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Contradicting "messengers"

an anarchist

Your local anarchist.
@ Baha'i faith
Your messengers contradict each other. I've yet to see an satisfactory answer to this problem.

The "messengers" are supposedly emanations of God. But they disagree with each other.

Let's start off simply.

Krishna teaches reincarnation. Muhammad does not.

How do you explain this?

Contradicting messages means that some messengers have to be wrong. And well if they're wrong, then they can't really be emanations of God, can they?

I joined this site a religious syncretist, but as I investigated the varying faiths further, I realized it required helluva mental gymnastics to synthesize them.

Let's see you do the splits :)
 

dybmh

דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
You may want to tag the individual Baha'is to get their attention on this, @Xavier Graham .

It's a great question, I asked it myself. Didn't get a straight answer, did a bunch of reading, and eventually got the answer. But I had to work for it.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
@ Baha'i faith
Your messengers contradict each other. I've yet to see an satisfactory answer to this problem.

The "messengers" are supposedly emanations of God. But they disagree with each other.

Let's start off simply.

Krishna teaches reincarnation. Muhammad does not.

How do you explain this?
Nobody knows what Krishna taught because there are no scriptures written by Krishna.
What writings we do have came by way of oral tradition and were written hundreds of years after Krishna lived.
Thus nobody knows if Krishna actually taught reincarnation, the way it is commonly believed by Hindus today.

But even if Krishna taught reincarnation, so what? Baha'is never claimed that all the Messengers taught the same things and there would be no point for God to send a succession of Messengers who all taught the same things. If Krishna taught reincarnation that would have been because that is what people needed to hear at that time in history. Humanity is now at another stage of development so people can understand that it is not necessary to come back to this world and learn lessons over and over again. We progress in this earthly life to a certain point and we continue to progress after we die and go to the spiritual world. There is no need to come back to this world for anything.
 
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rational experiences

Veteran Member
Pretty basic.

I'm human and you're human.

A human lives and has their own experience. As they live as their own self. Are human. What we think or say anyone knows is just speaking some words and stories or pre studies.

A human is a Human as a human.

Just man just a human says I want what you own. Humans experience and human the whole time.

But not for self for his machine to resource. As he claims you are being given star energy to live.

As a woman...I know scientists studying us as humans wanted the mother of science.

The power of space by their say so.

How come my life was bio life attacked as a woman a mother a healer. Hearing worded scientific data and terms only programming owned?

By men with machines their partner.

I'm not your evil science you liars.

If I wasn't born and no woman human lived you'd have to look at your stupid man brother selves. Would you then say we men own life by star energy and give it to machines?

I sincerely doubt it.

Actually.

So a human has an experience. You scrutinized it not because you believe or don't believe. Because you are a satanic theist who wants the advice to link to maths science and stars mass.

As those who believe Baha'i terms are in the order. Humans in a spiritual human activity. Human the whole time human.

Those who don't believe spiritual group participation practice science.

Then there is the occult scientists. Who do believe but want it for machines. They build put whatever substance Inside. Press a Button.

What has the circumstance got to do with human life?

He says I put the heavens gases in my machine. So what! Did you build the machine as a human bio bodies thesis?

No. It's a machine the first body.

A human is their first body...wait a minute a man says just his man human life is the first body. Oh you are a machine then man who reacted a reaction inside your body to produce a human woman's life.

So I'm a Resource power mass then am I?

The reason they deride Baha'i information seeking star mass contacts he claims a human gained.
 

Truthseeker

Non-debating member when I can help myself
It's My Birthday!
@ Baha'i faith
Your messengers contradict each other. I've yet to see an satisfactory answer to this problem.

The "messengers" are supposedly emanations of God. But they disagree with each other.

Let's start off simply.

Krishna teaches reincarnation. Muhammad does not.

How do you explain this?

Contradicting messages means that some messengers have to be wrong. And well if they're wrong, then they can't really be emanations of God, can they?

I joined this site a religious syncretist, but as I investigated the varying faiths further, I realized it required helluva mental gymnastics to synthesize them.

Let's see you do the splits :)
Like @Trailblazer said, the supposed words of Krishna were written down many years in the Bhagaivad Gita, and indeed this story was written within mythological story called the
MAHABHARATA. There are also other sources with Krishna within it, that present him a different way.

Aside form that problem there is a differnt interpetation of reincarnation might mean:

"'The Bahá'í view of 'reincarnation' is essentially different from the Hindu conception. The Bahá'ís believe in the attributes and qualities, but maintain that the essence or the reality of things cannot be made to return. Every being keeps its own individuality, but some of his qualities can be transmitted. The doctrine of metempsychosis upheld by the Hindus is fallacious.'
(To an individual believer, March 27, 1938)
(Compilations, Lights of Guidance, p. 536)

In other words, a person might acquire some attributes from souls that have died earlier, but their soul and the earlier soul are not the same soul.

