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You have lots of personal opinions, we all have those, but personal opinions are not facts.
Opinions can range from being baseless and false to being highly fact-base and valid.
You see facts where there are none. Facts aren’t debatable, they are true and verifiable by any neutral mind. Believers notoriously claim facts and evidence that do not meet the criteria set by logic and reason.
True. Opinions about the ancient religions of the past are not fact-based the way the opinions about the Baha'i Faith are.
I cannot speak for other religious believers but I never assumed anything was true. I investigated the religion and then I believed the claims were true.
I see facts and evidence because there are facts and evidence. What you think those facts and evidence mean is another matter.
Only in your mind has the Baha'i Faith sunk as truth, but that doesn't prove anything except that you have the ability to think.
We have presented the evidence but it is not OUR JOB to evaluate that evidence for you.
Agreed. I don't think this contradicts what I wrote. Yes, if an employee can produce evidence that he worked, he should be paid. If he has a job where logging into a computer does the same thing as a time card, then that's the expected evidence the absence of which is evidence that he didn't do the kind of working that requires logging in.
Once again, decisions will be made based on the evidence available. Absence of evidence that a given suspect committed a given crime doesn't mean that he is innocent, but if evidence would be expected that is not found, that's good (but inconclusive) evidence of innocence.
Agreed, but not a basis for saying that the think likely doesn't exist. Consider the deist god, for whom we would expect no evidence and have none. All we can say about that god is that the claim that it does exist is both unfalsifiable and not demonstrable, so the calim cannot be called correct or incorrect. It's "not even wrong."
So his every word and deed reveals that he is truly channeling a deity for you? None of it does for me.
All gods are unverifiable.
I have no reason to believe that. None have ever said or written a word that doesn't seem very human. Nothing ever written in and scripture or in any other piece of literature doesn't sound human.
Yes, you said that that's what you believe. Those that taught you that want is for you to abandon reason. They need you to do that to believe that which can only be believed by faith. They praise faith as a virtue and disesteem empiricism and critical thought. But faith is not a virtue. It's the opposite. It's the least examined kind of thinking possible.
I'm saying that I do not believe velociraptors exist, but that this cannot be a 100% sure belief. There is always that chance, no matter how small, that we might find one in the wild.
Correct. Small chance, but still possible. It is only as small as it is because humans have basically taken over virtually the entire planet and we aren't going to find any velociraptor in the ally by the apartment complex. There really isn't a whole lot of wild terrain left. But never say never.
I do not think the way you think. I think you need to understand that before we go on. I now believe that Baha'u'llah is evidence for God but that is not how I approached my belief in the Baha'i Faith, which is what I did when I originally joined the Baha'i Faith. I did not think in terms of 'evidence for God', I thought in terms of what I deemed to be the truth, a true religion.
"I thoroughly investigated the person, the history, and the claims of Baha'u'llah before I believed that He was who He claimed to be."
No, I never said that. In fact, I have always said that any claim of 'channeling a God' is unverifiable.
What His Writings sound like to one person will not be what they sound like to another person since we are all thinking with different minds.
I said: "what you are trying to do is apply logic to that which is far above and beyond human logical reasoning. "
Sorry, I have no reason to believe that, at least not in the case of the Bible.
To me that shows one does not understand what is said in the Bible.
Now the governments are the idol, set above the community. By what I see, it doesn't work well.
I don't think any Biblical law is used today. It seems to me that this has come true:
That is a good question.
Stricter gun laws don't prevent murder, they only prevent decent people to protect themselves. Criminals don't care about such laws anyway and they will have guns regardless of any law. But, obviously the point of the gun laws is to help criminals and to oppress common people, not to protect anyone else, except the corrupt regime that fears common people don't submit to their tyranny.
Evil is like emptiness, it is nothing, it is the lack of good. It needs not to be created, it is formed, when good is rejected. And, although evil is not nice, I think it is great that God gave the freedom to choose.
What exactly didn't work? And why do you think so?
I don't see any chaos and harm, if people can't freely murder their babies.
And many more things DO change.
Again: we were discussing the value of bible teachings regardless of gods existing. And yet, you keep referring back to this god over and over.
What you are telling me is consistent with you just believing them, though.
So savage. And so true.
You say that you have evidence for this god, and that that evidence is the life and words of the messenger. But then you walk that back and say that evidence is not proof, and that in the end you believe by faith. What you call evidence plays no role in this process. You want it both ways. You want to say that nobody can verify that a god exists, but that you have evidence that one does. When asked to show what that evidence looks like, you present no examples. You just say, "all of it," which is not evidence at all.
