Well thanks. I’m not trying to be humble. I’m just musing my random thoughts.
People do not have to try to be humble, they either are or they aren't.
You are a refreshing change from the atheist poster I quoted in the OP.
In over five years of posting to him, I do not think he has ever admitted he was wrong, and he has never even met me halfway. That might sound rather extreme but it's the truth.
I certainly do not know his motives for talking so much about a god he does not believe in and thinks would be evil if it existed, I would not waste my time talking about a god I felt that way about, but we humans are all so different.
I think that on some level he really wants to know if God exists, but he is not going to find out putting all these expectations on God.
So on and on it goes. Anymore I just delete the repetition because it only leads to arguing and I don't like arguing. He thinks he knows me better than I know myself and he has to call me brainwashed by religion because if he conceded to that I really investigated my religion before I believed it, he might have to entertain the possibility there could be something to it, and he won't do that. He goes on the same way with the Christian poster I have on my forum, who is very humble and gracious and patient.
I think that people inevitably impose human features onto a deity. That includes having scriptures with the deity’s supposed instructions to mankind. Are they valid or are they just what people wanted to hear?
Since I am a Baha'i, I have a religion, so I think that scriptures contain God's will for mankind through the Messenger of God. Some are what people want to hear but a lot are what people don't want to hear, like some of the laws.
People also want proof that a deity exists, and that’s a valid need. But it’s valid for human beings. A deity or god or what have you, is not human though.
That is a good point. Human needs are not God's needs and God is under no obligation to fulfill our needs.
I’m not particularly an atheist nor am I a theist necessarily. I like to believe there is a God, that my feelings of a deity looking out for me are verified, valid even. But that’s a strictly human feeling. Existential angst.
Maybe the deity exists but is bound by law not to interact. Maybe the deity simply doesn’t care. Maybe the deity is having a nap. Maybe it doesn’t even exist.
How do we know?
Again, I appreciate your humility and open-mindedness. Those are rare qualities in humans.
According to my beliefs, there can never be any direct intercourse between God and ordinary human beings, and that is why God speaks through Messengers who have both a divine and a human nature, thus they can act as mediators between God and man. That seems logical to me and that is why I believe it.
For whatever reason, atheists have a problem with he idea of Messengers of God but in over five years of asking why I still have received no logical reason. The most logical thing they say is that they cannot know that any Messenger actually received messages from God and that is valid because nobody can prove that...The question is then why proof is necessary, why isn't good evidence sufficient?