Atheist looking for religious debate. Any religion. Let's see if I can be convinced.

[Aupmanyav]

I don't see that as a very big problem though because I feel close to Baha'ullah, and according to Shoghi Effendi we will still have to go through the Prophets to experience God in the next world. I look forwards to meeting Baha'u'llah and Jesus but I don't care to meet God.

That is family propaganda. Great grandson promoting great grandpa. Good wishes for your meeting with Bahaollah and Jesus whom you expect to meet after death? But why limit the meeting to just these two, why not the others too? You have seven more.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

God is one, therefore nothing separate from God can enter into God. Logical yes? So all souls who imagine God to be separate from them, can never become one with God, which is the very purpose of religion, yoga, etc..

 

[Aupmanyav]

Well, other religions do have other Gods and evil beings. I'm sure some Christians would say that Satan dressed himself up to look like a maiden to deceive Mirza. But, if Baha'u'llah isn't who he thinks he is... Who is he? Is he just another person who wrote some things and started a religious movement? Like Baha'is feel that way about the person you mention, Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad.

For me, unless they get a majority of people to believe in the Baha'i Faith, it will never be all that important. If they do get a majority, then I'm worried about them putting their laws, supposedly the laws of God, into place and then having to enforce them. Right now their leaders make decisions about how to grow the religion... without much success. If in control of a city, a state, a nation and the world? I don't see how they could run things. It seems like it would become just one big bureaucratic mess.

I feel just the same for Bahaollah, Mirza Gholam Ahmad and the kind. What do I know of Bahaollah? I am an atheist.

History is full of fakes and crooks in the garb of men of God. There are/have been innumerable claims of being Jesus, prophets and Mahdis, some even claimed to be God. That people believe themselves to be God or representatives of God is a well-known psychological condition.
List of people claimed to be Jesus - Wikipedia, List of Mahdi claimants - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Buddha_claimants, List of messiah claimants - Wikipedia, List of avatar claimants - Wikipedia, Jerusalem syndrome - Wikipedia, Messiah complex - Wikipedia, God complex - Wikipedia, People who claimed to be God

There are more Wiki pages about such disturbed psychological conditions. I have not listed all. Find them here: God complex - Wikipedia

 

[night912]

No, I am not the one who is obligated to support that position; Baha'u'llah is obligated to support it since He is the one who made the claim. I am just a person like you. The difference is that I have chosen to believe His claims and you have thus far chosen not to believe them.

There is a distinct difference between believing that he made the claim and believing in what he claimed. The former is not what is being discussed. So since you believed his claim, you now also share his claim as well, that he is a messenger of God. And since both his claim and your claim are the same, both claims share the same burden of proof and evidence.

Here's an analogy to clarify what I'm saying:

1. Christian A claimed that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead.

2. Christian B believes that what Christian A claimed is true.

3. Therefore, both Christian A and B believes that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead.

Conclusion: when either of them are talking to a nonbeliever about the resurrection of Jesus in accordance to reality, both of them are making the claim that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead. So both of them share the same burden of proof, egardless of who made that claim first.

 

[Tiberius]

That is where Faith builds upon what we can know.

That is a large discussion.

Regards Tony

And if Faith could produce reliable results, I wouldn't mind.

But when faith produces almost as many results as there are people who use it, then I don't see how anyone can seriously expect it to be viewed as a reliable means of learning any objective facts.

 

[Tiberius]

The stories, signs, miracles, and prophecies of the bible are true (according to what you called wordplay).

That is the claim I have been showing you.

Why do you think that is nothing?

You have not shown that they are true.

You have shown claims and said they are proven by nothing but wordplay. I find your wordplay entirely unconvincing, and thus your claims remain unproven. At least, they have not been proven to any reasonable amount.

And I'll tell you now, this wordplay method is always going to be unconvincing. If you want to convince anyone that the claims are true, find another method of demonstrating it.

 

[Tiberius]

True, the real world is what it is, but we have to perceive the real world. How we perceive the real world is subjective. This is not the first time I've had to clarify this to you.

And I've said many times that I understand that point.

I also believe I've said that I am interested in the real world itself, not just how it is perceived. So I want a method that gets as close to an objective view of the real world as possible. And that's science.

It is still part of the evidence.

Very weak evidence at best.

It was not shorthand, it was longhand, and it was reviewed by Bahaulah and stampted with His original seal. I assume it was signed and dated, @Truthseeker9 or @ Tony Bristow-Stagg would be more familiar with that than I am.

I beg to differ. My source says: "Baha’u’llah dictated his works so rapidly that his secretary develop his own form of shorthand. It can be read with practice." Also: "Most of Baha’u’llah’s revelations were dictated to his secretary. These were recorded initially in a form of short-hand which became known as ‘revelation writing’."

You can read it HERE. I've already provided this link to you, when we were talking about how many words Mr B produced.

That might be true but that is not relevant to what you are responding to as I explained in this post:
#1985 Trailblazer, Today at 3:27 PM

You were talking about evidence you gathered AFTER you were already a believer, yes? In that case, it is very relevant. I said, "people are very willing to accept any claims that support what they already believe without casting a critical eye over them."

