Baha'i faith is not blind faith.

[firedragon]

The problem is, if one does not refer to recorded traditions (aka Hadithes), one cannot know the intention of many of the verses.

Irrelevant.

 

[firedragon]

No worries, we are now used to these types of responses when the position we offer becomes clear and logical.

It's not logical. No evidence. That's why one has to preach.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Both scriptures, of both Muslims and the Bahai's speak of people going to hell. But the Bahai's say "they don't".

That is a misrepresentation of what I understand as a Baha'i, it is not a black and white topic. The extremities of Heaven and Hell do exist, as does Light and Darkness, Love and Hate.

Our One God has created it all.

I hope you appreciate that point.

Regards Tony

 

[TransmutingSoul]

It's not logical. No evidence. That's why one has to preach.

The evidence is ALL the Writings of the Baha'i Faith, they supplement each other.

This is also a key component of understanding the Writings of the Bab.

The Message of the Bab was given to prepare humanity for Baha'u'llah. Imagine this point, that Elijah in this age was also A Messenger of God, who came again as a Lamb to be sacrificed in preparation of the event of Baha’u’llah the 'Glory of God'.

The Bab made all His revealed Laws subject to the sanction of the One Whom God would make Manifest. The Bab offered that he could do away with them all, if that was the choice.

I am unable to read the entire Bayan. It is an interest of mine that one day I will be able to as I am aware that many of the Laws were a radical break from Islam.

Also I am thinking (all my thoughts, no official basis) that if Baha'u'llah has not explicitly repealed some of those Laws via the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, then it may be possible some can be embraced by the Universal House of Justice in the future, if they are needed, time will tell.

Regards Tony

 

[firedragon]

That is a misrepresentation of what I understand as a Baha'i, it is not a black and white topic. The extremities of Heaven and Hell do exist, as does Light and Darkness, Love and Hate.

Our One God has created it all.

I hope you appreciate that point.

Regards Tony

Err. It is you who is misrepresenting what I said. I said that Bahai's say in this thread that people are not put in hell.

 

[firedragon]

The evidence is ALL the Writings of the Baha'i Faith,

Then your Bahai faith is against the Qur'an, and the bab, and I have given references unlike you and all other Bahai's who are never addressing anything directly but are preaching and proselytising.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The principles of the Teachings of Baha’u’llah should be carefully studied, one by one, until they are realized and understood by mind and heart

Believing that those words are divinely inspired requires faith. Reading them and evaluating them as the advice of a man rather than those of a deity does not. Unbelievers would find some of it consistent with their own beliefs, but wouldn't study it. Believers generally consider every word important and worth learning and heeding simply because of the source, not the words themselves as an unbeliever would.

People categorize ways of knowing into many categories - language, emotion, senses, intuition, faith, memory, reason, etc.. There is only one way to know about our common reality, and that's empiricism - reason applied to the evidence of the senses. It's this last part, the evidence of the senses, that makes justified belief not blind, and what is lacking from faith-based belief that justifies calling it blind belief.

All other methods of coming to conclusions about reality, methods that involves insufficiently supported belief fail to generate useful results (knowledge). It's that simple. Compare these faith-based programs with their empirical counterparts: creationism and evolution, astrology and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry

Either one's beliefs are justified by the standards of critical analysis, or they are believe with less, making them unjustified. Unjustified (unsound) belief is synonymous with faith, and it is always blind, or it wouldn't be faith. These are very simple and clear concepts to articulate, and it is very easy to decide quickly which beliefs are justified and which are believed by faith.

The faithful don't like that, hence threads like these arguing that it's not "blind faith" to earn a little of the respectability that evidence and reason bring to beliefs. Everybody wants to be seen as reasonable. Hence the faithful come up with what they think is evidence and sound argument, but most don't know how to construct a sound argument or know what evidence would support a god belief. But even if they could, they still couldn't generate a sound, evidenced argument that ends, "therefore God." That can only be believed by faith

A little faith anywhere in the process makes everything that follows unsound. Even a valid argument based in the existence of a god is unsound because it's premise is unjustified. By this reckoning, all faith is blind. If it weren't, it wouldn't be faith. And even a little faith makes.

