Why are “some atheists” so intolerant of religious believers?

[LuisDantas]

Yet Hinduism makes no sense to me.

It still doesn't? I can only assume that you are too attached to the idea that religion is a consequence of monotheism.

That is indeed true and that is the reason why God has to reveal new religions in every new age. Christianity cannot be revived by the Pope. It is in its winter season, see in the pangs of death.

That is not inherently wrong as ideas go, but even leaving aside for a moment the reliance on theism I still find your claim above a bit too reductionist. Every adherent has his or her own religious actualization. In a very real sense there are billions of religions, and they change slightly every day. And that is very much a good thing.

I do not know what you consider an unfortunate trait or a damaging restriction.

Perceiving monotheism as the origin of your religious practice instead of its expression.

And, in the text that I was quoting and answering to, the unfortunate dogma that religion is revealed pristine and then actually corrupted by practicioners.

In truth, all religions are continually distorted and continually regenerated by the practice itself, which offers both the opportunity for improvement and further realization and the manifestation of mistakes minor and major.

Religion is not the sterile, passive expectation of new editions of very sparse revelations. It is the very dynamic, constant, everyday realization and expression of the living flow of the Sacred.

I do not think anyone should believe anything to appease the expectations others because that would be insincere.

Right you are. Unfortunately, that is perhaps the lesser of the downsides of that sadly very widespread situation.

I just try to understand. Is the plight that you would have to worship the one God?Why do you consider that a plight?The answer to that question could be very revealing.

To exist in a society where Abrahamic expectations of monotheism are the norm is the plight I that was refering to.

I was referring to the way they practice their religions, their daily or weekly rituals and observances, like the way they say prayers or going to Church.

Sorry. I tried a bit too hard there.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Everyone will not find the evidence for Abrahamic religions convincing because everyone has a different childhood upbringing, heredity, education, and adult experiences. That is essentially why humans will never view the same religions in the same way.

That is true. That is why for us there is no God or ambassadors from God (whatever name you give them) and the Bahai 'universal panacea' is just the usual monotheistic evangelism.

According to my religion, any religion that contradicts science is mere superstition; e.g., to say that dead bodies will rise from graves is contradictory to science.

If you cannot give acceptable evidence, then what you believe also is superstition, God and his manifestation.

 

[Shad]

sophistry: the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.https://www.google.com/search

I was not making an argument nor was I trying to deceive you. I just answered your question.

Also include reasoning not merely an argument. My point still stands on your reasoning

There is plenty of evidence that supports what I believe. I explained what that evidence is.

Yet you can not produce the specific evidence regarding what Buddha supposedly said all while claiming your religious leader knows for a fact. So you ignore evidence when it fits your views. Nothing more.

I did not post that evidence because it is not my job to do other peoples’ research. If people want to look at the evidence it is all available on the internet. Everyone has to judge for themselves if it constitutes evidence for them or not.

You made a knowledge claim based only on your religious conditioning not evidence.

“If a man were to declare, ‘There is a lamp in the next room which gives no light’, one hearer might be satisfied with his report, but a wiser man goes into the room to judge for himself, and behold, when he finds the light shining brilliantly in the lamp, he knows the truth!” Paris Talks, p. 103

Off topic babble. You still have zero evidence for your knowledge claim. You are dodging this fact and have been for days. Again another fine example of why people do not tolerate theists as their thought processes are absurd.

 

[Trailblazer]

Where? I think that you forgot to include a link.

Sorry about that. I was in a hurry last night because I had to answer a lot of posts on another forum, but now I am done with that forum. There are no words for how insulting and mean some people can be, just because they disagree with beliefs. Everyone on this forum has been so respectful. People do not have to agree in order to have mutual respect.

Here is that link to the post: #192 Trailblazer, Yesterday at 11:59 PM

I cannot even begin to imagine why you would think that EVERYONE would find monotheism convincing.

I do not and I would not. But that is because I realize that Abrahamism makes claims that are logically inconsistent with reality.

Were I trying to defend its logical viability, I would have to deal with the implication that literally everyone would be expected to somehow be a monotheist by default. As does Islaam, understandly if disastrously.

What claims are logically inconsistent with reality?

Everyone is not going to be monotheistic, but that does not mean that monotheism is not true. It could be, or not. Nobody can prove it.

The justification is solid, but the statement that it attempts to sustain... sorry, but that is utterly unconvincing to me.

