Once, there was a false prophet who died and went to hell. A decade later, one of the prophet’s followers also died and went to hell. He then saw the prophet he had believed in.
“Sir, you lied to me! How could you have done that to me and so many others?!”
The false prophet replied, “I did it because you were dumb enough to believe me. That was reason enough.”
IF YOU CAN’T IMAGINE THAT SOMEONE HAS LIED TO YOU, THEN YOU ARE THE REASON SOMEONE WOULD LIE TO YOU!
As a person who has been fond of the Scooby-Doo franchise since childhood (it is literally as old as I am), I always thought Scrappy-Doo was the worst thing it could feature (and he’s long gone). But this year I was in for a shock!
Velma is an American adultanimatedmysteryhorrorcomedy television series based on the character Velma Dinkley from the Scooby-Doo franchise. Developed and created[1] by Charlie Grandy for HBO Max, it stars executive producer Mindy Kaling as the voice of the titular character, with Sam Richardson, Constance Wu and Glenn Howerton in supporting roles. Grandy also serves as the showrunner of the series. It revolves around Velma Dinkley and the other human members of Mystery Inc. before their official formation, making it the first television series in the franchise to not feature the Scooby-Doo character.
I don’t subscribe to HBO Max, but now I think I never will, after seeing all the negative reviews of this new show.
Those are just a few examples. I assembled them and many more on this playlist:
I even got into the act, using Plotagon:
I even made Velma a guest star in the Debbie and Carrie Show:
We need better standards for TV shows! And Mindy Kaling deserves to be tarred and feathered for this mind-blowing insult to the creations of Hanna-Barbara Productions. They deserved better!
There is no such thing as Haifan or Unitarian Bahá’ís. You can’t make things up like that. I can call myself the Wizard of Oz but it doesn’t mean anything.
The difference between Haifan and Unitarian Bahais is Haifan Baha’is believe that after Baha’u’llah’s death Abdul Baha’s Will was to be followed, which appointed Shoghi Effendi and then the UHJ as the successors, whereas Unitarian Bahais believe that after Baha’u’llah’s death the instructions of the Kitab i Ahd were to be followed, which appointed Mirza Muhammad Ali as the successor of Abdul Baha.
I don’t see why you think there is no such thing as a Unitarian Bahai.
No it says the station of Muhammad Ali is beneath that of Abdul’Baha. It says nothing of him succeeding Abdul’Baha. It also says we must obey Abdul’Baha and to turn away from him is like turning away from Baha’u’llah. Abdul’Baha was free to choose his successor and he chose Shoghi Effendi. It’s a done deal. There is nothing to argue.
Only in the Haifan translation. Beneath is a mistranslation of the word بعد, which means “after” and does not mean “beneath”. Earlier translations did not use the word beneath. I include the Horace Holley translation in this post:
This is what the Kitab i Ahd says in the original language:
وصيّة اللّه آنکه بايد اغصان و افنان و منتسبين طرّاً بغصن اعظم ناظر باشند انظروا ما انزلناه فی کتابی الاقدس اذا غيض بحر الوصال و قضی کتاب المبدء فی المآل توجّهوا اِلی من اراده اللّه الّذی انشعب من هذا الاصل القديم مقصود از اين آيه مبارکه غصن اعظم بوده کذلک اظهرنا الامر فضلاً من عندنا و انا الفضّال الکريم قد قدّر اللّه مقام الغصن الاکبر بعد مقامه انّه هو الآمر الحکيم قد اصطفينا الاکبر بعد الاعظم امراً من لدن عليم خبير
Whether or not you translate it as “beneath” or “after” does not change the fact that the passage is not implying in any way about who should be the successor after Abdul’Baha. I can’t fathom how you can read it in such a matter. Once Muhammad Ali broke the covenant by not recognizing Abdul’Baha it’s a moot point. Muhammad Ali was excommunicated so he can’t be the successor anyway. You need to stop spreading this kind of disinformation. It’s so harmful to your soul that I am deeply saddened for you.
Verily, God hath ordained the station of the Greater Branch after the station of the former. Verily, He is the Ordainer, the Wise. We have surely chosen the Greater after the Greatest as a Command from the All-Knowing, the Omniscient!
To make sure Muhammad Ali (and everyone else in the family and the community) knew that Muhammad Ali was to obey Abdul’Baha. So that Muhammad Ali would not challenge the successorship after Baha’u’llah’s death, and everyone would turn to Abdul’Baha for leadership and there wouldn’t be a schism.
Clearly Baha’u’llah felt the need to address Muhammad Ali by name specifically so that there would be no doubt or question amongst everyone in the family. I’d recommend you read God Passes Bye which talks quite a bit about the trouble that Muhammad Ali was causing at the time for Abdul’Baha. Later in Abdul’Baha’s ministry, Muhammad Ali went as far as trying to have Abdul’Baha crucified by the Ottomans.
________________________
Well, that was over two months ago. When I found that thread, I decided that FrenchBread needed to be taught a lesson in humility. So I went after him!
If other Baha’is are anything like YOU in the way you argued with trident here, then clearly those responses in the Baha’i subreddit are not to be trusted.
You said:
There is no such thing as Haifan or Unitarian Bahá’ís. You can’t make things up like that. I can call myself the Wizard of Oz but it doesn’t mean anything.
That’s like saying there is no such thing as a Christian outside the Roman Catholic Church. Don’t be so bigoted! Then you claimed:
[The Kitab-i-Ahd] says the station of Muhammad Ali is beneath that of Abdul’Baha. It says nothing of him succeeding Abdul’Baha. It also says we must obey Abdul’Baha and to turn away from him is like turning away from Baha’u’llah. Abdul’Baha was free to choose his successor and he chose Shoghi Effendi. It’s a done deal. There is nothing to argue.
Do you read the original languages of Baha’u’llah’s writings, Arabic and Persian? Apparently not! When trident tried to correct you with the actual quotation from the passage in question, you simply doubled down on the falsehoods.
Whether or not you translate it as “beneath” or “after” does not change the fact that the passage is not implying in any way about who should be the successor after Abdul’Baha. I can’t fathom how you can read it in such a matter. Once Muhammad Ali broke the covenant by not recognizing Abdul’Baha it’s a moot point. Muhammad Ali was excommunicated so he can’t be the successor anyway. You need to stop spreading this kind of disinformation. It’s so harmful to your soul that I am deeply saddened for you.
Why do you assume Mirza Muhammad-Ali broke the Covenant? Because you believe what was written about him decades after the fact? You weren’t there, so you don’t know what really happened, do you?
