Is There Something Wrong with the Concept of God? (Page 19)

Zanjan: Yes I can.....and to confirm that, He said so Himself.

What's totally unknowable is His essence. You can't even know your own essence, much less another human's.

However, He created us to reflect some of His attributes, to varying degrees. Each attribute has its own power, operating in distinctive ways. We recognize God by those. Obviously, if we didn't have a specific attribute ourselves, it would be impossible for us to recognize it.

On the other hand, if we were to learn we COULD display that particular attribute - that it's merely latent within us and could be developed - would we be interested in cultivating it?

If so, we couldn't learn that from each other because we'd need a Master. How could we know who's a master if we, ourselves, are poor and needy? We'd be like the elementary grade math student searching for a private tutor who's a world class physics instructor. Crazy.

Nevertheless, God has given us a way. Only the Manifestations of God (His high Prophets) reflect these attributes to perfection - it's only through Them that we can know what God has permitted us to know about Him insofar as each individual has the capacity to understand.

You can't find this Personage on your own but God will send someone to tell you about Him.

ghostgeek: A pretty speech, Zanjan, but I wish God had delivered it instead of you. That way those of us who don't have afternoon tea with him might have some reason to believe in God's existence.

Zanjan: Actually, God DID deliver that speech - sounds much nicer in His own Voice. I summarized because I don't expect anyone here to look it up and read the whole epistle.

I take it you're not interested in polishing up your mirror, huh. Owww, too shiny!
I bet your car is a wreck.

ghostgeek: Yep, the car is a wreck, and I don't strain myself polishing mirrors. Anything else you want to know?

Zanjan: I think I've heard enough to confirm what I already knew, thank you.

ghostgeek: Well, that makes two of us, Zanjan.

ghostgeek: According to those that claim to know, God is good. Not an evil atom in His being. What nonsense.

Consider Abraham. Nimrod saw in the stars that a man would be born in his day who would rise up against him and give the lie to his religion. So what did he do? Kill seventy thousand baby boys to try and stop Abraham being born, that's what. And what did God do? Threaten to chastise Nimrod.

A kind, caring, being wouldn't have let seventy thousand babies die. He would have intervened straight away.

Zanjan: You've got it all wrong by giving too much credit to Nimrod. The babes would have died no matter what Nimrod did because the whole of the society was corrupt. That's why God sends one of His Messengers - to bring the dead souls back to life. Nimrod couldn't perform that stunt, you see.

No single man has the power to change the tides of destiny - if that were true, we'd all be at peace now....or extinct. You choose.

By the way "Nimrod" means "The Rebel". Anyone who rebels against God loses whatever power he may ever have had.

ghostgeek: I thought babies were supposed to be innocent.

Zanjan: They are. Physical death has nothing to do with innocence or guilt. Has it ever occurred to you that people in heaven need babies too? At least there, they'll be well-taken care of. Spiritual death, on the other hand, is a consequence of what former generations have done.

When the time is right, the people will be forewarned - a lesser Prophet tells them. He lets them know a high Prophet is about to appear with a new Revelation. At that moment, God causes all souls to expire and revives whomever He choses with the life-giving waters of the Holy Spirit. This great pulse of energy is a light to the world that advances mankind.

By the way,Nimrod challenged this life and death thing, claiming he had the same power. It was said that to demonstrate this, he took two men, let one go and killed the other. This is Abraham's response: God raises up the sun every morning in the east, and sets it in the west. If you have the power to rebel against God, then bring the morning sun up in the West!

Whether this is a factual statement or not doesn't matter, it's still a perfect answer.

ED> added last sentence in first paragraph for clarification.

ghostgeek: You'll be telling me next that jelly babies need potty training. Get your feet back on terra firma and smell the coffee. That's reality.

Zanjan: Hey, I DRINK the coffee! Taste buds are more accurate than the nose, unless one is a dog.

I'm only going by verified historical and scientific fact, taken over a period of 4 thousand years. These confirm the cycles of delivery and consequences so, they're impossible to deny or even challenge. God doesn't change His ways - that makes it easy for you to recognize how He works.