It seems to me that were there anything close to the Christian Bible's God, one that literally claims to have very humanlike emotional flaws while also emphatically claiming to be the creator of existence and expecting worship, everyone would know that for a fact, as an instinct even.

Why would everyone know that? Again, it all goes back to what I said before -- everyone has a different childhood upbringing, heredity, education, and adult experiences. That is essentially why humans will never view the same religions in the same way.

Hinduism makes the very sensible yet not particularly challenging decision to avoid such a logical and theological pickle by having its deities, the Deva, be emotionally sound and artistically meaningful. That raises it to a whole new level of functionality and meaning which, of the Abrahamics, only the Bahai Faith and perhaps Judaism have even a glimpse. Sikhism seems to have inherited a bit of that realization as well. Of Hinduism that are appealing and useful.

I am sure there are many features of Hinduism that are emotionally sound and artistically meaningful, features that the Abrahamics do not have. I only wish I had the time to learn about other religions, but I have not even had the time to learn Islam, I I only know a little about Judaism and Christianity. Religion has never been a burning interest for me, I was always more interested on psychology till recently.

 

[Trailblazer]

Yet you can not produce the specific evidence regarding what Buddha supposedly said all while claiming your religious leader knows for a fact. So you ignore evidence when it fits your views. Nothing more.

I never claimed that my religious leader knows anything that Buddha said. Nobody really knows what Buddha said because Buddha never wrote it down.

You made a knowledge claim based only on your religious conditioning not evidence.

Off topic babble. You still have zero evidence for your knowledge claim. You are dodging this fact and have been for days. Again another fine example of why people do not tolerate theists as their thought processes are absurd.

I have evidence for what I claim to know. Just because it is not evidence for atheists does not mean it is not evidence for me. Evidence is by definition anything that indicates that a belief is true.

 

[Shad]

I never claimed that my religious leader knows anything that Buddha said. Nobody really knows what Buddha said because Buddha never wrote it down.

Wrong. As per the below

I cannot say exactly how Abdu’l-Baha (eldest son of Baha’u’llah and the centre of his Covenant) knew this, but here is what he said:"

You have no evidence yet you believe due to your conditioning. You demand evidence from the buddhist but your eyes glaze over when it is your religious figure talking.

I have evidence for what I claim to know.

Except the above you admit you do not above.

Just because it is not evidence for atheists does not mean it is not evidence for me. Evidence is by definition anything that indicates that a belief is true.

Wrong. I used your own standard you demanded from the Buddhists against you. It was not my standard. I pointed out your religious hypocrisy. You have been trying to dodge it for a good week now.

 

[Trailblazer]

Wrong. As per the below

You have no evidence yet you believe due to your conditioning. You demand evidence from the buddhist but your eyes glaze over when it is your religious figure talking.

Wrong. I used your own standard you demanded from the Buddhists against you. It was not my standard. I pointed out your religious hypocrisy. You have been trying to dodge it for a good week now.

I do not have any conditioning because that implies someone conditioned me. Nobody did that. I researched the Baha'i Faith and decided it was true.

I believe in the Baha'i Faith and with that belief comes the belief that Baha'u'llah was infallible. Since Abdu'l-Baha was the centre of Baha'u'llah's Covenant whatever He says about Buddha is authoritative.

I do not demand anything from Buddhists. All I ever said was that they do not have any scripture written by Buddha but the Baha'is have scripture written by Baha'u'llah.

 

[Trailblazer]

If you cannot give acceptable evidence, then what you believe also is superstition, God and his manifestation.

What is "acceptable evidence" varies by the person examining the evidence.

 

[Trailblazer]

Indeed. That is its one unavoidable, yet serious, flaw.

Only if the Abrahamic religions are false.

Actually, that is not at all true, because "God" is hardly a rigidly established, rigidly defined idea. If anything it is almost absurdly freestyle.

True, God is unknowable, and cannot be defined.

It is surprising that such a thing has to be said, since anyone who ever took part or was even close to a functional family is supposed to have learned that for a fact, but sure, that is certainly true.

Lots of people were not brought up in a functional family. I know I wasn't so I had to learn this later. Many people I encounter on forums don't know this, so.....

 

[Trailblazer]

It still doesn't? I can only assume that you are too attached to the idea that religion is a consequence of monotheism.

I can only assume that you are too attached to the dharmic faiths.

That is not inherently wrong as ideas go, but even leaving aside for a moment the reliance on theism I still find your claim above a bit too reductionist. Every adherent has his or her own religious actualization. In a very real sense there are billions of religions, and they change slightly every day. And that is very much a good thing.