And many of the faithful understand this, which is why they not only try to make their beliefs seem reasonable with threads like this one and arguments like Pascal's Wager, but they try to make empiricism seem faith-based, as when they say that they don't have enough faith to believe in evolution, or say that science is based in faith. I think a lot of that kind of thinking came out of the evolution versus creationism arguments trying to get the latter on an equal footing with the former in secular curricula, arguing that if either is appropriate for public schools, they both are. This led to the intelligent design movement being in court (Dover) and having its program identified as faith (pseudoscience) and not equivalent to science.

Personally, I don't care if you believe by faith or not, but I do care when others call such beliefs not blind.

 

[Trailblazer]

The faithful don't like that, hence threads like these arguing that it's not "blind faith" to earn a little of the respectability that evidence and reason bring to beliefs. Everybody wants to be seen as reasonable. Hence the faithful come up with what they think is evidence and sound argument, but most don't know how to construct a sound argument or know what evidence would support a god belief. But even if they could, they still couldn't generate a sound, evidenced argument that ends, "therefore God." That can only be believed by faith

I agree that is what most believers do and I agree that God can only be believed on faith since there is no proof that God exists.

This is related to a new thread I just started. Please stop by and weigh in when you have time.

Belief is not the same as faith

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Err. It is you who is misrepresenting what I said. I said that Bahai's say in this thread that people are not put in hell.

That is a statement that needs clarification.

Hell is not a material place, it is a state of being.

Regards Tony

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Then your Bahai faith is against the Qur'an, and the bab, and I have given references unlike you and all other Bahai's who are never addressing anything directly but are preaching and proselytising.

The Baha'i Writings embrace all the Writings of the Quran and the Bayán.

The 'One Whom God Made Manifest', had the authority of Allah to make all things new.

It is not proselytising to give clarity to the statements you are making about the Baha'i Faith.

I try not to post an endless amount of quotes in support of what is offered. If you want those quotes I am happy to research and provide them.

The key here is you are under the impression we are making this up, that we have not read, with the intent of understanding all of what Baha'u'llah offered, you may be mistaken.

Regards Tony

 

[CG Didymus]

Another avenue of investigation is to see if whether what is presented in Baha'i Faith is compatible with the religions Baha'i considers to be valid revelations of God.

How is it that you see the teachings of the Baha'i Faith are "compatible" with the other major religions? Now if you say that after the Baha'i Faith interprets what they believe is the true teachings of the other religions, then of course they are compatible. Because the Baha'i Faith does away with all the teachings and beliefs in the other religions that contradict the Baha'i beliefs by reinterpreting them or just making them symbolic.

 

[CG Didymus]

What better way to prove the Covenant that to have it severely tested, even by family members.

That none have succeeded, proves beyond a doubt that God has fulfilled the promise.

Regards Tony

The point was that there was corruption within the leadership of the Baha'i Faith. Why would we think that there is no longer anyone who is waiting for the chance to take control?

 

[CG Didymus]

Our view is that yes, the later religions built on the previous religions and took into account the culture at the time of the new revelation, but they are from God, not borrowed.

Even with the Bible, it was not "revealed" by a manifestation. Who do Baha'is believe wrote it? You don't think they were influenced by the other religions and cultures of the people around them?

 

[CG Didymus]

You are not an authority in the Baha'i Faith, but Shoghi Effendi etc are, so it is their translations english speaking people should be seeking to understand, not yours.