This can be applied over and over to apparent differences between Revelations. Before the Bab and Baha'u'llah, only the Qur'an was right on target about what was revealed in our view. Also there is different terminology in each Revelation that is different, and Baha'u'llah opened the books of previous Revelations, at least the Abrahamic religions, though not the Buddhist and Hindu religions. This interpretaion above by Shoghi Effendi above about reincarnation thoguh draws on what Baha'ullah said on slightly different subjects. Our scholars can decipher their own particular solution to thorny problems about differences also, which are not authorittative solutions but are helpful.
 

TransmutingSoul

Veteran Member
Premium Member
@ Baha'i faith
Your messengers contradict each other. I've yet to see an satisfactory answer to this problem.

The "messengers" are supposedly emanations of God. But they disagree with each other.

Let's start off simply.

Krishna teaches reincarnation. Muhammad does not.

How do you explain this?

Contradicting messages means that some messengers have to be wrong. And well if they're wrong, then they can't really be emanations of God, can they?

I joined this site a religious syncretist, but as I investigated the varying faiths further, I realized it required helluva mental gymnastics to synthesize them.

Let's see you do the splits :)

The splits are not needed, when one reads what the Baha'i Writings offer on this topic, one finds proofs in the evidence as to why there appears to be a contradiction.

The Messengers come with a twofold station, the human and the divine. They also come to Renew the eternal truths, but at the same time give the message and laws applicable for the age we live in.

There are many quotes that inform us why we see a difference, even when it all comes from one source!

Here are a few only.

"....The measure of the revelation of the Prophets of God in this world, however, must differ. Each and every one of them hath been the Bearer of a distinct Message, and hath been commissioned to reveal Himself through specific acts…." Baha'u'llah

".. The other station is the station of distinction, and pertaineth to the world of creation, and to the limitations thereof. In this respect, each Manifestation of God hath a distinct individuality, a definitely prescribed mission, a predestined revelation, and specially designated limitations. Each one of them is known by a different name, is characterized by a special attribute, fulfils a definite mission, and is entrusted with a particular Revelation. Even as He saith: "Some of the Apostles We have caused to excel the others. To some God hath spoken, some He hath raised and exalted. And to Jesus, Son of Mary, We gave manifest signs, and We strengthened Him with the Holy Spirit." Baha'u'llah

And last for more now.

".. It is because of this difference in their station and mission that the words and utterances flowing from these Well Springs of Divine knowledge appear to diverge and differ. Otherwise, in the eyes of them that are initiated into the mysteries of Divine wisdom, all their utterances are, in reality, but the expressions of one Truth. As most of the people have failed to appreciate those stations to which We have referred, they, therefore, feel perplexed and dismayed at the varying utterances pronounced by Manifestations that are essentially one and the same...." Bahá’u’lláh

Regards Tony
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
Nobody knows what Krishna taught because there are no scriptures written by Krishna.
What writings we do have came by way of oral tradition and were written hundreds of years after Krishna lived.
Thus nobody knows if Krishna actually taught reincarnation, the way it is commonly believed by Hindus today.

But even if Krishna taught reincarnation, so what? Baha'is never claimed that all the Messengers taught the same things and there would be no point for God to send a succession of Messengers who all taught the same things. If Krishna taught reincarnation that would have been because that is what people needed to hear at that time in history. Humanity is now at another stage of development so people can understand that it is not necessary to come back to this world and learn lessons over and over again. We progress in this earthly life to a certain point and we continue to progress after we die and go to the spiritual world. There is no need to come back to this world for anything.

Are you saying that God's teaching of truth or lies does not matter, or are you saying that reincarnation was true for those to whom Krishna and Buddha came and not true for other people whose Messengers taught something else?
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
IIRC when Bahais answer questions such as this they almost always present the idea of progressive revelation (which is to a certain point inherited from Islam).

The gist of it is that each "time" has different needs and abilities to "understand the truth" and therefore the message must change and adapt.

As ideas go, it is not entirely without merit. It is certainly true that cultural changes due to the passage of time and other factors have an effect on the ability to perceive and act morally. If there is such a thing as a message from the god that created the universe, it ought indeed to change as time passes and circunstances vary.

But the version of this argument that is presented by Bahais can't quite reconcile itself with its own premise that divine messengers speaking on behalf of the Abrahamic God are a real thing.

That is before considering how ill a fit the non-Abrahamic creeds are to the idea of Abrahamic messengers.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Nobody knows what Krishna taught because there are no scriptures written by Krishna.
Do you believe there are scriptures that were written by Jesus?