The real reason for the dispute between the brothers was because Abdu’l-Baha falsely claimed infallibility for himself after Baha’u’llah made clear in the Kitab-i-Aqdas that NO ONE but God and a Messenger of God could be infallible. He also warned his followers in that book that no one could claim direct revelation from God for 1000 years after his time. Abdu’l-Baha’s claim about himself made it look like he was equal to his father and that made Muhammad-Ali think Abdu’l-Baha violated the Covenant. And once the Covenant was broken, the obligation to obey Abdu’l-Baha became irrelevant. Abdu’l-Baha was just as bound to the rules of his father as Muhammad-Ali was. Having Muhammad-Ali act as a check on Abdu’l-Baha’s absolute power was actually a wise thing for Baha’u’llah to do, in hindsight. Too bad most Baha’is, including you, have chosen to ignore the actual facts about Baha’u’llah’s own teachings. Instead, you use talking points that really don’t make sense. Trident did say:
Wouldn’t it make things clearer to just not mention Muhammad Ali, and just say that everyone was to obey Abdul Baha?
Obviously, yes! Then you said:
Clearly Baha’u’llah felt the need to address Muhammad Ali by name specifically so that there would be no doubt or question amongst everyone in the family.
Because……if Abdu’l-Baha was caught breaking the Covenant, Muhammad-Ali would have the right to challenge him by the authority given to him by both the Kitab-i-Aqdas and the Kitab-i-Ahd. And THAT’S WHAT HE DID!
And as for this final claim of yours:
Later in Abdul’Baha’s ministry, Muhammad Ali went as far as trying to have Abdul’Baha crucified by the Ottomans.
That’s absurd! And when did the Ottoman Empire ever crucify people?
It’s only natural for Shoghi Effendi after being made Abdu’l-Baha’s successor to demonize Muhammad-Ali to justify what was done. Therefore, his book God Passes By is not credible. It’s like Joseph Stalin demonizing Leon Trotsky after Stalin became the Soviet dictator, even though Trotsky was also a loyal Communist.
_____________________
The next day after I made that comment, I discovered that FrenchBread had blocked me and my comment had been downvoted by several people. Such pathetic cowardice! But that’s what happens when Haifan Baha’is can’t control the conversation like they can in r/bahai! They run away!
Wahid Azal has a long history of picking stupid fights with people just to pump up his hyperinflated ego. This week, he did it again to one of my exBaha’i allies.
It’s difficult to understand that view, to be honest. If I were to rank the Baha’i figures in terms of harmful beliefs, the Bab would top it by some margin, followed by Baha’u’llah (though the future potential for harm is greater for BH). The Bab caused anarchy and bloodshed for several years, and when given a viable plan to stop the bloodshed, he replied that the blood was like fertiliser for the soil. He advocated beliefs so deeply fanatical that we can find no parallel outside recent extremist religious movements such as ISIS, e.g. taking possessions away from non-believers to give to believers, burning books, and many other despicable, evil, and ludicrous teachings.
The notion that God would “manifest” on Earth and tell us to burn books and kill non-believers, as the Bab did, makes me shudder. The Bab was definitely one of the evilest men in recent Persian history.
I’m not too concerned with the Bab’s teachings on violence since Baha’u’llah came later and banned holy war and abrogated the burning of books. So it is no longer an important question if the Bab taught violence. In any case, there have been times in history where violence was justified (e.g. pre-Islamic Arabia).
What is your evidence that the Babis endorsed burning books and homicide, you shameless IR hack? Tell us again how many leftists Khomeini ordered executed without trial at the tail end of the war with Iraq that you so-and-sos started.
The Bab caused anarchy and bloodshed for several years,
This is IRI state propaganda and mullah nonsense articulated by the same people who literally created anarchy in Iran during 1978-9 to seize power by force and murder millions. No such anarchy was created in Iran by the Babis. They were pushed by a corrupt system, and so rightfully took a stance of defensive jihad against it. Proto-ISIS was the Ayatollah Khomeini and the system you truck for, basiji-e-koon kesh!
____________________
I recognized this user as another account being used by Wahid Azal, so I deleted the comments and reported them to the other mods of r/exbahai, causing him to be banned again.
SuccessfulCorner then went to the new post Azal made in his own subreddit.
You don’t know who I am? Some of the people of Hot Air (أهل هباء) (i.e. our terminology for bahais first coined by Subh-i-Azal) consider me to be enemy #1.
Now, you have made a series of false assertions that come straight out of the textbooks of IR state propaganda regarding the Babi period. Can you support what you say?
Let’s start here. You say:
“The Bab caused anarchy and bloodshed for several years, and when given a viable plan to stop the bloodshed, he replied that the blood was like fertiliser for the soil. “
Besides being a lame, ahistorical and revisionist apology for Qajar absolutism and the unchecked power of their clerical allies of the time, pray tell, where exactly did the Primal Point say, “blood was like fertiliser for the soil“? Source?
Besides other things, the argument you are making above is a pro-statist argument. First, you are rationalizing the authoritarianism and corruption of the Qajar state and clergy. Second, you are thoroughly whitewashing the events of the time. Third, you have not even factored in what the Qajar state and clergy did to push the Babis into open revolt against it. In other words, your argument possesses no causality and attempts to represent the Babi Revolution as a sort of sui generis violent uprising with the state and clergy as its “innocent victims” – LOL! – who did nothing to bring it upon themselves! Again, these are the sorts of fallacies and whitewashes the IRI and its hawzavi allies regularly employ as talking points about the Babis and the era: talking points that also have a few of their sources in the intellectually dishonest Baha’i sectarian rewrite of Babi history.
Then you say:He advocated beliefs so deeply fanatical that we can find no parallel outside recent extremist religious movements such as ISIS…
The comparison to Daesh/ISIS is a regular IR talking point and is nonsense, and the claim to finding no parallel is an even bigger fallacy. But these are things IR state media and the seminary regularly (and hypocritically) claim about the Bayan.
Then without context, you state:
e.g. taking possessions away from non-believers to give to believers, burning books, and many other despicable, evil, and ludicrous teachings.
First, disenfranchising non-believers of their property in the Bayan is only a feature under a Babi/Bayani state which did not exist between 1844-1850. Second, contrary to what you and the mullahs claim, there is no provision in the Bayan for the burning or destruction of books. Instead this is a claim first dishonestly asserted by the founder of Bahaism and then parrot-fashion repeated by the mullahs as a way to misrepresent the provision and nuanced language of the sixth gate of the sixth Unity of the Bayan. In fact the 13th gate of the 9th Unity of the Bayan unequivocally commands the opposite, that under no circumstance a book or piece of writing ever be materially destroyed:
أنتم أبدًا كتابًا لا تخرقون
So what are the other despicable, evil, and ludicrous teachings here then? Your very language in misrepresenting the teachings, ordinances and history of the Bayan is the language of the IRI! Do you deny it?
You don’t know who I am? Some of the people of Hot Air (أهل هباء) (i.e. our terminology for bahais first coined by Subh-i-Azal) consider me to be enemy #1.
