We are not talking about ordinary evidence that can or cannot be misinterpreted about ordinary claims. We are talking about extraordinary evidence, that must support extraordinary claims. Or do you think that claims of Messengers from God, World Unity, and the existence of a supernatural God, are just ordinary claims? .... You certainly have the burden of proof, because it is YOU making the claim, not me. Or, are you now saying that God does not exist?
No, of course these are not just ordinary claims; they are life changing claims.
Just because I believe something is true, why do I have the burden to prove that to anyone else? How can I prove that to anyone else? Everyone can look at the evidence and prove it to themselves if they take the claims of Baha’u’llah seriously. I cannot present all the evidence on a public forum. All I can do is answer specific questions that people have and tell them what I suggest they read.
I know that we are all different, but a red light signal is interpreted the same in China, as it is in America. Any objective evidence should mean the same for me as it does for you. That is the meaning of objective evidence.
Objective evidence refers to information based on facts that can be proved by means of search like analysis, measurement, and observation. One can examine and evaluate
objective evidence.
Objective Evidence Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc.
The definition says that one can examine and evaluate objective evidence, but it does not say that everyone will come to the same conclusions about it.
Religious beliefs are not traffic signals. A red traffic signal can only mean one thing, but the objective evidence of Baha’u’llah can mean many different things to many different people. The objective evidence of Baha’u’llah is not going to mean the same thing to everyone.
What people see and understand varies according to a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. For example, if an atheist has a confirmation bias from a past bad experience with religion in childhood, he is probably not going to believe in Messengers of God, so he will interpret the objective evidence of Baha’u’llah to mean he must be an ordinary man or a false prophet or a con-man or a psychotic.
If someone is a Christian, they are going to interpret the objective evidence of Baha’u’llah to mean that Baha’u’llah is a false prophet because He claimed to be the return of Christ, and Christians believe that the same man Jesus is going to return some day.
The objective evidence for Baha’u’llah is what it is; it remains consistent. Baha’u’llah was born and died and we know the history of His life and what He did on His mission and what He wrote. But not all people are going to interpret that evidence the same way and believe His claim to be a Messenger of God, the Messiah, the Promised One of all ages. The chances are greater that they will believe that if they put all their preconceived notions and prejudices aside, but not all people can do that. Moreover, if they do not even think that peace and world unity and the oneness of mankind are good ideas they are not going to believe that Baha’u’llah revealed the truth from God.
This is typical of your flawed logic. How do you get from A to B, when A does not exist?
There is nothing flawed about my logic. A (God) does exist because B (Messenger) brought a message from A (God). There could be no Messenger of God if there was no God. That Messenger is the evidence that indicates that God exists, because that is one reason God sent Him, as evidence of His existence.
You have done everything you can to discredit the video, except the obvious. Proving that the facts are incorrect. Is it true that only one Book that has been translated, and two Books haven't? That would mean that 2/3rds of your religions is unknown to you. You are simply being told what is written. Maybe being told how to think, and what to believe, is all the evidence you need for knowledge.
The facts might be true but they have been distorted by the presenters of the video in an effort to make the Baha’i Faith look bad. Are you actually saying that facts cannot have more than one meaning? Do you watch any politics on TV? If facts meant the same thing to everyone, why would the political commentators argue about the significance of the facts to the country?
Do you want the actual facts about the translations? Here they are from a legitimate source, the source closest to the actual information, scholars who have actually researched it in depth.
Notes by Robert Stockman:
Bahá'u'lláh revealed over 15,000 tablets. Some are long (several hundred pages) but most are a page or two, written to a specific individual to answer a question or convey encouragement. Shoghi Effendi translated about a thousand pages into English in His lifetime.
Gleanings contains 166 extracts,
Prayers and Meditations 184, but some tablets provided more than one extract, so the total number of tablets that the Guardian used was less than the sum of the extracts in the two books (350). Since the Guardian did not assemble a list of his sources, it has been necessary to search for the original tablets he used, and they have not all been identified yet. More recently, the Universal House of Justice has overseen production of
Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh Revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and
The Kitáb-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book, rendering into English 500 more pages of revelation. It appears that less than 500 of the 15,000 tablets — a relatively small percentage of the total revelation — have been partially translated and published in English. Since the works were selected by the Guardian and Universal House of Justice, we can be sure that those available are the most significant and useful texts. Much of the rest probably is encouragement to individuals. We can also be sure that in subsequent centuries our understanding of the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh will undergo significant expansion and deepening as more tablets are translated.
From:
Number of tablets revealed by Bahá'u'lláh
So those who have a motive to discredit the Baha’i Faith believe there is a conspiracy on the part of the Universal House of Justice to conceal some of the Tablets, hide them from the Baha’is, so we won’t know what is in them. But the
fact is that the Baha’i Faith Fund does not have the funds to allocate to committees of translators that would be necessary to translate the Writings of Baha’u’llah with the great care, in order to ensure the translations are correct. Another
fact is that the translations that are available are the most significant and useful texts, and what we need to function as a religion until more translations are made available in English. Another
fact is that all the Tablets are available to read in Arabic and Persian so most people in the Middle Eastern countries can read them, since they can understand those languages. That means that Persian Baha’is can read them, so if there was something that was markedly different from the Writings that have been translated into English, those Baha’is would have told us. All these
facts are what they do not tell you in the videos that seek to discredit the Baha’i Faith.
Belief is the absence of knowledge, and knowledge is the absence of belief. The more knowledge you have the less need you have for belief. I know my car is parked in the garage. If I didn't know that, I might only believe that my car is parked in the garage. I may believe that I sound like the great crooners, but I know that the sacred Ibis sound better.
Belief in God is the absence of objective proof that God exists. Belief in the Messengers of God is the absence of objective proof that they actually received a Revelation form God.
The minute I know something is true/certain, it should also be objectively true/certain.
I do believe that the Baha’i Faith is objectively true/certain, but I cannot prove that to anyone else.
Some of us do not require objective evidence for that which cannot ever be proven objectively, the existence of God. As such, what we Baha’is do is look at the trail of evidence that leads to the conclusion that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God. That evidence is like the bread crumbs that were left by the guy who was eating the sandwich, which lead us to conclude there was a sandwich.
Follow The Bread Crumbs to Your Purpose
