Is atheism a religion?

[Trailblazer]

More important for your religious beliefs is that many gods/messengers would have to be real for your religion to be real.

That is the main premise upon which the Baha'i Faith is based.

Understanding human history is not jumping to conclusions.

What do you understand?

I'd be willing to bet that you do continue to present your "knowledge" to atheists and anyone else who will listen.

I will answer questions that are asked and explain my beliefs but I have learned my lesson. I will point them to the evidence room but I am not posting any more evidence. Live and learn.

 

[Trailblazer]

Speaking of convenient, I notice you conveniently skipped over this rather damning example of your equality for women assertions.

There is nothing damning about it. It is just an excuse to say we do not uphold the principles, which is false.
This is what I meant about atheists being illogical. They pick on one detail and then they generalize from the specific to the general -- so illogical.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

NO, that is not the same

Except that it is. You don't have a choice in what your "race" is.
One does not punish or reward people for things that aren't under their control.

You can choose to believe or disbelieve because you have free will.

False again.

I can choose to have a steak or chicken for dinner.
I can not choose what I believe or don't believe.

Think about it: could you decide, here and now, that you are going to believe that Santa Claus is real and seriously honestly believe it - not just say it?

Off course you cannot. Belief is a compulsion. I don't get to decide what I find convincing or not.

You cannot choose to be a black or a Caucasian because that is not subject to free will.

Neither is belief.

I can't choose to believe that 2+2 equals 5.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Have at it, there is plenty of evidence.

So you keep saying. But when asked for that evidence, all you do is repeat the claims...........

What point?

Exactly.........

There is nothing better than what we have, original scriptures penned in the hand of the Prophet.

Uhu, uhu.
Just like the book of Mormons.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You do not define what is good and bad evidence for anyone else except yourself because YOU do not set the standards for evidence.

No. I go by objective standards of evidence and actively try not to let bias get in the way.

If you do not like the evidence that is provided by God, so be it

Assuming your conclusion much?

And you know that there is not sufficient evidence exactly HOW?
You never even looked, you just assumed.

If there was, it wouldn't be a religion, but instead just common knowledge...
To review all the religious claims believed today, would take multiple lifetimes.
This is why the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. Those making these claims, fail to produce valid evidence.

No, religions require faith because God cannot be proven to exist, so we have to take that on faith.

And if there were valid evidence, you wouldn't have to resort to faith.
The point.

Just like I don't require "faith" to believe that I'll get hurt and very likely die if I jump from a tall building without a parachute.

You atheists think you are so superior to believers but you are not because you cannot understand simple logic.

I don't consider myself superior to anyone.
And simple logic informs me that it is irrational to accept unfalsifiable, untestable claims as true.

Spoiler Alert! You are just a mere human being. You do not get to test the Almighty God.

Replace "almighty god" with "Lord Xenu" or "extra-dimensional unicorns".

The only testing you can do is the reading what has been revealed in scriptures and reading about the Messenger of God in order to ascertain if He was really a Messenger of God.

As said by every follower of every religion ever - 99.9% of which disagree with your religion.
The fact is that such things aren't testable either.

God does not need your belief because God does not need anything.

Gravity doesn't need my belief either, so that isn't an argument for or against anything.

I never said they were the evidence. You have to check out the claims to determine if they are legitimate, like duh.

And those claims must be supported by evidence outside of the claims themselves.
But when I asked you for evidence, you just pointed me to the scriptures. ie, the claims.

Religion is the evidence that God exists, take it or leave it.

Wow! Just..... wow!
So....

Scientology is evidence that our immortal inner Thetans and Lord Xenu are real.
The norse myths are evidence that Thor is real.
Islam is evidence that Allah is real.
Christianity is evidence that Jesus is god.
Hinduism is evidence that Visjnoe and thousands of other gods, are real.
....

In other words: if there is someone that believes claim X, then that is evidence that claim X is real...

Talk about a facepalm statement....

There is evidence that support those claims to be a Messenger of God.

I asked for such evidence and you just refered me back to the scriptures.....................

So here's your chance (again). Give me your BEST piece of evidence.

The evidence that Baha’u’llah was who He claimed to be is everything that surrounds the Revelation of Baha’u’llah, including who He was as a Person (His character); His mission on earth; the history of His Cause, from the time He appeared moving forward; the scriptures that He wrote; what His appointed Interpreters wrote; what others have written about the Baha’i Faith; the Bible prophecies that He fulfilled, as well as prophecies of other religions that He fulfilled; predictions He made that have come to pass; the religion that He established (followers) all over the world and what they have done and are doing now.