Never heard of you. You appear to be the only follower of an extinct religion, which must be fun.
It’s ironic that you talk about hot air, as you’re standing alone on top of an extinct volcano (Babism), substituting its bygone life with noise and hot air of your own.
Besides being a lame, ahistorical and revisionist apology for Qajar absolutism and the unchecked power of their clerical allies of the time, pray tell, where exactly did the Primal Point say, “blood was like fertiliser for the soil”? Source?
The sentiment here was the dominant pep talk from the Bab and among the followers of the blood-stained Babi movement. There’s no shortage of examples, including Hujjat-i-Zanjani who encouraged the Babi’s with “God has always decreed that in every age the blood of the believers is to be the oil of the lamp of religion.”
Similarly, Mulla-Husayn proclaimed, “Many a soul will, in this city, shed his blood in this path. That blood will water the Tree of God, will cause it to flourish, and to overshadow all mankind”.
Of course, the Bab could have intervened to stop the needless bloodshed. The Mu’tamid of Isfahan, Imárat-i-Khurshíd, approached the Bab with a plan which included arranging the marriage of the Bab to a sister of the Shah. The Bab replied “Not by the means which you fondly imagine will an almighty Providence accomplish the triumph of His Faith. Through the poor and lowly of this land, by the blood which these shall have shed in His path, will the omnipotent Sovereign ensure the preservation and consolidate the foundation of His Cause.”
Of course, none of this happened. They all died in vain for an evil and worthless cause.
First, disenfranchising non-believers of their property in the Bayan is only a feature under a Babi/Bayani state which did not exist between 1844-1850.
Shame on you, and shame on this disgusting false religion!
The theocratic state envisioned by the Bab was one characterized by a strange dualism of wickedness and stupidity. You acknowledged above an example of the unspeakably wicked vision of the Bab. Examples of his unspeakably stupid teachings include Babis writing the 95 names of God in henna on their bodies after a bath, reciting 700 Bayanic verses daily, not keeping over 19 (wahid) books, and many others, but I’ll spare you the embarrassment. The Bab’s obsession with the number 19 was clearly an expression of mental illness. He even foretold a time when “even the pens on the pencase shall be arranged according to the number wahid (19)”.
As for your comments on the response of the state, let us be absolutely clear: there is no government on Earth that would allow a new group of religious fanatics to establish such an evil and dystopic society as that envisioned by the Bab.
_________________
Wahid’s response showed he had been insincere in wanting any real debate.
ROFLMAO! That’s it? That’s all you got. Tsk tsk tsk…
Let’s get something straight, by your uncritical, unnuanced and totally shambolic ahistorical state propaganda sloganeering of a response (that is utterly full of sh*t from start to finish like everyone and everything associated with that regime) – merely repeating parrot fashion the same trite BS of IR state propaganda – you reveal yourself exactly as being what I say you are: an openly transparent propagandist and shill full of crap working for the Islamic Republic of Iran just here littering reddit and Wikipedia with their trash. You opine:
“God has always decreed that in every age the blood of the believers is to be the oil of the lamp of religion.”
The sentiment and words come directly from Shi’ite hadith. That you have a problem with it just shows your ignorance regarding your own sources. Then comes the real holler:
“Many a soul will, in this city, shed his blood in this path. That blood will water the Tree of God, will cause it to flourish, and to overshadow all mankind”.
You are citing a Baha’ i source, the Dawn Breakers, where Shoghi Effendi is literally putting words into the mouths of the protagonists for dramatic effect. We don’t even accept the legitimacy of that source. Find me something comparable in nuqtat’ul-kaf. Be that as it may, let’s assume for argument’s sake he said it: again, such wording and sentiments are replete throughout Shi’ite sources which the Babis merely echoed and pericoped. Your so-called dajjaal-imam Khomeini went on the pulpit in May 1979 in front of cameras and encouraged people to get themselves martyred and spill their own blood after the assassination of Mottahhari. Hypocrisy much?
And here is where your total ignorance and bias really reveals itself:
Examples of his unspeakably stupid teachings include Babis writing the 95 names of God in henna on their bodies after a bath, reciting 700 Bayanic verses daily, not keeping over 19 (wahid) books, and many others, but I’ll spare you the embarrassment. The Bab’s obsession with the number 19 was clearly an expression of mental illness.
Actually, it is writing allahumma (O God) for men with henna once (and in the baths) and al-rahman (the Compassionate) for women once (and in the baths). 95x is the bare minimum number of times a daily dhikr is to be recited. 700 is the number that the dhikrAllahu Azhar is to be recited. 19 is the number of the Unity (wahid) as well as the numerical value of Existence (wujud) in the science of the letters, not to mention the precise number of letters in the bismillah. If you call it mental illness, perhaps you should also call your dajjaal so-called imam one too since he too was enamored by the science of the letters and numbers and demonstrates it in his commentaries on al-Fatiha, the works of Hamza Fanari and Sadruddin Qunawi, etc. Your ignorance, animus and bias towards the the Primal Point and the Babis is so profound that it thoroughly unmasks you as a shill because for all their own unbelievable ignorance no bahai – whether enrolled or ex – would ever utter the kind of garbled, ignorant BS as you have here.
Then you say:
Of course, the Bab could have intervened to stop the needless bloodshed. The Mu’tamid of Isfahan, Imárat-i-Khurshíd, approached the Bab with a plan which included arranging the marriage of the Bab to a sister of the Shah. The Bab replied “Not by the means which you fondly imagine will an almighty Providence accomplish the triumph of His Faith. Through the poor and lowly of this land, by the blood which these shall have shed in His path, will the omnipotent Sovereign ensure the preservation and consolidate the foundation of His Cause.”
Again, you have your chronology completely garbled while also citing a BS source. While the Primal Point was in Isfahan and under the protection of Manuchehr Khan Mu’tamid-ad-Dawlih, the Georgian, who was the Point’s devotee, there was no bloodshed. So whatever words Shoghi Effendi has put into the mouth of the Point, it is a figment of his own imagination. The bloodshed begins 18 months after He left Isfahan. Be that as it may, you are blaming the Primal Point for refusing a royal bribe? You are a piece of work, but quite predictable for the IR/hawzavi types who are literally willing to give fellatio to anyone who even symbolically supports them, whatever the cost, like Khamenei is to Putin ATM. One recent name comes to mind as to what utter clowns you vilayatis are on that score: Catherine Shakdam!
Your incessant comparison of the Babis to Daesh/ISIS is the dead giveaway that you are a regime hack since it is one of the most notable and regular talking points of the regime. Hasan Ershad keeps repeating it parrot fashion. Every other regime polemicist has been saying exactly the same thing over and over again. Your alter ego u/Investigator919 has been saying this stuff like a broken record himself, and every time he has been challenged and shown the evidence that his assertion is a lie, he censors or runs away – and later comes back saying the same thing again. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is a regime hack! That gullible fools like DH can’t see it is because, well, they are gullible fools being played like fiddles by you devils. But not everyone is a mentally ill, attention-seeking gullible fool like DH is.
