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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: A Call to Religious Unity   -   The Baha'i Faith
Message-ID: <241@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Nov-84 10:03:50 EST
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.241
Posted: Tue Nov 27 10:03:50 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Nov-84 06:10:04 EST
References: <248@mhuxh.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 57
Keywords: flame, syncretism
Summary: 

<<<<< FLAME ON >>>>>  (Who, me?  Gosh.  I'll keep it low.)

The Bahai faith is perhaps the most ambitious syncretism ever attempted.
Essentially, they try to syncretize all religions.

(From my dictionary:  syncretize -- to attempt to unite and harmonize esp.
 without critical examination or logical unity.)

Needless to say, this would be impossible without rejecting many of the
blatantly contradictary ideas espoused by the myriads of religions.

In article <248@mhuxh.UUCP> mpatent@mhuxh.UUCP (Verbus M. Counts) writes:
> I present to you an introduction to the writing  of  the  Baha'i  Faith...

> If a man would succeed in his search after truth, he must, in the  first
> place, shut his eyes to all the  traditional superstitions of the past...

> We  must  abandon  the prejudices of
> tradition if we would succeed in finding the truth at the  core  of  all
> religions...

> It is, therefore, clear that in order to make any progress in the search
> after  truth  we  must  relinquish  superstition...

And so on ad nauseum.

I suppose that the idea is to look beneath the surface of human religions to
find what they hold in common, and to suppose that to be "true".  This could
(in the long run) produce a very catholic and adaptive theology that would
allow for cultural differences.

However, I don't think that the religious approach is the correct way to deal
with the task of seeking commonality of religion.  For example, I can point
to their assumption of a single universal god as one of the prejudices that
they haven't given up.

Instead, I endorse science (sociology, anthropology, sociobiology, etc.) as
the route to understanding.  (And for that matter, why shouldn't religions
be designed scientifically, rather than by cabal and political pressures?)
Science is the methodology that best allows casting off of prejudices of
tradition, and has a long history of doing so.

> Science must be accepted.

I can just imagine bahais happily chorusing "Oh yes, science is true too."
That's the oldest political trick in the book.  Put your seal of approval on
something you can't fight, and then try to regulate it.  Occam's razor?
"Oh, science doesn't work for religion.  It's separate." they'll say.

In conclusion, the Bahais are more of the same old religious goop.  They do
nothing really new (except perhaps a new combination of the same old religious
devices, including pacifism, morals, syncretism, acceptance of science, 
venerated new prophets, aggressive expansionism, heavy on the tolerance "even
though they're bound to ancient prejudices", etc.)
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh