How do you know what God would care about? How do you know God could have guided them to solve it better?
I don't know what God cares about, that is why we use source material to figure it out. I have been talking about that for a while now and why it is important to include the history and what the ancient Jews/Christians believed in and the source for that is the Bible/Torah. So what we can do is look at what they wrote and try to figure out what God cared about and didn't. That is why I have such a hard time figuring out how you define your God, because you constantly claim that we can't trust the Bible, because it was written by people. And that is why im trying to explain to you, that you can't just throw out certain verses that you don't agree with, without presenting a good case for why it should be so.
For instance some of the verse in the bible have been removed, because they were found to have been added later or doesn't fit the older manuscripts. That is how people working in the field with these texts does it. They find evidence for why certain texts might not have been in the original bibles and therefore should be removed. They don't just go through it and say
"I don't think this describe my view of God, so lets remove that verse". So there is a huge difference here. So when I tell you that you can't just throw out verses in the middle of a story, because you don't agree, its not a valid way to do it. Because everyone would be able to do that and the Bible would be completely useless then. So when Baha'u'llah or those of Bahai faith claim that the prophecies are talking about him, I tell you that you are wrong, because you read and grab these texts out of context, with no regard to the ancient Jews and what they believed and the time period in which they lived. But you are so convinced that Baha'u'llah is who he claim to be, that it apparently doesn't matter. But Im pretty sure that if you actually read the bible for yourself, that you would see that im not trying to fill you with nonsense, but that God in the OT do only care about the Jews. That Jesus is talking about salvation for the Jews coming soon and not in the future with Baha'u'llah.
The reason God could have guided them better, is based on the claims about what God is. And my claim is that almost any modern day person living today, would be able to guide them better. You applying Bahai teaching as a guide would be better than Gods. So how am I to believe that a God, that is all powerful and good can be beaten by a human when it comes to morality and guidance for other people.
So it seems to me that is how it came to be written in the Old Testament; it was written by men, not by God. That is one reason why I consider it a waste of my time read and try to understand the Old Testament.
And again, what God do you believe in? What you write makes no sense when it comes to God, unless one of the option I mentioned above is true?
I agree, and I do not think God made these laws.
Completely agree as you know. But then again im an atheists. But do you think an all powerful and good god, would allow his chosen people to write such immoral laws? and treat other humans as they do? and if so how can you maintain the claim that God is all good?
True, when seen from a personal point of view, achieving “personal” happiness is the goal of humans, but I consider it selfish to only think of oneself. Jesus taught to love your neighbor as yourself but Baha’u’llah taught to prefer your neighbor to yourself. Owing to the spiritual evolution of humanity the expectations God puts on humans are greater in this new age.
But you are not thinking about yourself. If you thrive towards happiness and one of the things that makes you happy is to help others. Then it is not selfish, even if you do it to improve your own happiness, we don't decide what makes us happy and what doesn't anyway.
You mention that you like cats, so you taking care of them most likely makes you happy. Based on your logic you are doing something selfish because it brings you joy. And im saying that it doesn't matter, it makes you happy and that it is good, because it benefits you and at the same time the cats, therefore there is nothing wrong with you doing and thriving towards this happiness. But not everyone want or can have cats, or they might be allergic to them whatever. But they might like them so much, that they donate money to animal shelters or whatever and that might make them feel better and it helps the cats. To assume that something is wrong with that, makes little sense to me.
Where I would agree with you, is if a person sexual abuse a child, because it benefit them, then that is wrong and that is why we punish people like that. Because them trying to achieve happiness that hurts other is not acceptable. There is a huge difference here.
It would only make sense if this is the only life we have and there is no afterlife, but if there is an afterlife it ceases to make as much sense as you think it does. If there is an afterlife, this life is preparation for that life, and we are here primarily to acquire spiritual virtues (good character) rather than to just be happy, because our character is all we will take with us to the spiritual world. That does not mean we cannot also enjoy this life, but it is a matter of priorities. There has to be a balance and everyone is an individual so they have to find their own balance. What works for one person won’t work for everyone becaue all our capacities and our life circumstances differ.
Thriving towards happiness, to me at least make sense regardless of there being an afterlife or not. The only difference is that if a God exists and its goal is for humans to worship him or he will throw you in hell. Then one have to decide whether its worth living an eternity with such a monster or spend an eternity in hell, which is probably equally bad.
But all this is based on the claim that an afterlife actually do exists, which there is absolutely no evidence for. And even reading the old texts about what an afterlife might be, makes no sense at all. So the question becomes, do you want to spend your whole life worrying about something for which there is no evidence whatsoever or do you want to live you life as happy as possible and get the most out of it? To me it is the last option, because through examining all these claims people have made throughout history, there are nothing to suggest that any of it is true. And even if you should choose one of them, there is 1 in 300000 or how many religions and religious views there is that you get it right, at the same time God is apparently not interested in telling us which of these are correct or not either. Which, if he exists, again makes him a monster and ill rather spend an eternity in hell or simply being dead than spending time with something like that. But obviously that is a choice each of us have to make.
If there is a God that created humans, don’t you think that God would know what our purpose of life is? If that has been revealed, would you want to know? From a Baha’i perspective, the purpose of life is to become our true self.
Yes God would know, but he have decided to not share this information with us in any good way, instead he have given different information to everyone, so no one have any clue, which again makes him incompetent or a monster for making people run around like headless chickens trying to figure it out and killing each other over what is true or not, when the fact is that no one knows. So to be honest, I personally don't give a rats *** what Gods possible purpose with our lives is, if he want me to know, im right here and he is welcome to come and explain it, if not, so be it.
There really is no excuse for this because their scriptures do not teach this way of living. I’d expect to see atheists living this way since they have no God to answer to, but most atheists I know do not live this way. They care about social and political issues and the environment and other species as well as humans.
I think the reason people does this, is because they don't know what else to do. Religion causes confusion, what are you allowed to do and what can't you do. Did you do the right thing? will God approve? I think most atheists, ask themselves if what they are about to do, is going to harm or cause trouble for other people, animals etc. and if not then they see no issue doing it. Its very simply and understandable way to approach life. Obviously this is generalizing atheists as you will have some that do harm to others for whatever reason. To me, I would guess that is the biggest difference between atheists and religious people, all the nonsense rules etc. are filtered away.
However, some Christians just think they have a free ride to heaven and they don’t care if others go to hell, as long as they have an enjoyable life. This I consider selfish. There is nothing more to say. They cherry pick out of the Bible what they want to believe and it is all about personal salvation. Thank God all Christians are not like this. I consider many Christians even more spiritual than Baha’is I know, and I can learn from them. They love God and they walk the walk rather than just talking the talk. Jesus hated hypocrites. I struggle not to judge this person I mentioned because I know that is wrong, but I cannot help how I feel, only how I behave.
Well it actually were like this historically, you might remember that people used to be able to buy salvation for money. Which obviously seems very in line with God
But none the less people believed it. You have examples of kings and emperors that would get baptized on their deathbed to get rid of all the sins they had committed during their rule and they would get to heaven as well. So apparently there are lots of ways to "trick" your way into heaven, following the rules given in the Bible.
You have to remember that it is with Jesus the concept of being judged for eternity comes into play and that God can read your thoughts and that you sin through these as well, if I remember correctly. So the NT is not any better than the OT, both are pretty much equally bad in my opinion.