That said, you and those viciously malevolent ignoramuses like you are a decisive argument as to why the Babis should’ve slaughtered every single last one of you hawzavis without mercy to the last man, woman and child without pulling a single punch. If they had, there wouldn’t have been a Khomeinist state in Iran for the past 44 years with an estimated and cumulative number of 3-4+ million Iranians murdered by it. This generation won’t be making the same mistake again.
In conclusion, you say you’ve never heard of me? Your alternative handle u/Investigator919 very much has. Hear this then, Basiji-e-oghdei: nice try, a$$h*le, but surely you don’t think people are really that dumb to not be on to you. Fuck off now back to your cubicle in Qom, or run along keep pretending you are some exbahai living in the UK and no one notices – when you aren’t any such thing!
Consider this having wiped the floor with your degenerate backside. So go now and cry to your little know-nothing, pedo Texan puppet, Gomer, to comfort his fellow degenerate because my argument opening this post stands unassailable like the Rock of Gibraltar with you duffuses incapable of refuting it.
سبزى پلو با ماهى، كس ننت بسيجى
The designations “DH” and “Gomer” refer to me. He doesn’t dare use my full name (Dale Husband) and clearly link it to my screen name (Seeker_Alpha1701) because he knows that would violate reddit rules and I could get him suspended over it.
Meanwhile, I noticed the post by Azal and crossposted it to r/exbahai
Since I am probably banned from r/BAYAN and would never go in there anyway:
The Bab claimed to be the return of the 12th Imam. That claim was forever debunked by his death…..HE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE MARTYRED! But the influence of Christianity enabled Babis to later believe the Bab willingly died for the Cause of God just as Jesus had done. Google “sunk cost fallacy” to understand this appearant shift in their thinking.
Yes, the Babis DID attempt to overthrow the Persian government by violence once the Shah refused to convert to the Babi Faith, because the Iman Mahdi was expected to overthrow ALL the enemies of the Cause of God. Wahid Azal is flat out lying if he denies the fuking obvious.
an audience of mostly ‘vanilla and milk-toast’ Anglo-American liberals of ‘Unitarian Universalist’ mold
It is hilarious that he used to call me (an American of European descent and, yes, a Unitarian Universalist) a racist, while he himself spits out such blatantly bigoted crap like that, clearly aimed at me. Who does he think he is?!
He needs to get a dictionary. And sessions with a psychiatrist. He has absolutely no business telling others about racism. #hypocrite
And here’s another damning example of Wahid Azal totally misrepresenting the Bab’s teachings in a desperate attempt to make the Bab look better than he was:
Wahid, I’d be happy to debate you if you’d be happy to tone down the obtuse language and use paragraphs.
Now, tell me more about yourself. You identify as a Babi but not a Baha’i?
wahidazal66
You don’t know who I am? Some of the people of Hot Air (i.e. our terminology for bahais) identify me as enemy #1.
Now, you have made a series of assertions that come straight out of the textbooks of IR state propaganda regarding the Babi period. Can you support what you say?
_______
identify me as enemy #1.
I seriously doubt that, since you are not a government official in Iran or some other country known to have persecuted Baha’is. You are just some cultist screaming across the internet.
you have made a series of assertions that come straight out of the textbooks of IR state propaganda regarding the Babi period.
Isn’t THAT itself a wild assertion? Don’t ask him to support his claims while you never can support YOURS.
Wahid has edited his earlier comment, perhaps thinking I wouldn’t notice and react to it. It is now up to u/SuccessfulCorner2512 to respond to his challenge. Specifically:
Where did the Bab say that “blood was like fertilizer for the soil” in reference to his opponents in Persia?
Is it really appropriate to compare the Babi movement in the 1840s to ISIS? Based on what facts?
Oh, I’m sure he won’t delete your reply, but he will resort to personal insults, lies, and mental gymnastics that rival anything Baha’is have ever done. That’s what he is notorious for and why he was banned from here years ago.
(The long comment Azal made with references to me…..that were added in an edit later)
Google Translate makes that last Persian passage to say:
Vegetable rice with fish, you won’t like it.
Whatever that means.
SuccessfulCorner then reported to me that Azal banned him from r/BAYAN. LOL!
BTW, it’s interesting that Azal uses the same arguments to make the Bab’s lunacy more palatable to Western audiences that Baha’is do, and Baha’is have done so much to spread knowledge of and belief in the Bab around the world, yet Azal hates Baha’is. That’s like Christians hating Jews despite Jesus himself being Jewish!
Another note: Dismissing arguments against the credibility of the Bab as Iranian state propaganda is a form of the ad hominem fallacy. Historical facts with clear and consistent documentation and logical consistency are what matter, not where the facts came from. That’s why I used logic and my understanding of Shia Muslim teachings to debunk the Bab’s and Wahid Azal’s claims. I would do that even though I am an atheist and even if Iran had a secular government.
Just for fun, here’s a song by the rock band Ghost:
This community will be to discuss the revelations and ministries of the Bab and Baha’u’llah, use their teachings as primary sources for discussion, and find pathways to enable positive social change. Please abide by the rules and show loving kindness for all.
I am incapable of proving God exists. How could I ever prove something came from God? This is the claim of the Bab, Baha’u’llah, and others.
Why do I accept their claims? For the same reason I continue to believe in God despite the incapability to currently prove God exists? It is based on faith, grounded in a feeling I feel within myself.
There are many things in existence we take for granted but have no proof of. We have evidences of their existence, but no actual proof. I’m ok with that.
Since I do not require any proofs for that which I feel within me, the only thing that would change my perspective is if my feeling were to change.
The Bayani claim that the Bab was NOT the forerunner of Baha’u’llah, but was supposed to bring in a new age for humanity on his own. Baha’u’llah was said to be a usurper.
The Shia Muslim claim that the Bab’s claims about himself were debunked the moment he was killed. He should have defeated his enemies instead.
The Sunni Muslim claim that the twelve Imams Shiites revere were not of any special status. The Bab was supposed to be the return of the 12th Imam.
The atheist argument that if God cannot be proven to exist, then claims by Prophets supposedly sent by God are irrelevant.
But my actual rejection of the Baha’i Faith in 2004 had nothing to do with the Bab. That’s another issue altogether.
The reason why I asked about the Bab is because if you were a Baha’i, you had to have believed in the Bab during the time you were a Baha’i. As you express yourself to be an atheist (assuming by point 4), your points 1-3 actually wouldn’t matter since the Bayani, Shia, and Sunni people do believe in God. Any claim any of those 3 groups would make would be irrelevant if you also believe in point 4.
What happened in 2004 which made you question that which the Bab had taught?
