"Bahá'u'lláh has said, "If religion and faith are the causes of enmity and sedition, it is far better to be nonreligious, and the absence of religion would be preferable; for we desire religion to be the cause of amity and fellowship. If enmity and hatred exist, irreligion is preferable." Therefore, the removal of this dissension has been specialized in Bahá'u'lláh, for religion is the divine remedy for human antagonism and discord. But when we make the remedy the cause of the disease, it would be better to do without the remedy."
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 232)
". . . God is the one heavenly Shepherd and all mankind are the sheep of His fold, the religion or guidance of God must be the means of love and fellowship in the world. If religion proves to be the source of hatred, enmity and contention, if it becomes the cause of warfare and strife and influences men to kill each other, its absence is preferable. For that which is productive of hatred amongst the people is rejected by God, and that which establishes fellowship is beloved and sanctioned by Him. Religion and divine teachings are like unto a remedy. A remedy must produce the condition of health. If it occasions sickness, it is wiser and better to have no remedy whatever. This is the significance of the statement that if religion becomes the cause of warfare and bloodshed, irreligion and the absence of religion are preferable among mankind."
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 298)
"Inasmuch as the blind imitations or dogmatic interpretations current among men do not coincide with the postulates of reason, and the mind and scientific investigation cannot acquiesce thereto, many souls in the human world today shun and deny religion. That is to say, imitations, when weighed in the scales of reason, will not conform to its standard and requirement. Therefore, these souls deny religion and become irreligious, whereas if the reality of the divine religions becomes manifest to them and the foundation of the heavenly teachings is revealed coinciding with facts and evident truths, reconciling with scientific knowledge and reasonable proof, all may acknowledge them, and irreligion will cease to exist. In this way all mankind may be brought to the foundation of religion, for reality is true reason and science, while all that is not conformable thereto is mere superstition."
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 374)
"Thus have the mighty verses of Thy Lord been again sent down unto thee, that thou mayest arise to remember God, the Creator of earth and heaven, in these days when all the tribes of the earth have mourned, and the foundations of the cities have trembled, and the dust of irreligion hath enwrapped all men, except such as God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise, was pleased to spare."
(Baha'u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 46)
"Indeed, as we gaze in retrospect beyond the immediate past, and survey, in however cursory a manner, the vicissitudes afflicting an increasingly tormented society, and recall the strains and stresses to which the fabric of a dying Order has been increasingly subjected, we cannot but marvel at the sharp contrast presented, on the one hand, by the accumulated evidences of the orderly unfoldment, 103 and the uninterrupted multiplication of the agencies, of an Administrative Order designed to be the harbinger of a world civilization, and, on the other, by the ominous manifestations of acute political conflict, of social unrest, of racial animosity, of class antagonism, of immorality and of irreligion, proclaiming, in no uncertain terms, the corruption and obsolescence of the institutions of a bankrupt Order."
(Shoghi Effendi, Messages to the Baha'i World - 1950-1957, p. 102)
"As the lights of liberty flicker and go out, as the din of discord grows louder and louder every day, as the fires of fanaticism flame with increasing fierceness in the breasts of men, as the chill of irreligion creeps relentlessly over the soul of mankind, the limbs and organs that constitute the body of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh appear, in varying measure, to have become afflicted with the crippling influences that now hold in their grip the whole of the civilized world."
(Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 5 written in 1931)
"In many of His Tablets Bahá'u'lláh has warned that prior to the full establishment of His Cause the forces of irreligion and disbelief will spread in the world. In one instance He testifies:
The vitality of men's belief in God is dying out in every
land; nothing short of His wholesome medicine can ever
restore it. The corrosion of ungodliness is eating into the
vitals of human society; what else but the Elixir of His
potent Revelation can cleanse and revive it?(10)
Not only is humanity turning towards waywardness and unbelief, but it is losing the language of religion altogether."
(Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Baha'u'llah v 2, p. 81)
". . . materialists are advancing and aggressive while
divine forces are waning and vanishing. Irreligion has
conquered religion. The cause of the chaotic condition
lies in the differences among the religions, and finds its
origin in the animosity and hatred existing between sects
and denominations. The materialists have availed themselves
of this dissension amongst the religions and are
constantly attacking them, intending to uproot the tree
of divine planting . . . If a commander is at variance with
his army in the execution of military tactics there is no
doubt he will be defeated by the enemy. Today the religions
are at variance; enmity, strife and recrimination
prevail among them; they refuse to associate, nay, rather,
if necessary they shed each other's blood. Read history
and record to see what dreadful events have happened in
the name of religion ."
(H.M. Balyuzi, Abdu'l-Baha - The Centre of the Covenant, p. 205)
Dissension, hatred, prejudice of a religious variety has got to be the most serious sin against God that has ever existed.
Regards,
Scott