A Christian becomes a nonbeliever

[TagliatelliMonster]

Again, you think that you are able to do that better than God.

I can only go by reason.

A just god who actually knows better and who is actually intelligent would explain the rules instead of just demanding blind obedience.
A just god who actually knows better would realize that demanding blind obedience would require sacrificing ones own conscience and moral compass. That would make the individual morally bankrupt, which would be immoral.


It's the age old idea of "is something immoral because the authority commands it is, or is there an actual reason for why it is immoral?"

In my moral compass, there are reasons for why things are to be viewed as moral or immoral.
And "the authority says so" is not a proper reason.

That's the morality of psychopaths. Of people with mental disorders causing them to be UNABLE of moral reasoning.

You seem to be advocating for exactly that: a moral philosophy which is centered around blind obedience to authority and / or looking for reward or avoiding punishment. My moral philosophy is centered around moral reasoning instead. By analyzing how behavior affects well-being of sentient creatures.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You hold the values you do because they are the values your religion wants for you.

No .. I hold the values I do, because I believe that they are from G-d..

You successfully repeated what he said, using different words.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

NOBODY can do 'better' than God.

Let's not pretend as if you and @muhammad_isa believe in the same god.
@muhammad_isa liked your post and I don't get why. He is not a Baha'i. As far as @muhammad_isa is concerned, you are an unbeliever.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Your God directs your fellow Muslims to hijack airliners..

What nonsense.
I suppose God directs the IRA to kill innocent citizens too.

You continually try to deflect from issues, by pointing the finger of blame.
There are 3 fingers pointing right back at you!

 

[muhammad_isa]

As far as @muhammad_isa is concerned, you are an unbeliever.

Divide and rule will not work. She is not an unbeliever.

 

[F1fan]

What nonsense.

It's factual, as we have the statements and actions of your fellow Muslims who commited acts of terrorism that they considered directives from Allah. I understand it is not something you want to be reminded of, but when you claim morality comes from God then they are as much an example as you are. We don't have any actual God coming forth, all we have is the believers themselves telling us what they believe. That includes you, and in the end you are still accountable for what you decide your God demands as moral.

You have claimed that Muslim husbands can sexually assault their wives and is allowed by Allah, even though that violates modern human rights.

I suppose God directs the IRA to kill innocent citizens too.

If they claim their attitudes and acts are authorized by God, then yes. Any religious person acting to harm others because they believe they are following their God is still accountable to secular laws and reason.

You continually try to deflect from issues, by pointing the finger of blame.

You sound defensive, as if you have no rebuttal to being in the same category as other believers who follow the moral dictates of God, whether it ends in murder or not. You offer no justification for being a follower of some moral code. You've yet to explain why you need to follow a religion's moral code, but have to decide which one is the right one, and which are wrong. If you can decide which moral code is correct, then why do you need to follow one? Who told you to be a follower? Why can't you think for yourself?

 

[F1fan]

Divide and rule will not work. She is not an unbeliever.

She doesn't believe in your version of God, nor your moral code. And you don't accept what she claims God is.

 

[muhammad_isa]

If they claim their attitudes and acts are authorized by God, then yes.

Any Tom, Dick or Harry can claim that .. it doesn't make it true.

 

[muhammad_isa]

She doesn't believe in your version of God..

We all have our own understandings .. we are not robots.
Another Muslim on RF will not think identically to me, either.

We all agree on at least one thing.
We all believe in the God of Abraham.

 

[F1fan]

Any Tom, Dick or Harry can claim that .. it doesn't make it true.

That’s exactly why anything you claim about your religion can be dismissed.

 

[F1fan]

We all have our own understandings .. we are not robots.

Believers aren’t understanding anything via facts and reason. They adopt dogma for various psychological reasons. I seldom see believers questioning why they believe at all.

Another Muslim on RF will not think identically to me, either.

And if there was an absolute truth via an actual God there would be uniformity.

We all agree on at least one thing.
We all believe in the God of Abraham.

Odd how eager Muslims and Christians have been to kill Jews over time.

And not Hindus, or Jains, or Shinto, or any of the many African religions, or the South American indigenous religions, or the many diverse South Pacific cultures that have other forms of god.

 

[Trailblazer]

A just god who actually knows better and who is actually intelligent would explain the rules instead of just demanding blind obedience.

He did explain the rules.

A just god who actually knows better would realize that demanding blind obedience would require sacrificing ones own conscience and moral compass.

He does, which is why He doesn't demand blind obedience.

 

[Trailblazer]

Let's not pretend as if you and @muhammad_isa believe in the same god.
@muhammad_isa liked your post and I don't get why. He is not a Baha'i. As far as @muhammad_isa is concerned, you are an unbeliever.

We absolutely do believe in the same God, the one true God.
There is not a Baha'i God and a Muslim God. There is only one God, the one true God.

"Regard thou the one true God as One Who is apart from, and immeasurably exalted above, all created things. The whole universe reflecteth His glory, while He is Himself independent of, and transcendeth His creatures. This is the true meaning of Divine unity. He Who is the Eternal Truth is the one Power Who exerciseth undisputed sovereignty over the world of being, Whose image is reflected in the mirror of the entire creation. All existence is dependent upon Him, and from Him is derived the source of the sustenance of all things. This is what is meant by Divine unity; this is its fundamental principle."​

Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 167​

 

[CG Didymus]

So the moral arbiter is YOU. You believe your values are from God and you could be mistaken.