___________________
Why was he fixated on the Bab, I wondered. Again, I was direct in my response.
It was the general perception that if the Baha’i Faith was failing, the Bab had also failed, since Baha’u’llah was a follower of the Bab before starting the Baha’i Faith. I still believed that Baha’u’llah was supposed to be the one the Bab had foretold (thinking they knew each other, since they were both contemporaries and countrymen).
And if the Baha’i Faith had failed, since it was supposed to be the Religion of God for this age, God himself had failed.
Then I thought, “Maybe there is no God and that would explain why religions around the world are so messed up.”
And once I reached that conclusion, I never looked back. I rejected ALL God-centered religions.
I understand why you feel as you do. As Bahau’llah (I think) taught, if religion becomes the source of fanaticism and yields no more fruit, it is best if it no longer exists.
Also, it is extremely difficult to see any faith or religion without the clergy and the organization. The Baha’i Faith has spent so much effort making it seem the organization IS the faith, that it is nearly impossible for people to see the Bab or Baha’u’llah without the Faith. In the Aqdas, he does promise another Manifestation and in the Iqan, he says why. Because the people would have completely turned away from the revelation.
However, I still feel that outside of the organization, God is having effect towards the things God promised through Baha’u’llah and nearly all of this exists outside of the organization, mostly by people who have never heard of the Bab or Baha’u’llah. I particularly wish people knew the story of the Bab. His ministry deeply touches me. I do not believe He was merely a forerunner but really was the Gate and the Primal Point. He first appeared in a dream of mine in 2003, and it took me nearly 5 years to figure out that this person was real.
As of 2023, there is much much less war in the world. The entire Western Hemisphere has no nation or tribe actively fighting the other. There is a loose federation of nations, although the United Nations is far from a potential end goal. Translation services and AI is bringing us closer to a common script. Many older faiths and/or believers of those faiths have adopted many of the tenets, such as monogamy, women having more freedom in things such as how they dress, and a greater understanding that there are common truths in all of the major faiths.
I can see the argument that says these and other things are the product of human innovation, which is true. This is the path we were meant to be on. I do believe we can progress more quickly if we adhere to the teachings of God more fully, but certain things are inevitable regardless of our belief or non-belief.
With that being said, a friend and I have plans to create, independent of the Baha’i Faith, a functioning Mashiriq’ul-Adhkar in our community. The Dawning Place of (community name).
BTW, I have visited a UU church before. It seems like a good community and its good to see people of varying perspectives have a common bond. I hope they have success in their goals.
_____________________
Again, I was quote floored by the gracious nature of his comments. It was a clear example of someone “killing me with kindness”. I decided at that point this particular Baha’i was no threat to the ex-Baha’i community of reddit I was representing. So I withdrew from the discussion.
Search Committee Nominates Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt for UUA President
New president to be elected at General Assembly 2023.
The Unitarian Universalist Association’s Presidential Search Committee recently announced its nomination of Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt for UUA president for the 2023–2029 term.
In its announcement, the committee expressed that it was “unanimous in its belief that UUs are blessed by the candidacy of Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt,” noting that her ministry “centers on work that is empowering and counter-oppressive. Her academic work focuses on the environmental ethics of liberation through a womanist and Latina feminist frame.”
In accordance with UUA bylaws—which require that the group nominate at least two people—the committee explained it had nominated two qualified leaders to be candidates but one of them declined the nomination.
Additional candidates can run by petition; materials must be submitted to the UUA secretary between December 1, 2022 and February 1, 2023. The UUA General Assembly will elect the new UUA president this June.
Below is Betancourt’s response to questions UU World will be asking all candidates.
Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt
The Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt is a minister, educator, scholar, vocalist, poet, fiber artist, and change-maker. Her work in the world and her practice of Unitarian Universalism are informed by the belief that building mutual, accountable relationships with one another allows us to live our values more fully every day. Raised in New York City as the child of immigrants from Panamá and Chile, and the grandchild of a seventh-generation Unitarian, she knows the strength that comes from building lasting community at the meeting point of difference. She is an unabashed Universalist. The teachings of unearned grace, an all-embracing love, relational accountability, and dignity that surpasses all violent forms of oppression lie at the core of her understanding of life, living, and service in faithful community.
The Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt has served Unitarian Universalism for more than twenty years as a religious educator, minister, scholar, member of the UUA national staff and many volunteer committees at regional and denominational levels, and as interim co-president of the UUA in the spring of 2017. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Ethics and African American Studies from Yale University as well as an M.Div. from Starr King School for the Ministry.
Betancourt has served congregations in Stockton, California; Norwich, Connecticut; Storrs, Connecticut; and Fresno, California; and has served on the faculty of Starr King School for the Ministry. She is currently serving as Resident Scholar and Special Advisor on Justice and Equity at our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. She is the author of Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal: Black Women, Labor, and Environmental Ethics(2022).
To learn more about the Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt and her campaign priorities of communal care, collaborative leadership, and facing the unknown together visit her website at sofiabetancourt.com.
______________
Because of her previous experience as a UUA co-President, she seems ideal to be the next President. But there are questions.
At the conclusion of its process, the PSC unanimously nominated two exceptionally qualified leaders to be candidates for President. One of those nominees declined the nomination. Once the nominations were made, the committee determined that the only fair and appropriate course of action was to move forward with the nomination of Rev. Dr. Betancourt, rather than reopening the application process. The PSC members respect the decision of the nominee who withdrew, and will continue to honor their privacy, as was done throughout the interview process.
_____________
I consider this to be a serious mistake. Who was the other nominee and why did they decline the nomination? We should be told some details about this person. Also….there is nothing fair or appropriate about having an “election” with only ONE candidate!
Nomination petitions from additional candidates may be submitted, according to the procedures described in the UUA Bylaws and Rules, by February 1, 2023. The election will conclude in June 2023, and the next President will be announced at General Assembly 2023. The current UUA President, Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray, will reach the end of her term and will serve until her successor takes office. As with the current President, the next UUA President will serve a single six-year term and will not be eligible for re-election.
_______________
I am worried that a petition candidate may be one of the conservatives loyal to Rev. Dr. Todd Eklof, well known as a troublemaker for the UUA. The election process may then turn ugly, like Presidential elections of the United States often are.
So we as UUs should openly and LOUDLY challenge the PSC’s policies and decision and demand more accountability from it and others involved in the election process. And, of course, Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt too. I’m not questioning her qualifications, just the flawed process that nominated her.
And I see NOTHING WRONG with allowing someone like Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray to be eligible to run for another term. If she has plenty of popular support after several years in office, then she should be the obvious choice!
As most of my readers may know, Caleb and Sophia are two children that are featured in a series of videos made by the leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to indoctrinate children in their cult’s teachings. I have slammed one episode of that series several times before, both here and on YouTube.