None of this is evidence. All of it, is just about what people believe.
So yes, just like I said: your "evidence", consists of just the piling on of even more claims and anecdotes.

You are the one who needs to do the homework if you want to believe in God.

I don't "want" to believe anything in particular. What a strange thing to say.

I already did my homework.

So far, it grades F

Don’t waste your time with that ploy. It does not matter if everyone believes in my religion. 93% of people believe in God.

Again with that dishonest line. 99.9% of them, disagree with you.
Not that amount of believers of anything make those things more or less credible off course. 100% of people could believe something and be wrong about it.

I just find it curious how you consistently try to put everybody that can't be called an atheist, in your camp. While in reality, your camp consists of barely 0.1% of the world's population.

No, it will eventually grow to 100%, because eventually everyone in the world will recognize Baha'u'llah and there will only be one religion.

Funny. 1.2 billion muslims believe the same thing. But not about your religion. You may guess 3 times which religion they believe will rule the world one day.

And they believe it just as hard as you do. Some of them even harder. So hard that they are willing to blow themselves up for that belief.

You got that right. God is not an objective reality. Can we all go home now?

So god is a subjective reality. Yes, we can go home now, now that we've established that gods only exist in people's imagination.

God exists everywhere, because God is Omnipresent. This world is not the real world, would you but know it. It is just a reflection of the spiritual world, which is the real world.

What's next? We really live in the matrix?

 

[ecco]

Throughout religious history there has been about 500-1000 years in between the Manifestations of God, so what you might want to ask is why the short gap between the Bab and Baha'u'llah. It is unprecedented that two major Manifestations of God would come so close together.

The answer lies in the fact that the Bab ushered in an entirely new religious cycle called the Cycle of Fulfillment (the Baha'i Cycle). The primary purpose of the Revelation of the Bab was to announce the coming of Baha'u'llah and to bridge the gap in between Islam and the Baha'i Faith, since their social teachings and Laws were markedly different.

The Babi religion was like a transition religion between the Adamic Cycle (which began with Adam and ended with Muhammad) and the Baha'i Cycle of religion. It was never intended by God that the Babi religion would last more than 19 years. The Bab clearly stated to his followers that His purpose was to announce "Him Whom God shall make manifest" which was Baha'u'llah.

Uh huh.

“HE is God, no God is there but Him, the Almighty, the Best Beloved. All that are in the heavens and on the earth and whatever lieth between them are His. Verily He is the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.

This is a letter from God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, unto God, the Almighty, the Best Beloved, to affirm that the Bayán and such as bear allegiance to it are but a present from me unto Thee and to express my undoubting faith that there is no God but Thee, that the kingdoms of Creation and Revelation are Thine, that no one can attain anything save by Thy power and that He Whom Thou hast raised up is but Thy servant and Thy Testimony. I, indeed, beg to address Him Whom God shall make manifest, by Thy leave in these words: ‘Shouldst Thou dismiss the entire company of the followers of the Bayán in the Day of the Latter Resurrection by a mere sign of Thy finger even while still a suckling babe, Thou wouldst indeed be praised in Thy indication. And though no doubt is there about it, do Thou grant a respite of nineteen years as a token of Thy favour so that those who have embraced this Cause may be graciously rewarded by Thee. Thou art verily the Lord of grace abounding. Thou dost indeed suffice every created thing and causest it to be 8 independent of all things, while nothing in the heavens or on the earth or that which lieth between them can ever suffice Thee.’” Selections From the Writings of the Báb, pp. 6-7​

There is nothing in your above quote that specifies who will be taking over. In 1863, after being banished from his native Iran, Bahá'u'lláh announced that he was this prophet.

Also, how do you know The Bab wrote this? How do you know it wasn't written after the fact by Bahá'u'lláh's followers to justify Bahá'u'lláh's takeover?


You said "It is unprecedented that two major Manifestations of God would come so close together" but you can't show a reason why it happened.

 

[ecco]

You atheists think you are so superior to believers but you are not because you cannot understand simple logic.

That's quite funny.

It would be funny if it was not so sad.

There is an atheist on another forum I post on who cannot even understand why he cannot know more than an All-Knowing God. He thinks that he knows more than god would know if god existed regarding the right way to communicate to humans. This dialogue has been going on for about five years and the atheist forum owner finally had to tell both me and him to shut up. This is not the first time he has told us that, but hopefully it will be the last.

This atheist also says that if was god omnipotent god could do anything but he does not understand why the converse also applies: an omnipotent god would never do anything it did not want to do. This atheist does not understand why an omnipotent god doesn't do what he wants it to do.