Yeah, like God really told Moses that people had to be stoned to death for breaking moral laws and breaking the Sabbath. But then, God stopped having his people enforce the penalty? Or... God never gave that order. The religious leaders just needed a way to keep the people in line.

Now we have new laws supposedly from God... the Baha'i laws. Instead of stoning adulterers to death, he's just going to fine them. That's not bad for someone with a lot of money. They could afford to mess around all they wanted. Then instead of stoning gays, God decided that all they needed was some help... a little counseling to get them over their "affliction". Great. Why didn't God think of that before killing all those other people for the same offence?

 

[CG Didymus]

Let's not pretend as if you and @muhammad_isa believe in the same god.
@muhammad_isa liked your post and I don't get why. He is not a Baha'i. As far as @muhammad_isa is concerned, you are an unbeliever.

Baha'is can wiggle out of saying that Muslims believe in a different God, but they can't do that with trinitarian Christians or polytheistic Hindus. To deal with them Baha'is say that they misinterpreted their Scriptures. And again, that makes a little sense with the Christian belief that Jesus is God, but I think it is kind of hard for Baha'is to do that with Hinduism. But they do it anyway. And they even add a God to the teachings of Buddha based on some verse they found in some Buddhist Scriptures. Scriptures, of course, they don't believe are literally true... except for that verse that alludes to there being a God.

I really don't know why Baha'is go to all the trouble of trying to make all religion one and having come from the same one God? It would've been a lot simpler just to say all the ancient religions were wrong and then say, but now... "Our religion is true and came direct from God to our prophet. And you can trust that. Because our prophet said so."

 

[CG Didymus]

Divide and rule will not work. She is not an unbeliever.

It's great that you see Baha'is in a positive way, but that's not true of all Muslims.

​

Persecution of Baháʼís occurs in various countries, especially in Iran,[1] where the Baháʼí Faith originated and where one of the largest Baháʼí populations in the world is located.[2] The origins of the persecution stem from a variety of Baháʼí teachings which are inconsistent with traditional Islamic beliefs, including the finality of Muhammad's prophethood, and the placement of Baháʼís outside the Islamic religion.[2][3][4][5] Thus, Baháʼís are seen as apostates from Islam.​

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The Baháʼí Faith was established in 1863 by Baháʼu'lláh in Qajar Persia.[6] Eighty-nine percent of Iranians adhere to the Twelver branch of Shiʻa Islam, which holds as a core doctrine the expected advent of a messianic figure known as the Qa'im or as the Imam Mahdi.[7] The Báb claimed he was the Imam Mahdi and thus he had equal status to Muhammad with the power, which he exercised, to abrogate the final provisions of Islamic law.[8]​

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Baháʼu'lláh, a Bábí who claimed to be the one foretold by the Báb, claimed a similar station for himself in 1863 as a Manifestation of God and as the promised figure foretold in the sacred scriptures of the major religious traditions of the past and founded what later came to be known as the Baháʼí Faith.[9]​

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Do you believe that the claims of the Bab and Baha'u'llah are true? If not, then what? If the claims are false, then so is the Baha'i religion. Or... we can ignore the problems with those claims of theirs and just look at the good that the Baha'i Faith stands for and the good things it teaches.

And then can we carry that over to Christianity and not worry about their claims that Jesus is God and just look at the good things in Christianity. Can Muslims do that? I'd imagine some can. But how many?

 

[CG Didymus]

Believers aren’t understanding anything via facts and reason. They adopt dogma for various psychological reasons. I seldom see believers questioning why they believe at all.

This "robot" thing is relatively new. There was a time when a person was killed for not believing the right stuff in the right way. Here's one example...

​

Michael Servetus (/sərˈviːtəs/;[1] Spanish: Miguel Serveto; French: Michel Servet; also known as Miguel Servet, Miguel de Villanueva, Revés, or Michel de Villeneuve; 29 September 1509 or 1511 – 27 October 1553) was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio (1553). He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.​

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He is renowned in the history of several of these fields, particularly medicine. His work on the circulation of blood and his observations on pulmonary circulation were particularly important. He participated in the Protestant Reformation, and later rejected the Trinity doctrine and mainstream Catholic Christology. After being condemned by Catholic authorities in France, he fled to Calvinist Geneva where he was denounced by John Calvin himself and burned at the stake for heresy by order of the city's governing council.​

 

[muhammad_isa]

Baháʼís are seen as apostates from Islam..

Yes .. there are scores of people locked up in Iran, claiming to be the Mahdi..
..oh well

 

[CG Didymus]

Let's not pretend as if you and @muhammad_isa believe in the same god.
@muhammad_isa liked your post and I don't get why. He is not a Baha'i. As far as @muhammad_isa is concerned, you are an unbeliever.

If the God as defined in these religions is real, then yes, no one could do better. But this God has done such a bad job at everything that it doesn't seem like he's real. Some older men might be able to relate to this... Why did God wrap a gland that swells up when men get older around the tube that he has to urinate through? Very poor design.

 

[CG Didymus]

We all believe in the God of Abraham.

Did this God create the world in 6 days a few thousand years ago? Did he flood the whole world not long after that? Did he tell Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac or was it Ishmael? Now add some Christian NT beliefs... Did Jesus die on the cross? Was it even him on the cross? And if he did die, did he come back to life.

Jews don't believe like Christians and Christians don't believe like Muslims and none of them believe like Baha'is. All of them take the Bible and do different things to it to support their beliefs. But why take it as being nothing more than the beliefs and myths of an ancient people? Why make this God and the myths about him the God that you believe in and that is the one that is real?