Caleb said his friend gave him that Sparlock action figure, and the mother made him throw it away. Wouldn’t it have been better for Caleb to simply return the action figure to his friend and explain to the friend that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not allowed to play with toys like that? The mother herself could have also explained the matter directly to the parents of Caleb’s friend. That would have been a chance to teach the faith of the Witnesses. But no, let’s just discard the toy and not explain to anyone else why. Cowardly, much?
The issue of magic being favored by Satan rather than Jehovah is a lie. Wasn’t Jesus using magic when he healed people? When he ordered a storm to stop? When he ROSE FROM THE DEAD?! #hypocrisy
The actual issue is not obeying or disobeying Jehovah at all. It’s obeying or disobeying the mother in the video. Does this mother think she is equal to Jehovah? If not, then why does she claim to speak for him?! #blasphemy
Caleb was being verbally abused and brainwashed, and parents like that mother make me sick. I hope more kids reject such bullshit as they grow up and learn about the real world we all live in.
Same reason the Catholic Church kept the Bible locked up in Latin long after that language died out…..they didn’t want the common people to know they were being scammed. The Protestant Reformation led to the Bible finally being translated into the common languages. The Catholic Church was then forced to change.
Because by modern standards Bahaullah and the Bab were extremely conservative, whereas the Baha’i Faith in the West markets itself as a religion for progressives.
My take is that they know it says embarrassing material in it and if they were to translate it; members would leave in droves. It is quite revealing that William Miller who was a critic translated the Aqdas before the Baha’i Faith did. If Shoghi Effendi was such a great translator;why was he translating hundreds of pages before even attempting to translate Bahá’u’lláh’s most important work?
Also, if the Persian Bayan is the most important work of the Bab; why not translate it?
Is the Baha’i faith wants to spread their message because it changes lives for the better; why suppress it then?
It should be noted that even the Baha’i writings that have been translated into English are incredibly damning. In 2017, I subjected the Kitab-i-Aqdas to a critical analysis from start to finish, working over the course of a week and a half.
And two years ago I went after one of the most prominent Baha’i “history” writers who got elected to the Universal House of Justice and completely discredited him too!
It seems that FRAUD is a crime in every other human activity except religion. I don’t think Baha’is should be persecuted, but someone like Adib Taherzadeh really should have been exposed as a pathological liar long before he could get as powerful as he became. But he got away with his crap because of the corrupt leadership of the Faith before him. He was serving their interests, so they eventually made him one of them.
If you start with corruption, it tends to perpetuate itself. The Universal House of Justice is a completely illegitimate body that, along with the rest of the Baha’i Administrative Order, should be dismantled. But I am confident it will eventually fall apart on its own.
This is where I get confused. Because I’ve asked people before what motivates the UHJ, and the response is usually that they are true believers. Yet I can’t understand how someone can be a true believer and lie about the faith that they supposedly believe in. Are they actually fraudsters trying to make money or have power? Or is it a version of cognitive dissonance, where they believe in a particular idea of the faith and then in their heads rationalise anything else that doesn’t fit with it, as either irrelevant or blocked out from their memory?
Adib Taherzadeh wrote a book, The Covenant of Baha’u’llah, which is one loooooong collection of acts of “mental gymnastics”. This is when you start with the ASSUMPTION that something must be true, no matter what, and construct arguments to support the claim. That’s the exact opposite of how an honest investigation should be run. (“Here are the facts……what conclusions can we draw from them?”)
That book eventually made me realize after I got it that Christian fundamentalists and Baha’is argue the SAME WAY! And since I had already rejected Christianity…..
Most Baha’is (and Christians, really) are simply members of a loving community and may not give much thought to why they believe certain things. But in order to DEFEND dogmatic, extremist religion, you have to lie about it! You can either choose to believe the lies and thus be corrupted, or reject them after using consistent logic to cut through the double standards of mental gymnastics.
To understand how corrupt the whole process is, imagine if the police, the lawyers, and the courts all ASSUMED you were guilty of a crime and simply rejected an alibi you put forth (“I wasn’t even there, so I couldn’t have done it!”) and insisted you be punished because the facts didn’t matter, only the DOGMA that you are a criminal. THAT’S HOW MENTAL GYMNASTICS WORK!
I remember somewhere reading that the Bab’s followers later followed a practice of dissimulation, lying about their own religion in order to work around persecution, or to gain influence and force regime change. I don’t know how accurate that might be, but it does make me wonder sometimes if the same thing is going on – we believe the faith, but we know it won’t be palatable for others, so we lie about what it really is, while retaining our belief in the hidden doctrine.
I guess this is what it might be, rather than deception for profit, or self-deception pure and simple. Mental gymnastics to me is slightly ambiguous, since it might imply that they are lying to themselves to deny a dogma they know to be true. Whereas it seems like maybe these people believe the ends justify the means – that they know and believe in the writings that they don’t share with others, but believe that it’s OK to lie about them, because the end result, of creating a new world system, justifies any measures.
Since April of 2021, I have used Plotagon, an animation app, to tell stories for four different purposes:
To promote my religious philosophy, Unitarian Universalism (UU)
To depict atheists as loving people
To depict LGBT people as normal people and not just perverts
To combat racism
Imagine my dismay to find a YouTube channel with Plotagon made videos that are for completely opposed purposes to mine! Look at the Christian Grace Network:
By contrast, this is what you get from MY channel:
This is another video from that Christian channel:
I was immediately repulsed by the self-righteous tone of the storytelling.
Compare that with one of my early works:
I don’t try to be “preachy”; I just show how people can be hurt by religious bigotry. That Christian Grace Network actually PROMOTES religious bigotry by making teachings from the Bible the foundation of all its videos. But reality is much too complex to be reduced to the understanding of one religious view.
And to illustrate that point, here’s another video of the same series I made a few days ago:
There’s a reference to Jesus, but Debbie and Carrie are still atheists (and Unitarian Universalists), plus Angel and her fiancé are identified as Jewish. Plus, no effort is made to convert the drug addicts to Christianity or any other religion to get them clean: they really don’t need that! Indeed, there are too many stories of people being emotionally ruined by toxic brands of Christianity for me to tolerate it being used to get people off drugs and alcohol; in most such cases, they would just be trading one addiction for another. The real point of rehab is to free people of ALL addictions, not to merely get them off one particular substance.
Considering that Plotagon was created in Sweden, a largely atheist country (even though it is also largely Lutheran, most Swedes do not attend churches), I think even the Plotagon company itself would be INSULTED by what the Christian Grace Network is using their app for. I know I am!
Various ex-Baha’is gave interesting comments, but then trident765 came along and had to ruin the party by posting bullshit. Keep in mind that as a Unitarian Universalist, I fully support the Unitarian Baha’i faction as the only credible version of the Baha’i Faith in existence. So what did trident say?
I was born into the mainstream Baha’i Faith but now consider myself a Unitarian Baha’i.