 

[Tiberius]

That is absolutely correct. We are talking past each other again. By real world I thought you were referring to the material world and all that is therein. What you are calling the real world I call would reality so I think you are referring to reality. In reality, Baha'u'llah was either just a man or Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God.

I have been saying that for years, it is either a or b. Baha'u'llah was either (a) a man who made false claims (a false prophet) or He was (b) a man who was a Messenger of God who made true claims.

Agreed. And so the question is this: Is there any real world evidence that shows that he was a messenger from God.

This first question is a simple yes or no.

No, I am not the one who is obligated to support that position; Baha'u'llah is obligated to support it since He is the one who made the claim. I am just a person like you. The difference is that I have chosen to believe His claims and you have thus far chosen not to believe them.

No, it remains your obligation since you are saying his claims are true.

By your logic, all anyone has to do to avoid the burden of proof is to die. Then, apparently, their claims can be presented as true with no requirement at all to show they are correct!

 

[Tiberius]

No, I do not need to prove what everyone knows just because you enjoy playing games.

Yeah, you can't just say something is so by declaring, "But it's just obvious!"

If you think that's a valid argument, then I'll use it against your claims that Mr B was a messenger from God. It's just obvious that he wasn't really. I don't need to prove it because everyone in the world accepts it (except the small minority that are Baha'is).

But they wouldn't say that because it would be documented in books that Potter was a fictional character so it could be researched and known.

Please quote the passage from Harry Potter that says he is fictional. I've read the entire series many times, and I never read anything like, "And then Harry (who was a fictional person, by the way, not real at all) picked up his wand..."

And I will continue to do so.

At least you are open and honest regarding your intellectual dishonesty.

I said "Just because people write fiction about God, it doesn't mean God isn't real."
I never said "You can't prove God is fake, so that means he could be real."

Just because people write fiction about Harry Potter, it doesn't mean Harry Potter isn't real.

I am not saying that the REASON to believe that God is real is because God cannot proven to be fake. I am saying what I have always said, that I believe God is real because of the evidence that *indicates* that God is real.

And I've said many times, what you have is not actual evidence, no matter how much you claim it is.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I have read "Kitab-e-Iqan" of Bahaullah his most famous book, I understand. It was written in 1862, almost the time he took a covenant from the Bahais, never becoming a part of this covenant himself.

So, in Iqan period or pre-Iqan period Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí, I understand, had not taken up the new name Bahaullah publicly, nor did he have any direct Converse with Allah that he made public, nor he publicly claimed to be a messenger/prophet of Allah. Right?

Paarsurrey, my knowledge about Bahaiims is limited. I hope some Bahai will take the trouble of clarifying that.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I see It lays in our ability to accept God in Faith.

I see knowing of and loving God is the apex of Truth in this Matrix, yet it is a Relative Truth.

Regards Tony

As described by? Why would anyone accept one version over another? I can't see any reason as to such.

 

[Aupmanyav]

.. because as a Messenger, Baha'u'llah is the First to submit to the Will of God and that God Does as God so Chooses.

Your statement is not correct, Tony. Billions of people have submitted to the will of God, not just prophets and manifestations. Did not Job submit to the will of God? Did not Bab submit to the will of God. You claim that he was a Mahdi. How could he be a Mahdi without submitting to the will of God?

Another topic, I see quite a large number of likes given to me are from Bahais. That sort of surprises me.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Of course, the trouble with that is that if we say the real world could be ultimately subjective in nature and not objective, then the claim that it's subjective could itself be subjective, and thus it may not be subjective for everyone.

In any case, I don't think that things like the Uncertainty principle mean that the world can not be objective in nature.

It’s not so much that the Universe has no underlying objective reality.
Rather that this ultimate reality, which if it can be said to exist at all, is fluid, mutable, uncertain, and possibly without substance, is something of which we can only ever hope to catch glimpses. It’s the old Newtonian belief that everything in the material world can be calibrated, explained, determined, which no longer serves.

When physicists say things like “The certainties of classical physics are just probabilities. The well-defined and solid picture of the world given by the old physics is an illusion*”, isn’t time to start questioning everything we think we know?

*Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Correct, as you say another topic. India energy consumption is among the lowest but we have to think of the future of the poor among our 1390 million people. If energy is not available, where from we provide jobs and livelihood to them and how do we provision them? Even agriculture requires energy. Do you want them to return to stone age and keep themselves alive by gathering (you will have problems with hunting also)? Would you like to do that yourself? And why do you hate business? Life cannot go without business. Even to barter things is business.

My post offered we need to find new sources. I see cities will not be a s big, there will be more satellite communities.

Yes I see we need more farming, but it will not need a lot of land, they will progress in the science of agriculture, in fact it is well on the way. We need organic solutions, not chemicals.

Regards Tony

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Your statement is not correct, Tony. Billions of people have submitted to the will of God, not just prophets and manifestations. Did not Job submit to the will of God? Did not Bab submit to the will of God. You claim that he was a Mahdi. How could he be a Mahdi without submitting to the will of God?