It is amazing how anyone can be that illogical. He thinks he could know more than an All-knowing God, which is logically impossible because nobody can be more than All-Knowing. He also thinks that God makes mistakes. I told him an infallible God cannot make a mistake but then he said that there is nothing in logic that would require god to be infallible... He also says that god could be evil because there is nothing in logic that would require god to be benevolent.
The list goes on. He makes god in his own image, whatever is convenient to try to win an argument.

How interesting. To support your assertions you reference someone in another thread in another forum. You say he is illogical. You give examples of what you think shows he is illogical. You give counter-arguments that I guess make you feel superior.

I suppose you must feel very proud of your ability to build a strawman and then shoot him down so completely and so effectively.


Perhaps you would like to try using your superior debating skills with people in this forum where we can all see what you have to say and what atheists have to say.

Oh, wait. We already have a history of how well you actually fare.

You don't do as well in this forum with this forum's atheists as you say you did in "another forum" with "another atheist". I wonder why that would be.

 

[ecco]

Everyone has their own opinions but that does not prove anything, logically speaking, since all opinions differ.

As just one, of many, examples:
Some of your sacred writings contained quotations of private conversations between two people. I challenged you to show how the writer could have known the contents of those conversations. You couldn't. You asked a friend. His explanation clearly was nothing more than unsubstantiated opinion. You asked people in the Bahai organization that you felt were more qualified to know. Their explanations, although different, were clearly just vague guesswork. This is not opinion. These are facts.

Some of us can differentiate between the two.

 

[ecco]

Nevertheless, perhaps you can show your true knowledge and understanding of Bahá’u’lláh's writing by summarizing the meaning of
EPISTLE TO THE
SON OF THE WOLF

I do not need to demonstrate my knowledge because I am not an egotist.
You can read that for yourself if you want to know:

The reason I asked you to summarize the meaning of
EPISTLE TO THE
SON OF THE WOLF
is because I read through it and found it to be 46,000+ words of incoherent rambling. I was quite certain that you could not make any more sense out of it than I could, so my challenge was more than somewhat facetious.

However, your defense for not summarizing it because, while you have the knowledge, you don't want to show off is really sadly hilarious.

 

[ecco]

Only God and His Messengers know if it is the truth.

Logically speaking, that means that only God and His Messengers know if it is false.

So now you are saying you have no way of knowing if your religion is true or false. Or are you suggesting you do know it is true because you are a Messenger?

 

[ecco]

Understanding human history is not jumping to conclusions.

What do you understand?

I understand that over the course of thousands of years man and created gods in his own image.

I understand that most religions borrow from other religions while, at the same time, they try to present themselves as something new and different,

I understand that all religious people believe their god is the true god and their religion is the right and only way to worship their god.

 

[ecco]

There is plenty but I have decided I am not going to waste any more of my time presenting it to atheists.

I'd be willing to bet that you do continue to present your "knowledge" to atheists and anyone else who will listen.

I will answer questions that are asked and explain my beliefs but I have learned my lesson. I will point them to the evidence room but I am not posting any more evidence. Live and learn.

Considering that you have never posted any "evidence", this will be nothing new.

Posting extensive quotes from the "Gleanings" is not even pointing to evidence.

 

[ecco]

There is nothing damning about it. It is just an excuse to say we do not uphold the principles, which is false.
This is what I meant about atheists being illogical. They pick on one detail and then they generalize from the specific to the general -- so illogical.

• You state that women and men are equal in Bahai.
• Your holy scripture states that women are not allowed into the inner circle.

This is, at best, hypocrisy.

First, you tried to ignore my post. Now you say I'm being illogical for generalizing. I wasn't generalizing. I gave a very specific example and commented on it. If anything, your comment that Bahai treats men and women equally, was a false generalization.

Nevertheless, I went here...

Writings of Bahá’u’lláh | Bahá’í Reference Library​

...and looked through the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and searched for "woman" or "women". I found no reference. The website states that "Bahá’u’lláh authored thousands of letters, tablets, and books that, if compiled, would constitute more than 100 volumes". Obviously, I did not look through all of them, but perhaps you know where Bahá’u’lláh actually wrote something about male/female equality.

 

[Trailblazer]

There is nothing in your above quote that specifies who will be taking over. In 1863, after being banished from his native Iran, Bahá'u'lláh announced that he was this prophet.