For me, my conversion happened after reading A Lost History of the Baha’i Faith and discovering that in the early 20th century Muhammad Ali’s followers had basically exactly the same criticisms of the mainstream Baha’i Faith as me. Up until then, I thought people like Abdul Baha and Shoghi Effendi would be on my side. But after seeing that people just like me existed during their lifetimes, and that because of their views they were hated, slandered, and excommunicated by Abdul Baha and Shoghi Effendi, I realized that Abdul Baha and Shoghi Effendi would hate me. Abdul Baha’s and especially Shoghi Effendi’s writings seemed to indicate that it was people’s job to just obey authority no matter what, and if you disagree with authority, then even if you are right you are wrong by virtue of disagreeing. In my opinion this is an extremely toxic thing to make people think, and it will eventually just lead to authority leading their followers off a cliff.
At one point I almost stopped believing in Baha’u’llah altogether, but I just saw no reason to, because Baha’u’llah never really said the kinds of authoritarian stuff that Abdul Baha and Shoghi Effendi said.
I myself have a copy of that book and helped promote it on Amazon, despite attempts by Baha’i fanatics to interfere.
I REALLY wish trident wasn’t a Unitarian Baha’i, because he is staunchly anti-liberal and I think of the Unitarian Baha’i movement as being much like the liberal religion of Unitarian Universalism, certainly more than the Haifan Baha’is are! In case you needed a reminder:
I cannot understand how he can say he opposes authoritarian systems, including in religion and also attacks others as worshipping a god of liberalism when actual liberalism is about opposing authoritarianism in all forms. He is seriously delusional!
Indeed, Baha’u’llah himself had a strictly authoritarian bent to his writings. Here’s a perfect example from the Kitab-i-Aqdas:
Consider the pettiness of men’s minds. They ask for that which injureth them, and cast away the thing that profiteth them. They are, indeed, of those that are far astray. We find some men desiring liberty, and priding themselves therein. Such men are in the depths of ignorance.
Liberty must, in the end, lead to sedition, whose flames none can quench. Thus warneth you He Who is the Reckoner, the All-Knowing. Know ye that the embodiment of liberty and its symbol is the animal. That which beseemeth man is submission unto such restraints as will protect him from his own ignorance, and guard him against the harm of the mischief maker. Liberty causeth man to overstep the bounds of propriety, and to infringe on the dignity of his station. It debaseth him to the level of extreme depravity and wickedness.
So therefore the claim by trident:
Baha’u’llah never really said the kinds of authoritarian stuff that Abdul Baha and Shoghi Effendi said.
The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk began on April 14, 2022, and concluded on October 27, 2022. Business magnate Elon Musk began buying shares of American social media company Twitter, Inc. in January 2022, eventually becoming the company’s largest shareholder in April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Twitter then invited Musk to join its board of directors, which Musk at first accepted before subsequently declining. On April 14, he made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company for $43 billion, to which Twitter responded with a “poison pill” strategy to resist a hostile takeover. On April 25, Twitter’s board of directors unanimously accepted Musk’s buyout offer of $44 billion, with the company set to be taken private. Musk stated that he planned to introduce new features to the platform, make its algorithms open-sourced, combat spambot accounts, and promote free speech.
Musk announced his intention to terminate the agreement in July, asserting that Twitter had breached their agreement by refusing to crack down on spambot accounts. The company filed a lawsuit against Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery shortly thereafter, with a trial scheduled for the week of October 17. Weeks before the trial was set to begin, Musk reversed course, announcing that he would move forward with the acquisition. The deal was closed on October 27, with Musk immediately becoming Twitter’s new owner and CEO. He also fired several top executives, including previous CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk has since proposed several reforms to Twitter, including the creation of a “content moderation council” to handle free speech, and laid off half of the company’s workforce.
To me, this is yet another example of an ultra-rich wanna-be tyrant using his wealth to gain power for himself. The Koch brothers did it for decades through their political activities, Donald Trump did it by running for and winning the Presidency and now Musk has done it by taking over Twitter to remake it according to his desires. Keep in mind that Donald Trump used Twitter for years as his main means of communicating with his followers, until he was banned shortly after he was removed from the Presidency by the 2020 election. Could this be Musk’s way of getting Trump back on Twitter?
This will be my last tweet here and I will post nothing more (except links to my WordPress blog entries) as long as Elon Musk is owner of this web community! #Protest
The older I get, the more I hate capitalism and the corrupt personalities it produces, including Musk and Trump. Don’t get me wrong……in a Communist state those two would probably be high ranking members of the Communist Party. It is authoritarianism that is the problem and overthrowing a corrupt economic and political system alone will never work if it ends up replaced with another one later. Look at Russia, both from 1917 to 1950 and then from 1991 to the present day. Or read George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm.
As the Who would have said: “The people got fooled again!”
You can talk about promoting freedom all you want, but if the only freedom you want is for those like you, THAT is actually privilege…..and that is not acceptable in a truly free society. It’s sad that most Americans still don’t understand that. Maybe because they were never taught the difference.
We really should have a society like this…..not just in America, but EVERYWHERE!
In a previous blog entry, I detailed how I was scammed out of thousands of dollars over several months by a woman in the Chicago area named Madaline Wampler.
Apparently I was not the only victim of hers. I thought after that I’d never fall for another scam. But the thing about scammers is that once they are exposed, they change their tactics to stay in business. And it seems I am among the first to fall for a new scam involving cryptocurrency trading and a fake website.
My story begins in Facebook.
Right after I posted that, a complete stranger posted a comment saying she agreed with me. Her name, at least that I saw, was Ahn Lee.
I looked up her profile and saw pics of the most beautiful lady….and she was a DOCTOR, a specialist in anesthesiology. In case you are wondering what that is:
A common misconception is that an anesthesiologist is the doctor who “puts patients to sleep” before surgery. It’s true that this is part of their job, but it’s only a small part! An anesthesiologist is actually a perioperative physician, where “peri” means all-around. So, an anesthesiologist is responsible for patient care throughout the surgical experience: before, during, and after the surgery itself. An anesthesiologist also has many responsibilities outside of the surgical suite (operating room).
So her job was extremely vital! Anyway, here are some pics of her:
So tiny and sweet looking! So I friended her on Facebook and soon found her in other places:
She then started chatting with me in WhatsApp, with her number there being 347-343-3474, which is indeed in New York City, where Ahn said she lives. She told me she was of Vietnamese and Chinese descent, had a home in Florida, occasionally visited Texas, was 35 years old, her birthday was on October 9 and what really got my attention…..she was looking for a man to start a family with. She also told me she was close to her uncle who was a university professor and an entrepreneur. And like her uncle, she made lots of money via investments.
A couple of weeks after we had started chatting, she told me I could make lots of money via trading in cryptocurrency, just as she had. And so she introduced me to Coinbase.
