The Baha'i Faith

[The Grand Nudger]

No I get all that and respect it. I see it one way, you see it another it's cool. I just haven't ever had the opportunity to ask that question to any representative of your faith and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. You guys are pretty thin on the ground round here. I appreciate the response. If you hadn't responded that would have been kosher as well, obviously. We all decide our own level of involvement, eh? No challenge bud.

[Bibliofagus]

Is it still okay to ask questions? Mine can be seen as challenging - or maybe not - but it's something I'm really curious about.

[zanOTK]

No I get all that and respect it. I see it one way, you see it another it's cool. I just haven't ever had the opportunity to ask that question to any representative of your faith and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. You guys are pretty thin on the ground round here. I appreciate the response. If you hadn't responded that would have been kosher as well, obviously. We all decide our own level of involvement, eh? No challenge bud.

Alright. My apologies for the misunderstanding. I've been having to deal with individuals that are not only challenging, but insulting, lately, so I suppose I'm just on the defensive. Again, my apologies.

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Is it still okay to ask questions? Mine can be seen as challenging - or maybe not - but it's something I'm really curious about.

Go ahead, as long as it's just out of curiosity.

[Bibliofagus]

Thnx. The thing is: I've often wondered how christians decide which parts of their bible are true. I've seen many answers and they all seem arbitrary to me.
In your faith this problem would multiply. You have to somehow decide
-which books are holy
- which parts of these books supercede other parts that are internally inconsistent
- and which fragments of holy books supercede the fragments of other books that are at odds.

Is there a mechanism? You were confident answering Frodo on the divinity of jesus issue, so I'm guessing there is.

On a related note I'm Also curious if Dianetics and the book of mormon count as a holy book. And why they do or don't.

[zanOTK]

Thnx. The thing is: I've often wondered how christians decide which parts of their bible are true. I've seen many answers and they all seem arbitrary to me.
In your faith this problem would multiply. You have to somehow decide
-which books are holy
- which parts of these books supercede other parts that are internally inconsistent
- and which fragments of holy books supercede the fragments of other books that are at odds.

Is there a mechanism? You were confident answering Frodo on the divinity of jesus issue, so I'm guessing there is.

On a related note I'm Also curious if Dianetics and the book of mormon count as a holy book. And why they do or don't.

Is there a mechanism? I suppose. If something from another holy book isn't absolutely stated to be fact in Baha'u'llah's Writings, or the writings of another one of the Central Figures, then it is open to be seen as metaphorical. From there, it's kind of a common sense game. Is it pretty obvious it didn't happen? It's metaphorical.

But that doesn't really answer your question. So, let's focus on those three up there:

Which books are holy? That would be the books written by a Manifestation of God (Messenger of God. I can explain this more if you wish), or that are the recorded oral account of what a Manifestaiton has said. This brings up the question: how do we know Who's a Manifestation and who isn't. That one's harder. You see, we don't. At least, not all of them. We do, however, have a list of confirmed Manifestations. This would be (in reverse order) Baha'u'llah, the Bab, Muhammad, Jesus, the Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses, Abraham, Krishna, (there's another one here, but I can't remember His name), Hud, Noah, and Adam. So, anything by any of those Figures is holy to Baha'is. We're told that there are many more, but we have no record of them, or they weren't confirmed as Manifestations in the Writings.

Which parts of these books supersede other parts that are internally inconsistent? That would usually be the most recent ones. So, in the Bible, Jesus' statements supersede those of Moses. Muhammad's statements in the Quran supersede those of Jesus. And so on. Where there's an inconsistency, the most recent one holds. Unless stated otherwise by a Manifestation. In which case, what the Manifestation said holds, holds.

And which fragments of holy books supersede the fragments of other books that are at odds? I believe I answered this one while answering the previous question.

As for Dianetics and the Book of Mormon: No. Here's why:

Joseph Smith was not a Manifestation, and he didn't make a separate religion (Mormons consider themselves Christians).

L. Ron Hubburd was also not a Manifestation. While he did end up founding a religion (Scientology), he came after Baha'u'llah. While we do believe another Manifestation WILL come after Baha'u'llah, we are specifically told that it won't be until after 1'000 years after His dispensation has begun. Besides that, L. Ron Hubburd claimed that Dianetics was a science, and that Scientology was a religion based on his scientific findings. Not a revelation.

I hope I answered your questions satisfactorily?

[Bibliofagus]

I hope I answered your questions satisfactorily?