I do not believe that all religions are religions of God. Religions are not like pairs of shoes that fit and feel comfortable or not. They are either from God or they are not. Obviously my definition of religion differs from yours.

“And now concerning thy question regarding the nature of religion. Know thou that they who are truly wise have likened the world unto the human temple. As the body of man needeth a garment to clothe it, so the body of mankind must needs be adorned with the mantle of justice and wisdom. Its robe is the Revelation vouchsafed unto it by God. Whenever this robe hath fulfilled its purpose, the Almighty will assuredly renew it. For every age requireth a fresh measure of the light of God. Every Divine Revelation hath been sent down in a manner that befitted the circumstances of the age in which it hath appeared.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 81​

And, in the text that I was quoting and answering to, the unfortunate dogma that religion is revealed pristine and then actually corrupted by practicioners.

In truth, all religions are continually distorted and continually regenerated by the practice itself, which offers both the opportunity for improvement and further realization and the manifestation of mistakes minor and major.

Religion is not the sterile, passive expectation of new editions of very sparse revelations. It is the very dynamic, constant, everyday realization and expression of the living flow of the Sacred.

I do not believe religions are regenerated because humans cannot regenerate religion. Religion is a dynamic process but only God can regenerate religions, and God does that by sending new Messengers in every age.

To exist in a society where Abrahamic expectations of monotheism are the norm is the plight I that was refering to.

It is a plight to you because you see it as a plight. It is quite the opposite for those of the Abrahamic religions.

 

[LuisDantas]

Sorry about that. I was in a hurry last night because I had to answer a lot of posts on another forum, but now I am done with that forum. There are no words for how insulting and mean some people can be, just because they disagree with beliefs. Everyone on this forum has been so respectful. People do not have to agree in order to have mutual respect.

Here is that link to the post: #192 Trailblazer, Yesterday at 11:59 PM

That was an explanation? I saw just a claim, one that begs for support but seems to have to try to do without.

What claims are logically inconsistent with reality?

Frankly, pretty much all of those that characterize them as Abrahamic faiths.

A creator God that both demands and neglects awareness and belief in its existence?

That is just too contradictory.

To make the belief in the existence of that oddly schizo deity a central tenet of a supposedly religious faith? Bizarre, just bizarre.

To state, against the direct experience of billions of people through many thousands of years, that religious wisdom is a very centralized resource that can only trickle down by way of scriptures from a half dozen or so Messengers spread from each other by centuries or millennia? That is just lack of awareness of true religious practice, if you ask me.

To spend most of their energies attempting to explain their own contradictions and the fierce antagonism between their own doctrines? At this point I feel sorry for them, even as I can't help but perceive them as hopelessly misguided.

Everyone is not going to be monotheistic, but that does not mean that monotheism is not true. It could be, or not. Nobody can prove it.

And that is demonstrably not worth the trouble to even want to guess, since after all even if it is true, that very God did not bother to make us instinctively aware of it.

If to know of it is not important according to that deity's own paramenters, how could it possibly be important for anyone?

Why would everyone know that? Again, it all goes back to what I said before -- everyone has a different childhood upbringing, heredity, education, and adult experiences. That is essentially why humans will never view the same religions in the same way.

Now you are on to something. If you can only look past all that attachment to monotheism for the sake of monotheism...

I am sure there are many features of Hinduism that are emotionally sound and artistically meaningful, features that the Abrahamics do not have. I only wish I had the time to learn about other religions, but I have not even had the time to learn Islam, I I only know a little about Judaism and Christianity. Religion has never been a burning interest for me, I was always more interested on psychology till recently.

I am sorry that you have chosen Islaam of all creeds. It took me a while, but I eventually realized that it is not even a religion at all, but rather a fierce distraction and misguidance.

Only if the Abrahamic religions are false.

They are. They even say so outright, and not always regarding each other. Islaam actually tells me directly that it is a lie, for I am after all an atheist.

True, God is unknowable, and cannot be defined.

It is defined time and again. It is a very freeform concept and should be acknowledge as such, instead of unreasonably lent a heightened meaning that it never had a chance of sustaining.

Lots of people were not brought up in a functional family. I know I wasn't so I had to learn this later. Many people I encounter on forums don't know this, so.....

This deserves elaboration at some later point.

I can only assume that you are too attached to the dharmic faiths.

Don't. Try to learn instead. It would be a sorry waste to keep betting on monotheism as a driving force.