What writings we do have came by way of oral tradition and were written hundreds of years after Krishna lived.
What we have of the teachings of Jesus came through oral traditions. I don't know that you can automatically say that oral traditions are what created the Bhagavad Gita however. Do you have any source to support this? For the books of the NT there are plenty of sources. On what basis are you assuming this for the Bhagavad Gita, or the Upanishads, or any other of the Hindu sacred texts? What scholarship are you drawing from?

Thus nobody knows if Krishna actually taught reincarnation, the way it is commonly believed by Hindus today.
Couldn't you say then with this line of argument that nothing we read of what Jesus says in the Bible means that Jesus really believed that either, since Jesus never personally wrote anything at all?

But even if Krishna taught reincarnation, so what? Baha'is never claimed that all the Messengers taught the same things and there would be no point for God to send a succession of Messengers who all taught the same things.
But not teaching the same things, and teaching things that flatly contradict each other, is an entirely different issue. "You die once and never are reborn", cannot be made to fit with "You are reborn many times until you break the cycle of rebirth". This isn't a progression of revelation. It's a reversal of revelation! :)

Humanity is now at another stage of development so people can understand that it is not necessary to come back to this world and learn lessons over and over again.
It is??? We are all on the cusp of Enlightenment these days? Have you ever watched Fox News????

We progress in this earthly life to a certain point and we continue to progress after we die and go to the spiritual world. There is no need to come back to this world for anything.
Well, "continuing to progress" is what reincarnation is all about. So I don't hear you actually negating it necessity. You actually just affirmed it.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Or a Holy Typo?
Well, as we just learned in the post I just responded to above this one, since neither Krishna nor Jesus themselves wrote scripture, we can't trust that they actually believed what is said they taught anyway.

Of course, this creates one hell of a problem in calling them Messengers, doesn't it? What message?? We don't have anything from them we can trust because they didn't personally write it. May as well just chuck them in the trash can and write them off as Messengers. ;)
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Like @Trailblazer said, the supposed words of Krishna were written down many years in the Bhagaivad Gita, and indeed this story was written within mythological story called the
MAHABHARATA. There are also other sources with Krishna within it, that present him a different way.
As I just pointed out in another post and will repeat here, that argument to dismiss these teachings as valid because they were words written down many years later, can be directly applied to Jesus's teachings. Jesus never wrote anything himself, and all of the gospels stories about it, are part of oral traditions and the various views of different sects of early Christianity. Let's add to this that we also do not have anything that Moses himself wrote either!

Logic alone can tell you that Moses didn't write about his own death, which is recorded in the Pentetuch, but much beyond that modern scholarship can clearly discern different schools of thought and writing styles that were redacted or stitched together by later editors to make these first "five books of Moses". Same thing with the books of the NT, more or less.

Now let's apply that same scalpel to the Quran itself. Did Muhammad actually write what you have have today? Was there only one Quran that was faithfully copied and - without deviation, or different scribes injecting their own interpretations or ideas? That's not what history teaches. The fact is what you have today is what was chosen 150 years after Muhammad should be the only correct version, and all other deviating versions were thrown into a pile and burned up.

So this whole business of "correcting early revelations", or being the authoritative voice for the age, is frankly just the smoke and mirrors and slights of hand of religious apologetics, trying to make contradictions of ideas and errors fit into some harmonounius single revelation, that happens to reflect the views of whatever group it is trying to sell their various religious product.

Think of those trying to make a literal reading of the Book of Genesis fit into the teachings of modern science, each "day" is a great span of time, and so forth. It's all so very misguided.

The doctrine of metempsychosis upheld by the Hindus is fallacious.'
(To an individual believer, March 27, 1938)
(Compilations, Lights of Guidance, p. 536)
Wow. That's not arrogant and offensive at all!. My god. :(

Our scholars can decipher their own particular solution to thorny problems about differences also, which are not authorittative solutions but are helpful.
Yes, and it has about as much veracity as those who deny modern science to make the Book of Genesis a book of science. My thoughts compare all of that to what you find here on this site: Answers in Genesis
 

Dawnofhope

Non-Proselytizing Baha'i
Staff member
Premium Member
As mentioned earlier, we have no way of reliably knowing what Krishna or Buddha actually taught. Their Teachings have been passed down through oral traditions for many centuries before anything was written down.

OTOH The Teachings of Muhammad were written down during Muhammads lifetime. The Teachings of Christ were written down at least 30 - 40 years after His crucifixion.

Cultures change and evolve along with how their scriptures are understood. One should not be suprised religious traditions are so different with geophysical separation and the span of thousands of years.

Whatever the metaphysical structure of the universe it seems likely to be the same wherever we are in the world, independent of belief.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
@ Baha'i faith
Your messengers contradict each other. I've yet to see an satisfactory answer to this problem.