In many ways you did. Thank you. I understand how jesus would trump mozes, and guess paul would trump jesus (if you hadn't included the part about Manifestations, which I'm guessing jesus is and paul isn't) and so on.

The Manifestation-thing is confusing however. And I feel I should ask for clarification because it appears to be the meat of my question now. How does one go about finding out if someone is a Manifestation?

I mean: could any books by Manifestations have been missed? I know there won't be a new one for a 1000 years but what about older ones? A good many new religious texts by ancients have been unearthed and published since your religion defined itself... Is there a committee/pope/whatever reading these and dismissing them?

[vodkafan]

Hi zan, it seems that in trying to be all inclusive your religion just shouts the fact that it doesn't really believe any thing at all....if a new Manifestation came up next week Ba'hai would be happy to try to fit that in somewhere if it could ...to me, all religions are delusion anyway, not trying to insult you but you are on an atheist forum after all...ba'hai seems to be on a mission to portray and shape itself as a religion for everybody, a religion for the future..but I wouldn't trust anybody that wanted to be all things to all men but still tried to say there is a Diety.
This just seems half-way to Humanism.

[Dystopia]

So, Pickup_shonuff and I ended up discussing my faith on another thread, but it was dedicated to a different subject. So I'm starting this up here to continue the conversation.

I'm not really 100% sure what you(Pickup) want to know, so let's start there. What kind of questions do you have?

I'd like to ask what inductive or deductive evidence is there to support your religion?

[zanOTK]

I hope I answered your questions satisfactorily?

In many ways you did. Thank you. I understand how jesus would trump mozes, and guess paul would trump jesus (if you hadn't included the part about Manifestations, which I'm guessing jesus is and paul isn't) and so on.

The Manifestation-thing is confusing however. And I feel I should ask for clarification because it appears to be the meat of my question now. How does one go about finding out if someone is a Manifestation?

I mean: could any books by Manifestations have been missed? I know there won't be a new one for a 1000 years but what about older ones? A good many new religious texts by ancients have been unearthed and published since your religion defined itself... Is there a committee/pope/whatever reading these and dismissing them?

We know a Manifestation is a Manifestation if they fulfill prophecy, or were mentioned as such in a Holy Book. If neither of those are true, then they're probably not Manifestations.

Could any books by Manifestations have been missed? Hell yes! In fact, we are specifically told that there were many, many more Manifestations than we have record of.
However, no. There is no comittee/pope/whatever which reads these texts and says yay or nay. If it is not mentioned in the official Writings of Baha'u'llah, then it is not (officially) considered authentic. However, there is nothing stopping individual Baha'is from acepting their authenticity.

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Hi zan, it seems that in trying to be all inclusive your religion just shouts the fact that it doesn't really believe any thing at all....if a new Manifestation came up next week Ba'hai would be happy to try to fit that in somewhere if it could ...to me, all religions are delusion anyway, not trying to insult you but you are on an atheist forum after all...ba'hai seems to be on a mission to portray and shape itself as a religion for everybody, a religion for the future..but I wouldn't trust anybody that wanted to be all things to all men but still tried to say there is a Diety.
This just seems half-way to Humanism.

Many seem to think this at first. But we're not inclusive in the way you're thinking. We believe other religions are true, but not that the current practice of that religion is true. Example: we accept Islam as the religion founded by Muhammad, and the Quran as the Word of God. Just like Muslims. However, unlike Muslims, we do not believe that Muhammad was, in fact, the last Messenger sent by God. Further, we accept the Christianity as the religion founded by Jesus, and we believe that the book of the New Testament are a semi-accurate account of His life (with some serious flaws). We do not, however, accept the Jesus was God, or that God is a trinity. We are strict Monotheists, meaning we believe there is only One God, One Person (if that word can be used. Using the term "person" implies anthropomorphism, which is totally against Baha'i belief).

We most certainly do not try to be "all things to all people." We believe very specific things. They don't always agree with what others believe. That does not stop us from believing in them.

Nor would we try to "fit in" a Manifestation that showed up next week. Mainly because our prophecies specifically state that the next Manifestation will not appear until (at minimum) 1'000 years have passed since Baha'u'llah. So far, less than 200 of those 1'000 have passed. We've got a while to go. And besides that, even if another Manifestation COULD appear next week, we wouldn't "fit" him/her in. We would accept them, and follow whatever laws they declared rather than the Baha'i laws. That's how it works. We don't just "fit in" Manifestations.

[logicalreason]

Hi all!

You have two Baha'is here, a theistic Baha'i and a non-theistic Baha'i!