I do not believe that all religions are religions of God. Religions are not like pairs of shoes that fit and feel comfortable or not. They are either from God or they are not. Obviously my definition of religion differs from yours.

Indeed! Yours is useless to me. I wonder if it can actually be useful for anyone at all.

I do not believe religions are regenerated because humans cannot regenerate religion. Religion is a dynamic process but only God can regenerate religions, and God does that by sending new Messengers in every age.

Eh. Maybe that is why your God does not dare to reveal itself to me. It knows that it has a lot to answer for, starting with a very flawed presentation of religion by way of its messengers, and that I am not reluctant to call it for those failures...

It is a plight to you because you see it as a plight. It is quite the opposite for those of the Abrahamic religions.

It is a plight because many of those Abrahamists presume to have an authority over my beliefs and goals that was never even conceivably theirs to abuse.

 

[Aupmanyav]

What is "acceptable evidence" varies by the person examining the evidence.

That is right. What is written by these ambassadors of God or scriptures is no evidence for atheists. We will require a better proof. Not 'circular reasoning'.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Since Abdu'l-Baha was the centre of Baha'u'llah's Covenant whatever He says about Buddha is authoritative.
All I ever said was that they do not have any scripture written by Buddha but the Baha'is have scripture written by Baha'u'llah.

If Bahaullah did not talk about Buddhists, how come Abdul Baha did? He was not sent by your God. What authority did he have? Abdul Baha exceeded his brief. And why should you accept prophets and manifestations in Hinduism and Buddhism if they do not have any scripture written by Krishna or Buddha? Say that Hindus and Buddhists did not have any representatives from God.

 

[Trailblazer]

That is right. What is written by these ambassadors of God or scriptures is no evidence for atheists. We will require a better proof. Not 'circular reasoning'.

Then atheists will never believe in God, because the Messengers of God and their scriptures are the only evidence God provides.

Edited to add: I think that the Messengers and their scriptures are the best evidence for the existence of God, but some people find other evidence. It's all good.

 

[Vinayaka]

Then atheists will never believe in God, because the Messengers of God and their scriptures are the only evidence God provides.

I was an atheist, born and raised, and now believe in God. It most certainly wasn't because of some 'messenger'. I think there are a few others like me, maybe even more than a few. I have lots of personal subjective 'evidence' for the existence of God and gods, none of which has anything to do with messengers.

 

[Trailblazer]

If Bahaullah did not talk about Buddhists, how come Abdul Baha did? He was not sent by your God. What authority did he have? Abdul Baha exceeded his brief. And why should you accept prophets and manifestations in Hinduism and Buddhism if they do not have any scripture written by Krishna or Buddha? Say that Hindus and Buddhists did not have any representatives from God.

Abdu'l-Baha was the Centre of the Covenant and he was given authority to interpret what Baha'u'llah wrote by virtue of the Will and Testament of Baha'u'llah. So I can only assume that Abdu'l-Baha got this information about Buddha from Baha'u'llah, either verbally or in writing.

Baha'is also accept Judaism and Christianity and Islam, even though there are no scriptures written by their Prophets.

 

[Trailblazer]

I was an atheist, born and raised, and now believe in God. It most certainly wasn't because of some 'messenger'. I think there are a few others like me, maybe even more than a few. I have lots of personal subjective 'evidence' for the existence of God and gods, none of which has anything to do with messengers.

You raise a good point.... I know others like you who believe in God for reasons other than Messengers or scriptures.

I was kind of on the run when I wrote that so I did not think it through. I am on the run because my computer is on the blink and it keeps shutting down and I never know when it is going to happen. I have to take it into the shop tomorrow.
So pardon my grammar, because I do not have time to check it!

 

[Vinayaka]

You raise a good point.... I know others like you who believe in God for reasons other than Messengers or scriptures.

I was kind of on the run when I wrote that so I did not think it through. I am on the run because my computer is on the blink and it keeps shutting down and I never know when it is going to happen. I have to take it into the shop tomorrow.
So pardon my grammar, because I do not have time to check it!

So you're withdrawing your statement?

(Then atheists will never believe in God, because the Messengers of God and their scriptures are the only evidence God provides.)

 

[LuisDantas]

Then atheists will never believe in God, because the Messengers of God and their scriptures are the only evidence God provides.

Fair enough. It is not like believing in God is supposed to be a big deal.

 

[Trailblazer]

So you're withdrawing your statement?

(Then atheists will never believe in God, because the Messengers of God and their scriptures are the only evidence God provides.)

Yes, I am withdrawing it because some people find other evidence.