A lot happened in between the time the Bab wrote that to His followers and the time Baha'u'llah declared His Mission. In short, the Bab sent one of His disciples to find Him Whom God shall make manifest, and this disciple found Baha'u'llah because He exactly fit the description the Bab had given of what to look for. I have not read it but this is no doubt explained in God Passes By and The Dawn-Breakers.

Also, how do you know The Bab wrote this? How do you know it wasn't written after the fact by Bahá'u'lláh's followers to justify Bahá'u'lláh's takeover?

These are the original writings of the Bab which are in the archives. Baha'u'llah did not take over. He was recognized by the Bab to be the Promised One.

You said "It is unprecedented that two major Manifestations of God would come so close together" but you can't show a reason why it happened.

I did explain why it happened. The Bab means "the gate" in Persian because His primary mission was to announce the coming of one who would be greater than Him. The Bab's mission was also to bridge the gap between Islam and the Baha'i Faith.

 

[Trailblazer]

How interesting. To support your assertions you reference someone in another thread in another forum. You say he is illogical. You give examples of what you think shows he is illogical. You give counter-arguments that I guess make you feel superior.

I was not trying to support any assertions. ALL I was doing was describing one atheist on another forum and demonstrating how illogical he is as an example of how illogical atheists can be. I could give you many more examples. I have come to the conclusion after many years that the reasons atheists cannot believe in religion or Messengers of God is because they cannot think logically about them.

I suppose you must feel very proud of your ability to build a strawman and then shoot him down so completely and so effectively.

No, all your defense of him means nothing. He is either illogical or he isn't. Can any human know more than an All-Knowing God about the BEST WAY to communicate, yes or no.

Perhaps you would like to try using your superior debating skills with people in this forum where we can all see what you have to say and what atheists have to say.

Oh, wait. We already have a history of how well you actually fare.

I am not debating anyone here. In your dreams. As I told this atheist on the other forum, I am not trying to win any arguments. I am just trying to have a discussion. I already know God exists and I know who Baha'u'llah was so I have no need to win anything.

You don't do as well in this forum with this forum's atheists as you say you did in "another forum" with "another atheist". I wonder why that would be.

I never said "I did well" on the other forum with that atheist or any atheists. I have no need to "do well" because I already know God exists and the Baha'i Faith is the truth from God for this age. It is a closed case as far as I am concerned. There is nothing to debate. If people ask me questions about my beliefs I will do my best to answer them, but I am not trying to arrogantly prove I am superior to anyone. I just have my beliefs. Atheists don't believe in God. Nobody is superior.

 

[Trailblazer]

As just one, of many, examples:
Some of your sacred writings contained quotations of private conversations between two people. I challenged you to show how the writer could have known the contents of those conversations. You couldn't.

I did explain how the writer could have known the contents of those conversations. You just did not LIKE my explanation. That does not make you right and me wrong.

 

[Trailblazer]

The reason I asked you to summarize the meaning of
EPISTLE TO THE
SON OF THE WOLF
is because I read through it and found it to be 46,000+ words of incoherent rambling. I was quite certain that you could not make any more sense out of it than I could, so my challenge was more than somewhat facetious.

However, your defense for not summarizing it because, while you have the knowledge, you don't want to show off is really sadly hilarious.

I do not have to prove anything to you. That is why I did not adhere to your request.

I do not care that you thought it was incoherent rambling, as if you are anyone to judge a Manifestation of God.
THAT is what is hilarious, although it is also really sad for you, but not for me, because I know who Baha'u'llah was.

 

[Trailblazer]

So now you are saying you have no way of knowing if your religion is true or false. Or are you suggesting you do know it is true because you are a Messenger?

No, I am saying I KNOW it is the truth but I cannot prove that to anyone else.

I am also saying that I cannot prove it as one would prove a scientific fact; nobody can prove any religion that way because religion is not science.

 

[Trailblazer]

I understand that over the course of thousands of years man and created gods in his own image.

I understand that most religions borrow from other religions while, at the same time, they try to present themselves as something new and different,

Then you understand wrong because this is not what happened.

I understand that all religious people believe their god is the true god and their religion is the right and only way to worship their god.

So what? It is illogical to say this disproves the Baha'i Faith. What religious people believe has NOTHING to do with what is actually the Truth from God. There is no correlation whatsoever. This is logic 101 stuff.

 

[Trailblazer]

Considering that you have never posted any "evidence", this will be nothing new.

Posting extensive quotes from the "Gleanings" is not even pointing to evidence.

You are not the only atheist I ever posted to. I have posted evidence and it was not Gleanings or any quotes.

I have also posted a bulleted list of the various categories of evidence so people could do their own research.