I tried to explain that the predictions He made are not the best evidence but I allowed myself to be goaded into talking about them
You broached the topic of prophecy as evidence of a deity. You gave a mixed message there, saying that it wasn't proof - just evidence - after offering it as evidence that Baha'u'llah was a messenger of a real god with a valuable message for us. You seemed to sense that it would not convince skeptics. Perhaps in the future, you won't offer prophecy as evidence of a god.
Let's assume that you have a 5 year old son, and get a message over the telephone that it is your son, now 34 years old, calling you from the future. What would he need to say to you to convince you that it wasn't a prank call?
That's what happened in a 1998 movie starring Dennis Quaid called Frequency.
When an entity with knowledge of the future wants to make a convincing prediction, it'll be at least as good as the one made in the movie
Frequency, set in 1969, where Dennis Quaid's character’s son contacts Quaid from 1998 via ham radio.To convince his father of that fact, the son “predicts” the outcome of game five of what is for the father the as-yet unfinished 1969 World Series:
- "Well, game five was the big one. It turned in the bottom of the 6th. We were down 3-0. Cleon Jones gets hit on the foot - left a scuffmark on the ball. Clendenon comes up. The count goes to 2 and 2. High fastball. He nailed it. Weis slammed a solo shot in the 7th to tie. Jones and Swoboda scored in the 8th. We won, Pop."
Then the father watched the game live and that is what happened.
That’s high quality prophecy. It's specific, detailed, gives dates and places, and predicts something that could not have been guessed.
Low quality prophecy is vague or unclear predictions, trivial predictions such as it will be cold next winter, that earthquakes or wars will come, or that members of a religious cult will be disesteemed by the general public. This is what we get from the religions.
Did you look at the
Mathematical Bible Prophecy link I posted? Did you find it convincing? It was basically claiming that Ezekiel and Leviticus together predicted 1948 as the year for the restoration of Israel. Here are the two scriptures:
- "Then God said to Ezekiel, 'Now lie on your left side for 390 days to show Israel will be punished for 390 years by captivity and doom. Each day you lie there represents a year of punishment ahead for Israel. Afterwards, turn over and lay on your right side for 40 days, to signify the years of Judah's punishment. Each day will represent one year . . .’ ”(Ezekiel 4:4-6)
- "And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I (God) will punish you seven times more for your sins."- (Leviticus 26:18)”
Do you see where that is a prediction that Israel would return to the world in 1948? Me, neither. That's typical low quality biblical "prophecy." It actually predicts nothing since nobody got the year 1948 out of it until after 1948.
With all due respect, you haven't provided anything better from Baha'u'llah. You offered, "O banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore" and called it "pretty specific to WWI and WWII," but it's no better than the Old Testament example given above. Did anybody use those words for anything except after the fact to claim that they predicted two specific wars? If there was a third world war, could we amend our position and say that Baha'u'llah predicted them all?
So how can you use these insights to your advantage, knowing that these prophecies have little or no persuasive power with people outside of your faith?
I would suggest not trying to both claim that you have answers, but that you aren't trying to promote them and don't care what people believe. If the latter were the case, you wouldn't mention your beliefs unless asked about them.
The prophecies are counterproductive. They reveal the opposite of what you think and hope they reveal. They show me that this is yet another religion that hopes to establish the legitimacy of its god claim with words that can only be believed by somebody with the will to believe, which is different from a willingness to believe. The critical thinker is willing to be convinced, but has no desire to believe what cannot be argued convincingly by his own standards of reason applied to evidence, which may not be the same as your own.
It would also be helpful to listen to what your audience tells you, and even if you don't accept it, acknowledge it and let it be reflected in your presentation. On another thread, I read where you thought that your words were being rejected because we felt threatened or were uninterested, and that was written after you were told that we were interested, asked you for your best evidence, reviewed it, and found it unconvincing. Obviously, you didn't believe that.
Even if you were correct, if you don't at any point acknowledge that your audience believes what it is telling you, you've lost them.
I hope this helps you have a more satisfying experience interacting with unbelievers, an activity that you say that you enjoy.