You're just being obstinate. It's ok to say you've made a mistake; everybody makes them so why not face up to that fact?

Zanjan: Now that you've mentioned the "senses", I'd just like to add there's a natural phenomena not to be overlooked. Most sentient creatures have the same 5 senses; you know what they are. Yet in each species, ONE of those senses is heightened to sublime perfection.

God designed them so they can contribute something specific to the natural order and balance of life. For instance, bears and dogs can smell a sausage up to 10 Klm away. Predatory birds, like eagles and falcons, can spot their dinner from 20 thousand feet up. Neither clouds, wind or water seem to be much of a challenge for them.

However, this precious, sharpened sense comes at the expense of the other senses at diminishing grades. For example, those that have great noses will have poor eyesight; those with acute hearing will have lousy taste buds, and so forth. In short, each creature has been compensated to make up for it's limitations. Nobody has it all.

This fact applies to all humans, both physically and spiritually. Like any other creature, if they lose a faculty, another becomes heightened because the former power isn't there anymore to distract from mental focus. However, if they lose their most powerful faculty, they can't survive and will die.

That's why you see bad people get stinking rich and influential; you've wondered how it is that snakes are living in the lap of luxury and privilege while the gentle, goodly sort get stomped on by the establishment. While it doesn't appear fair, the truth is that it's a trade off we, ourselves, have made.

We've willingly sacrificed a power (sense) to gain the use of what we think is a better power (sense). Only humans can do that.

Due to this condition, no one has cause to be envious.

ghostgeek: Zanjan, do you ever admit to making a mistake?

Zanjan: Yes. Admission is easier than non- admission. (For the latter, one needs time to figure out a story)

It helps when you know what you're talking about before you speak. I do get messed up on dates rather frequently and names can sometimes be quite the headache to recall - can't remember everything. I do remember you asked me that question once before.

ghostgeek: There doesn't seem to be much activity in the religious forum of late. I suppose most people have seen the light and admitted, at least to themselves, that God doesn't exist. Still, there must be a few diehard believers out there, in the swamps and backwoods of America. I guess they've stockpiled the ammo and dug themselves in.

ghostgeek: The last day or so, I've been wondering about our so-called God's universal language. Mmmm, what's that you might ask, and that, of course, is the problem. God's scriptures are not written in a universal language open to all.

Consider the Qur'an. It's written in Arabic. If you don't know Arabic, so the Muslims tell us, you will, at best, only gain an approximate understanding of Allah's final revelation from a translation. That sounds down right incompetant of Allah, sending His last revelation down to humankind in a form that few will be able to fully understand.

What God needs is a language that everyone will be fully able to understand through all eternity. That way, there will be no danger of anyone misunderstanding the message. So where is it?

ghostgeek: Well, there most definitely isn't a universal divine language that the prophets spout, so what can we conclude? Two possibilities spring to mind.

1). There is no God. This is the most logical conclusion.

2). There is no universal God. Each people has its own god. This leaves us with the problem of which of these many gods actually created everything.

3). There is only one God, but it is only interested in a small fraction of the human race. This is the position the Jews and the Arabs take. They are God's chosen people and the holy books are provided for their benefit alone. That means the rest of us are buggered, whatever we do.

Zanjan: "Two possibilities spring to mind".

One of them is that you can't count.

Yeah, the religious forum certainly is deathly quiet - it's not because posters now believe God doesn't exist. Believers never give up because they don't have to.

I think it's more likely that everyone went out shopping for back-to-school supplies and had to register for classes. It's also harvest time in the temperate zones.


Furthermore, there's no such thing as "God's Universal Language" - that is, if you're inferring that it's an ethnic language spoken by man. We invent our languages and all of them always change.

Regardless of the language the Prophet spoke when He delivered the Revelation, there's no guarantee everyone will understand it even if that's their mother tongue. Had it been otherwise, everyone would have become a believer after reading the first few lines of any passage!