The "messengers" are supposedly emanations of God. But they disagree with each other.

Let's start off simply.

Krishna teaches reincarnation. Muhammad does not.

How do you explain this?

Contradicting messages means that some messengers have to be wrong. And well if they're wrong, then they can't really be emanations of God, can they?

I joined this site a religious syncretist, but as I investigated the varying faiths further, I realized it required helluva mental gymnastics to synthesize them.

Let's see you do the splits :)
A former Baha'i here.

Baha'i really follows from the Abrahamic tradition. I've never seen indication that the founder of the faith, Baha'u'llah, had any real familiarity with Eastern religions (Hinduism).

That said I personally believe Krishna and Mohammed can both be said to be God inspired manifestations.

I am a believer in reincarnation and my best assessment is that Islam wanted to be strong on the issue of personal responsibility in this life for conditions in the afterlife. I think there is also truth and value in that belief. I personally believe there is a considerable afterlife period as the previous personality before any soul reincarnation occurs.

So basically I am not seeing the contradiction as strong as you are suggesting.
 

TransmutingSoul

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Are you saying that God's teaching of truth or lies does not matter, or are you saying that reincarnation was true for those to whom Krishna and Buddha came and not true for other people whose Messengers taught something else?

I would offer that the original teaching on this subject would need to be sourced from Krishna.

Regards Tony
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
Are you saying that God's teaching of truth or lies does not matter, or are you saying that reincarnation was true for those to whom Krishna and Buddha came and not true for other people whose Messengers taught something else?
No, I am not saying that. Truth about the afterlife does not change over time. What is true is true.
I do not believe that reincarnation, as it is commonly believed, was ever true, and there is no reason to believe it was.

For one thing, we have no original writings from Krishna or Buddha, so we cannot really know what was taught by them. All we have is what came to us by way of oral tradition, which was written down centuries later.

For another thing, people who read the scriptures we have often misinterpret them or interpret them differently, which is why beliefs vary, even between those of the same religions.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
Do you believe there are scriptures that were written by Jesus?

What we have of the teachings of Jesus came through oral traditions. I don't know that you can automatically say that oral traditions are what created the Bhagavad Gita however. Do you have any source to support this?
The Bhagavad Gita in Context
Originally the Mahabharata was passed down through oral tradition, changing and developing from generation to generation. The Bhagavad Gita was probably added to the original epic sometime between the fifth and second centuries bce.
Bhagavad-gita | Encyclopedia.com
For the books of the NT there are plenty of sources. On what basis are you assuming this for the Bhagavad Gita, or the Upanishads, or any other of the Hindu sacred texts? What scholarship are you drawing from? Couldn't you say then with this line of argument that nothing we read of what Jesus says in the Bible means that Jesus really believed that either, since Jesus never personally wrote anything at all?
I could say that, but I trust the Bible more than the scriptures that are more ancient, partly because the Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha upheld the Bible as God's testimony, even it it did not come directly from Jesus.
But not teaching the same things, and teaching things that flatly contradict each other, is an entirely different issue. "You die once and never are reborn", cannot be made to fit with "You are reborn many times until you break the cycle of rebirth". This isn't a progression of revelation. It's a reversal of revelation! :)
No, it is not a reversal of revelation, it is an update to revelation, and that update came long before the Baha'i Faith.
Well, "continuing to progress" is what reincarnation is all about. So I don't hear you actually negating it necessity. You actually just affirmed it.
There is more than one way to progress. Coming back to earth and having to live another life, perhaps over and over, makes absolutely no sense at all. If we did not get it right the first time, why should we get another chance? If we did something wrong, why should we be punished by having to come back to earth and live in another body that isn't even our own?

Bahais believe we get one soul and one physical body and the soul works through the physical body while we are living on earth. After we die the soul ascends to the spiritual world and takes on a spiritual body. This belief in congruent with what the Bible teaches (1 Corinthians 15:40-54)

Coming back to earth again would be a punishment and I don't believe anyone deserves that kind of punishment. We have one life on earth so we have a chance to progress but if that life is cut short through no fault of our own, there will be a recompense from God.

Baha'is believe that the soul continues to progress in the spiritual world, thus it is not necessary to come back to this earth in order to progress.

“And now concerning thy question regarding the soul of man and its survival after death. Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter. It will endure as long as the Kingdom of God, His sovereignty, His dominion and power will endure. It will manifest the signs of God and His attributes, and will reveal His loving kindness and bounty.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 155-156

“If it be faithful to God, it will reflect His light, and will, eventually, return unto Him.
Gleanings, p. 159

“Blessed is the soul which, at the hour of its separation from the body, is sanctified from the vain imaginings of the peoples of the world….” Gleanings, p. 156
 
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