Belief by faith coupled with evidence is the only kind of justified belief, since there is no proof that God exists.
As I said, you bring private definitions and private "reasoning" to the discussion. My definitions are those of academia, not of my own invention. A belief is justified when it is the product of valid reasoning applied to true premises. No other kind of belief can be called justified by this technical definition of the word. When you say it's enough to justify belief for you anyway, you're saying that you hold unjustified beliefs, which can only be believed by faith.
My evidentiary support is anything but private since it is all publically available in the Baha'i Reference Library.
Private means personal rather than secret in this context.
My point was that they might 'have' the skills but not use them.
Who does that? For starters, one doesn't become facile with those methods without confidence in them, and once that happens, the closest you'll see to what you describe is the suspension of disbelief I described for myself while road testing Christianity. If you see a competent critical thinker suddenly abandon his ways, he's suffered a crisis of some sort.
Antony Flew, a renowned atheist philosopher who was said to have become a deist in his dotage, may have been such a person.
Some are vague but some are very specific
No biblical prophecies are specific. I defined the word for you in this context already. When an event is described specifically and comes to pass, the event is recognized unambiguously as the fulfillment. Think of the example of the specific game ("game 5") of the1969 World Series being prophesied right before it occurred, with specific players accomplishing specific feats in a specified order. No other baseball game could be mistaken for the one meant. This is unlike biblical prophecy, where one is free to call whatever he likes its fulfillment, as with calling Christ the fulfillment of Old Testament messianic prophecy. Who doesn't also fulfill that prophecy if Jesus does?
and those could have only been fulfilled by one person.
Disagree. Anybody can call themselves a messenger of God, and most will develop a following if they have the gift of gab as well. Jim Jones and David Koresh did
In order for a prophecy to be considered fulfilled by the claimant it would not be improbable.
It would have to have been improbable as human beings judge such things before its fulfillment. Consider the baseball game again. The outcome was only history to the son reporting it from the future. The whole point of the exercise is that the infinitesimal probability of the game unfolding as predicted is what makes it fulfillment convincing that its prophet had transhuman foreknowledge.
First, we have to agree to a set of ground rules. Biblical prophecies are revealed by prophets who are telling of God’s foreknowledge.
Are you expecting atheists to agree with that? As best I can tell, biblical prophecies are made by people with no special knowledge.
ambiguous prophecies can be interpreted in more than one way, as can all biblical scriptures
And you still don't see the problem with that undermining the purpose of prophecy.
but those prophecies are still valid if they were revealed by a prophet of God.
We have no bona fide prophets of gods to reveal anything - just people making the claim and others believing them.
The assumption is that the Bible prophecies were revealed by true prophets of God. If not, there is no point even taking any of them seriously, and we can all take our toys and go home!
That assumption, while acceptable to you according to your private definition of justified, is considered unjustified by the academic community.
This thread is actually turning out to be a lot of fun, and it is a lot more fun for me because finally, it is not the Baha'is who are targeted, it is the Christians.
Finally I can sit on the sidelines and watch the game instead of playing it!
Do you think that the Christians are being treated unfairly here by the critics of their religion? You're one of them. They make claims many of which you reject. They say that their scriptures confirm their beliefs, and you disagree with them. It's exactly what happens in the Baha'i threads, but with you on the apologist's side in that one. You explain your beliefs and offer your evidence, which are rejected by others.