bandwagon effect. The Chinese
proverb "
three men make a tiger" concerns the same idea.
Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia
The converse of this is that
if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.
The Narrow Way
13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because[a] narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14 )
In both cases, the task was to disseminate an important message to as many people as possible.
I fully agree, but I am not going to get the Baha'i administration to realize this so I am a woman alone.
Irrelevant. Furthermore, you just compared them when you found the absence of the Covid message potentially lethal but not the other.
It certainly is not irrelevant that nobody is going to die if they don't get the message.
News that affects people's life and death
is not the same as a message from a new Messenger of God. Nobody is going to die if they don't get the message.
There, I fixed it.
Which depend on the efficiency of delivery and the quality of the message.
Whether the message is believed by many people depends upon (1) efficiency of delivery, i.e., how well the message is spread by the Baha'is, and (2) the receptivity of people who receive the message. It has nothing to do with the quality of the message since that will always be a subjective determination.
Disagree. The message is not evidence that the message is from a deity because it is mundane.
What I meant is that the claims in the message are not evidence that it is from a deity because that would be circular reasoning.
There is nothing mundane about a message from God that contains everything we are able to know and understand about God.
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.
You could not be more wrong. Evidence of a deity is something evident to the mind and heart. It has nothing to do with the physical senses.
Nobody can write like Baha'u'llah, except the Bab. Some people realize that and see that as evidence but some don't.
“A certain Muḥammad Karím, a native of
Shíráz, who had been a witness to the rapidity and the manner in which the Báb had penned the verses with which He was inspired, has left the following testimony to posterity, after attaining, during those days, the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, and beholding with his own eyes what he himself had considered to be the only proof of the mission of the Promised One: “I bear witness that the verses revealed by Bahá’u’lláh were superior, in the rapidity with which they were penned, in the ease with which they flowed, in their lucidity, their profundity and sweetness to those which I, myself saw pour from the pen of the Báb when in His presence.
Had Bahá’u’lláh no other claim to greatness, this were sufficient, in the eyes of the world and its people, that He produced such verses as have streamed this day from His pen.” God Passes By. pp. 137-138
And it includes the message, which you early said you don't consider evidence.
The claims of Baha'u'llah are in the Writings of Baha'u'llah, how else can we know what He is claiming?
However, a claim cannot be used as evidence to prove the claim is true because that would be circular reasoning.
The message of Baha'u'llah, which is the Writings of Baha'u'llah, is part of the evidence that supports His claims.
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.
Yes, and I contend that the opposite is true - there are Baha'is who are qualified to look at the evidence and see that it supports and sufficiently justifies the belief. Our standards are those of critical analysis, according to the definition below, and that is how we came to the we came to our conclusions.
What is the meaning of critical analysis?
As Brown and Keely discuss, analysing critically is
a process of deconstructing what you read, write and listen to in a rational and logical manner (2012). It requires you to move beyond describing and analysing to evaluating, criticising and postulating on what you process.
Critical analysis - University of Wollongong - UOW
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.
The 'us and them" mentality, the claim that atheists are more intelligent than believers, and only they can think critically, is very divisive.
I take no offense at being disagreed with, but I will point out the obvious 'us and them' mentality, the air of superiority that emanates from your communication.
I am having no emotional reaction, I am as cool as a cucumber.
Correcting what
you believe are errors. The problem is you cannot prove they are errors so that is only a personal opinion. We all have those but we don't all tout them as fact.
It does not to be outwardly attacking. You see a distinction between us and yourself because you think you are more intelligent. That is divisive.
When people have to put others down it is done only in order to raise themselves up that shows that they are insecure. That's psych 101.
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.
All religious belief requires faith since God can never be proven to exist. I must have said this 100 times already.
What is
sufficient evidence to believe in a religion and thus in God varies by individual.
Some religious beliefs have more and better evidence than others.
Too bad you can't embrace that.
I do believe because I choose to and you disbelieve because you choose to. We all have free will to choose.
You will argue with that because you like to argue.
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.
You can have the atheist lane all to yourself but you cannot have the lane of reason and critical thinking all to yourself because you do not own that lane.