Here is the passage as translated by those considered authoritative in the Baha'i Faith;
'Should anyone intentionally destroy a house by fire, him also shall ye burn; should anyone deliberately take another’s life, him also shall ye put to death. Take ye hold of the precepts of God with all your strength and power, and abandon the ways of the ignorant. Should ye condemn the arsonist and the murderer to life imprisonment, it would be permissible according to the provisions of the Book.' Source: Bahá'í Reference Library - The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Pages 34-49

I'm not good at semi-colons, (in the english translation it appears to be a semi-colon not a comma) so you may have a point about me being mislead about the degree of seperateness of the two items. But Baha'u'llah's saying, "Should ye condemn the arsonist and the murderer" seems to me to indicate that He sees them as equivalent crimes. Perhaps also the explanatory notes are unhelpful in this regard because it says, "The law of Bahá’u’lláh prescribes the death penalty for murder and arson, with the alternative of life imprisonment" Source: Bahá'í Reference Library - The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Pages 203-204 If I was trying to say what you are saying it says I would have said, "The law of Baha'u'llah prescribes the death penalty for combined murder and arson" or, "The law of Baha'u'llah prescribes the death penalty for murder by arson". It is funny that I can think of less ambiguous ways of saying that than one supposedly guided by an All-Knowing God.


This doesn't entirely solve the problem, because if a choice is given to society then a more primitive vengeance based society could choose to burn the arsonist thereby infringing on the arsonist's human rights as it would not be permissable to forbid that which God has allegedly permitted.



I think the whole concept of punishment is vengeance based. If you are not interested in vengeance then you rehabilitate where possible and only kill using the most humane means at your disposal if it is impossible to rehabilitate and unsafe for society to isolate the individual concerned.


Agreed, it should only be done on the basis of retrospective research, and not on the basis of assertions by somone with delusions of grandeur claiming to be the mouthpiece of God.

"It is not enough to compare jurisdictions with the death penalty to those without unless the study controls for the many other variables that could affect the murder rate. For example, lower unemployment rates correlate with lower crime rates. More police involvement in the local community seems to reduce crime. The death penalty affects only a tiny percentage of even those who commit murder. Its effect is very difficult to pinpoint, and the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that past studies have neither proven nor disproven a deterrent effect."
Deterrence | Death Penalty Information Center.

So since we should not be subjecting people to cruel or unusual punishments without proof that it is beneficial, and since no research has been provided which determines it to be beneficial we should *not* burn either arsonists or murderers as it is not a compassionate thing to do.

In my opinion

But how often do Baha'is say that the laws are only for Baha'is. What happened to the peace and harmony, if Baha'is are going to be committing murder, arson, stealing, and adultery? They kill off the Baha'is that commit murderer and arson... they tattoo the thieves and shun them and fine the adulterers. What so "new" about this "new world order"? Same old problems.

 

[CG Didymus]

If you offer you understand justice better than what Abdul'baha has offerd, then that is your prerogative.

Regards Tony

But Abdul Baha' supposedly got it from God. Would God still be using these same punishments that have not been able to solve and prevent the problem?

 

[ppp]

What makes you think they are hypotheses?

A proposition that claims that X is true because Y.

 

[Trailblazer]

But Abdul Baha' supposedly got it from God.

No, Abdu'l-Baha did not get it from God, Baha'u'llah got it from God.

 

[Trailblazer]

What so "new" about this "new world order"? Same old problems.

Same old problems with different solutions.

 

[osgart]

No one has proved that any scriptures, whether Islam, Christian, Jewish, or Ba'hai holds any authority over the fate's and destinies of any non believer. So what compels people to read these books other than intellectual fascination, or a cultural study? There's simply no need, or reason other then that to read these books?

People do just fine without them.

 

[firedragon]

Hell is not a material place, it is a state of being.

Why do you Bahai's keep repeating this phrase? Has it been indoctrinated repeatedly as if its some big revelation?

I never claimed hell has an address like 10, downing street.

The Baha'i Writings embrace all the Writings of the Quran and the Bayán.

Against Qur'an, against the Bab.

Try to stop proselytising tactics and answer the question about hell in your own scripture.