Another topic, I see quite a large number of likes given to me are from Bahais. That sort of surprises me.

What is meant with that statement is that they are the First to submit to their own Messages.

You are correct also in that they are also follows of the Faith they came from.

A good comment is a good comment no matter its source.

Regards Tony

 

[CG Didymus]

Just because people write fiction about Harry Potter, it doesn't mean Harry Potter isn't real.

Is God's name Yahweh? Vishnu? Or one of the other names given to the Gods of various people? Who God is or who the Gods are varied from culture to culture. But, if the story about "God" are fictional, then what those people believed about their God wasn't true. It was what they made their God into.

But Baha'is cannot agree with any Hindu sect that has multiple Gods. They cannot agree with Trinitarian Christians. So lots of people believe in concepts of a God that, according to Baha'is, is false. So it's not just the stories about God were fictional. The God in those stories isn't real. But, of course, their invisible, unknowable, unprovable God is real. And why is that? Because Baha'u'llah had something about him... That special thing. He was a nice guy. So whatever he said must be true. And besides, he was a prolific and fast writer and dictate like nobody's business. And he said there is a God and told us what God is like... He's grand and great and way beyond our comprehension. But also we can know him by his attributes... He is all loving, just, kind, and all that good stuff. But created a world filled with pain and suffering and put us here, and, if we screw up, he says he's gong to judge us and we'll have to pay a price.

Invisible God? Pay a price for doing wrong? Sounds like something a parent would say to their kids to get them to obey even when they weren't around. How did that song go... "He knows when you've been good. He knows when you've been bad. So be good for goodness sake." That wasn't real, but it worked... 'til the kids got older. But the invisible God thing still works on a lot of people. Do religious people do "nice" all the time? No. But maybe they're being better than if they didn't believe. But some of them are pretty nice and try and show "God's" love to others. Ah, but they get to look forward to being rewarded when they die. So what's the big deal if they believe or not?

Unfortunately, some religious people take it too an extreme. They'll even kill for their God. Other religious people kill themselves for God. How real is that? Killing and dying for an invisible God that they can't prove is real. Yeah, it's best we check and recheck and make sure what religious people say is for real. If they can't prove it, and believe it anyway, then there's always going to be those that take their beliefs too far.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

As described by? Why would anyone accept one version over another? I can't see any reason as to such.

What is being offered is that we do not have to accept one over another, Baha’u’llah guided us by quoring

“No distinction do We make between any of His Messengers.” For they, one and all, summon the people of the earth to acknowledge the unity of God"

Before that Baha'u'llah offered how they are One in Relationship to each other.

"The Bearers of the Trust of God are made manifest unto the peoples of the earth as the Exponents of a new Cause and the Revealers of a new Message. Inasmuch as these Birds of the celestial Throne are all sent down from the heaven of the Will of God, and as they all arise to proclaim His irresistible Faith, they, therefore, are regarded as one soul and the same person. For they all drink from the one Cup of the love of God, and all partake of the fruit of the same Tree of Oneness."

Our exceptance is relative to our recognition of the station of those Messengers.

Regards Tony

 

[Mock Turtle]

What is being offered is that we do not have to accept one over another, Baha’u’llah guided us by quoring

“No distinction do We make between any of His Messengers.” For they, one and all, summon the people of the earth to acknowledge the unity of God"

Before that Baha'u'llah offered how they are One in Relationship to each other.

"The Bearers of the Trust of God are made manifest unto the peoples of the earth as the Exponents of a new Cause and the Revealers of a new Message. Inasmuch as these Birds of the celestial Throne are all sent down from the heaven of the Will of God, and as they all arise to proclaim His irresistible Faith, they, therefore, are regarded as one soul and the same person. For they all drink from the one Cup of the love of God, and all partake of the fruit of the same Tree of Oneness."

Our exceptance is relative to our recognition of the station of those Messengers.

Regards Tony

Well the station of these messengers is more by popular vote (in believing in them) than much else it seems to me. I have little faith in historical writings as to any veracity other than general truths, so I see no reason to accept any as any particular authority. And that goes for messengers too, especially when they are often raised up to be idols - something we are often told not to have - but it just happens in practice. Such are humans.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

And if Faith could produce reliable results, I wouldn't mind.

But when faith produces almost as many results as there are people who use it, then I don't see how anyone can seriously expect it to be viewed as a reliable means of learning any objective facts.

What we can not see is that Faith does offer much to the world and brings great progress. There was a golden age in Islam.

The issue is we are still learning to become humble in that Truth and then use it the way it was not intended.

The future, when mids unite and work for the good of all will be a diamond age.

Regards Tony

 

[Trailblazer]

That is family propaganda. Great grandson promoting great grandpa. Good wishes for your meeting with Bahaollah and Jesus whom you expect to meet after death? But why limit the meeting to just these two, why not the others too? You have seven more.

I might want to se the others too, but the Bab and Baha'u'llah are on the top of my list, then Jesus if He is available to Baha'is.