Spiritual language is understood with the heart - it's a specific connection between God and man that permits us to recognize the Word of God.

Zanjan: The most logical conclusion is that God doesn't need a universal language - humans do.

In an ancient tribal world, where people were born, raised and died all in the same place, one language was good enough to get things done. The world has changed - we're not tribal or even an agrarian society anymore. We'll never be that again. We're left to carry forward only the story of our historical roots.

Aside from one's mother tongue, all humanity should have one common language. God said so because the time is right for that. To date, it seems to be English. I don't care which language it is as long as we can all speak it. Sign language is cool but legally and scientifically challenged.

So, you're right - if we can't understand each other, how can we expect to understand God??

By the way, there's no such thing as a "final" Revelation from God - no scripture has ever said that simply because that would be really stupid. There can only be a most recent one for *you*.

Zanjan: After watching an animal training film recently, I've been thinking a lot about how long it takes some humans to learn even the simplest things.

Case in point, the Middle East, particularly what's going on in Syria. One wonders when these people will ever get tired of war. They're utterly ruined and there's nothing but rubble left yet they're still fighting over it.

I guess we need to keep these accounts of history so we can appreciate how amazingly patient God is to have let them decide their own end.

ghostgeek: Are you saying that the Qur'an is only for Arabs, or are you saying the whole world should learn Arabic? Come to think about it, are the Baha'i texts only for those who can read Persian and Arabic? From what I can gather, only a fraction of them have been translated into English. Doesn't that rather undo your God's purpose in providing a new revelation to the world? If people can't read it, it's pretty damn useless.

Doesn't your faith have as one of its goals the teaching of a universal language to the whole world? Seems somebody noticed that God had been falling down on the job.

Zanjan: Obviously, with a language comes a script. So, no, the world language is NOT Arabic for practical reasons. We're not all left-handed and we no longer use wet ink brushes and turkey feathers to write a letter.

Arabic has full literary value; however, on a daily exchange, it's overkill for the modern common man, who likes to reduce everything to acronyms and text-ese for greater speed.

First and foremost, all languages have had to adjust to the reigning tech and corporate kings by inserting English words into conversation. You're not going to take that away from them.

It's wonderful to learn a second language but, an absolute waste of time if there's no one around who can converse with you in it. Use it or lose it. I lost my French because I didn't want to walk around with a sign around my neck saying "Parlez vous Francais?"

For my own, personal meditations, I'd delight in being able to read Baha'i texts in their original language. However, I've not found that anyone who can is holier, smarter, more advanced, or more righteous than those who can't.

What all those who CAN read in the original language (because it's their mother tongue) say is that, in that language, they understand from the heart, but in English, they understand with the head. I suppose it's like eastern and western music - very different, each sets its mood. Both are valuable and appreciated.

Zanjan: While the Baha'i texts were delivered in two languages, most of them - the laws and critical teachings have since been translated into almost all languages. You can imagine what a challenge that was for say, the "Cree" language.

Not anyone is permitted to translate or publish. The Baha'i World Center has a bank of the finest linguists and scholars of language around the world. For any passage translation, 16 of these scholars must unanimously agree on the rendition before the UHJ accepts it as official and publishes it.

I find Baha'i scriptures more beautiful and majestic than anything previously produced in history. Most people would agree.

The Baha'i teachings have a fully unifying nature - as such, the Faith cannot address itself to a specific group of people except to portend what their future will be. Baha'is, alone, are bound by Baha'i Laws yet its teachings are for all of humanity, as are its Temples. .

That said, Baha'u'llah does address certain individuals of His generation; He also wrote letters to all the Kings, Queens, Presidents and Religious Heads of the world.

Thus, we get an idea of what God has charged them to do; any of those individuals who refused to listen, fell from power. Notice how those monarchies are no more.

ghostgeek: No, no, no, translations are no good. All translations can only ever be an approximation of the original meaning. What is required is God's spiritual language. The old bugger needs to get out of bed and start using His megaphone.