What I said was that there is nothing that should be believed uncritically. Furthermore, I know of no idea that cannot be evaluated critically. Somebody tells me that there is a transcendent deity that I cannot detect or understand, and that I need to stop thinking and just believe, because that's what pleases his god. But this person doesn't know any more about gods or what they want than I or anybody else does. He's fallen down a rabbit hole from which there is no escape without critical thinking.
Yes, I know you do just as you know that I believe the opposite. What you just wrote is a consequence of the willingness to believe without sufficient evidence to justify that belief. First, one accepts that the god exists, and then he accepts what others say this god wants. You say, "It is as simple as that." I think that's too simple.
I think we're talking past one another now. I'm not talking about collecting evidence. I'm talking about the significance of absent evidence. If we do a thorough investigation of a situation in which we would expect to find evidence if such-and-such had occurred, that absence is significant. If we never looked, then no evidence would be expected, and its absence is not significant for the purpose of deciding what had likely transpired.
Then you reject what experts have studied and have reported, and you offer no reason otehr than how you were conditioned to believe by society.
Yet you have a pattern of rejecting expert research and conclusions that are based on evidence, and prefer a belief that makes many assumptions that not only lack evidence, but are contrary to evidence. For example there are no gods known to exist, yet you have decided that what the Bible claims is true at face value, and can't defend that sort of interprtation.
False. Religions still have their idols, like Jesus Christ, the cross, God, etc. Governments ain secular nations design their structure to manage the diversity of their populations. The funny thing here is that if you claim government is the idol and it's bad, and you admit that religion has its idols, then religions are bad as well. What are you left with? Anarchy?
This is vague. Is this all you have as an alternative to secular law? Is setting speed limits and creating a limit on how much toxic waste a factory can dump in a river "lawlessness" in your view?
Good. Why do you think so many of your fellow Christians fail to love others as commanded by Jesus? It's worse than just being mean people, it is the deliberate deafness to the needs of the many, like women who can't get the reproductive healthcare they need due to vague laws passed by Christian extremists. Explain what you want to see happen to these laws that cause harm.
Right, it's too late to stop gun violence since the gun lobby has been so successful in preventing laws. But it's like saying that if we limit pollution today it won't result in clean air tomorrow morning, so why bother? We bother because tomorrow isn't the aim, it is the safety of the next generation, maybe 10 years from now. Conservatives have this massive short-sightedness where it comes to solving problems. They want immediate results, and if it can't hapven they don't bother. Conservatives lack vision and long-term planning skill.
And lax gun laws over the last few decades made it all possible. Easy gun access came from lax gun laws.
This is an absurd claim. I was a gun dealer back in the 890's and even after the Brady law came along it only limited those who could buy new guns from dealers. It didn't stop gun owners from selling their old guns to any one who had the cash, and this was even criminals. I sold a revolver to a friend and at some point he sold it to someone, who ten sold it to someone else, and it was eventually used in a robbery. My friend passed the background check, but who he sold it to, and then the next guy didn't have to pass anything. Major flaw in the law that could have been passed. It could be that any gun had to go through a dealer and subject the buyer to a background check, and that would weed out criminals fast, not you average Joe public.
Would you say the Lutherans and Catholics who committed the Holocaust were empty and evil? Why didn't the light of Christ prevent their acts?
For one the divine right of kings meant that a king could do anything he wants. Look at Trump claiming he has immunity from the crimes he committed as president and afterwards. He is wrong, but it illustrates the abuse anyone who claims to represent God is above any law created by government and secular law. And look at how republicans in Oklahoma passed a law to ban Sharia law from being enforced. This was a bogus threat but the Christians in government wanted to use their status as Christians in government to smack down Muslims in America.
This is a statement that reveals you don't fully understand the issue. Again, you are conditioned by what Christian extremism has imposed on your thinking. The fact is the extreme laws that ban abortion services are even affecting women whose pregnancies are in crisis and can't get the medicare they need, thus putting their lives in danger.
No, I did not just believe them.
No, I said that the Messengers of God are the evidence for God. The person, life, and works of the Messengers are the evidence that they are Messengers.
I don't want anything 'both ways.' I have evidence but no proof. How many times do I have to say that before it finally sinks in?
I have presented examples but then you say "that's not evidence."
I am not suggesting that you evaluate the evidence uncritically. I am saying the exact opposite, and Baha'u'llah said the same thing!
I see no point of continuing to repeat myself when you still do not understand what I am saying.
You just made another straw man.