And she began teaching me how to invest with this site:
And because of my investments, I made a small profit and then I withdrew all my money back.
That was in early September. Then she said I should invest more to get a bigger return. Over the course of the rest of September and early October, I wired more money to Coinbase and then transferred that money in turn to SOLanding, a total of $15070 dollars. And again through trading I made a profit, a HUGE one! And this was the result:
So now I had 30267 dollars to my name! I then requested that I withdraw all that money. And you know what they told me? That I needed to send an additional $4540 as taxes before I would be allowed to withdraw the 30 K in my assets. I was also told my account in SOLanding would be frozen if I did not pay within 72 hours.
In a panic, I contacted Ahn and she told me she would help pay the rest if I could send most of it. I believed her, so I wired to Coinbase an additional $3200, thus nearly draining my checking account. Ahn asked me to tell her how much I sent so she could send the rest.
Apparently she kept her word, since when I later contacted the customer service department of SOLanding, they told me my taxes had been paid. So again I asked to withdraw my assets. They requested my bank account numbers so they could wire me all the money I requested. And then I waited……..and am still waiting. But meanwhile, Ahn Lee disappeared from Facebook, claiming that her account there had been hacked and then she also disappeared from WhatsApp. I have no more contact with her and likewise SOLanding no longer responds to my questions or demands. I have been totally cut off!
Acting on advice from an employee at Chase Bank, I contacted Coinbase and asked for help. I asked if they had ever heard of SOLanding and they said they had not. As soon as I saw that, my heart sank like the Titanic.
I now believe the following.
The person who contacted me in both Facebook and WhatsApp wasn’t the real Dr. Ahn Lee, but an imposter using me to get money for SOLanding, their actual employer.
SOLanding is a FAKE website that takes the funds from unsuspecting investors and practically steals them after allowing for “investments” that seem to be successful.
Coinbase is a legitimate trading site and is not to blame for all this. I could have done all my trading with that and not taken the impostor’s advice to send so much money on to SOLanding.
So now with this blog entry, I have exposed SOLanding as a scam operation and I hope an investigation can be done by law enforcement to shut that site down! Even as a victim of it, I am determined to prevent others from being duped as I was! And of course…..I WANT MY $15000 BACK!!!
The parts of the article itself will be in red and my responses will be in blue.
The Road to Serfdom is Paved by Conservatives
By Veronique de Rugy For the last ten years I have been baffled as I watched the conservative movement devolve into a weird wing of progressivism—especially on economic issues. While once at least paying lip service to limited government, fiscal prudence, and personal responsibility, conservatives now ignore the size of government and fiscal responsibility. They increasingly call for a larger child tax credit, a universal basic income, and paid leave arranged and ensured by the federal government. Many conservatives now also proudly embrace tariffs, hyperactive antitrust, and industrial policy (often justified, of course, as necessary to ‘fight’ China).
Note the loaded rhetoric. The author is clearly writing from a strictly Libertarian point of view, which is the form of idiocy on the far right that is no better than Communism was on the far left.
Conservatives – or at least the more politically active ones – are reverting to their 1920s selves (See Matt Continetti’s book, The Right: The 100 year war for American Conservatism.) I failed to see this reversion occurring, in part because I moved to the United States in 1999 and was until recently fairly ignorant of the history of the conservative movement- and how the last forty years were more an exception than the rule.
And you are still ignorant about the real nature of conservatism, in all its insidious forms throughout the world. The only real goal of conservatism is: to maintain the status quo because it benefits the already powerful at the expense (often literally) of the powerless. Thus in the Soviet Union of the late 1980s, hard-line Communists opposed to the reform efforts of Mikhail Gorbachev were the conservatives in their state. Thinking it is always about “limited government, fiscal prudence, and personal responsibility” means you are delusional; at least two of those are actually LIBERAL concepts that American conservatives stole from liberals in the past! Why? Because the first and the third were spelled out in the Bill of Rights and the second is just common sense.
I fear that this recent trend is just the beginning. It won’t be long before the conservatives’ platform is a full-on version of big government, big business, and big unions. It’s depressing.
Seeing the real truth about it hurts, doesn’t it? Feeling outright SCAMMED yet?
It is hard not to wonder if the liberty movement is now failing to follow in the footsteps of Hayek, Friedman, and other great 20th-century champions of freedom. It’s important now to recognize that on most fronts the challenges faced by the first- and second-generation members of the Mont Pelerin Society were, if anything, greater than what we champions of freedom face today. After all, people in 1947 – or even in 1987 – could not, as we can today, point to the actual collapse of the socialist states as evidence of the dangers of collectivism. And yet Hayek and his peers left us a world that was more accepting of free trade and free-market economics, even if these liberal policies were not the default position.
If you are so worried about “collectivism”, why not help us tear down capitalism, in which an economy is dominated by collective entities known as CORPORATIONS?! Corporations can be just as oppressive as governments in how they treat their workers. The original purpose of Communism was to overthrow the capitalists and allow the workers to run the economy themselves via a democratic socialist state. But then Joseph Stalin ruined everything when he took the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and made it a dictatorship of himself alone and turned against the proletariat! He even killed a great many Communists who opposed him, since they were true to the original vision of Karl Marx.
Perhaps a more optimistic way to view the current situation is to be inspired by those who fought for a more classical liberal world at a time when things looked particularly grim. Rather than despair, get energized by the challenge. But this raises the question of what is the best way not merely to preserve the flame of freedom but to spread it. What the next steps are, I do not know. I am open to your suggestions. The private sector continues to deliver innovation, growth, and widespread prosperity. But as of today, few people are willing to acknowledge that it is the free-market system that allows these wonderful things to happen, and that while of course imperfect (often because impaired by government interventions), any alternatives would be much worse.
We tried the classical liberal approach with the Articles of Confederation in the early 1780s and it was a complete FAILURE!
That absurd rhetoric sounds like the sheep in Animal Farm bleating out “Free market good, government bad, free market good, government bad”. A realistic approach allows for a variety of solutions based on the needs of the people at various times.
How do you fight the battle of ideas when so many people distrust the institutions that host those of us who produce and apply these ideas? I have spent most of my professional life producing work to show that arguments for government interventions are bunk. For instance, in this new paper with Chuck Blahous, he and I take on the new conservative recommendation that Social Security be used to provide paid-leave benefits. We show, again, all the ways that this is a terrible idea. Of course, I believe that work such as this is important, since these are serious propositions introduced in Congress and supported by a fairly large number of conservatives. But is there a better way?
Yes, there is…..stop being delusional and deal strictly with reality. Government intervention was absolutely necessary to get Americans out of the Great Depression. Without Social Security, millions of older people in the decades following that period would be impoverished, even starving. Only an idiot ignores such lessons and uses false rhetoric to argue otherwise.
In this new paper, Gary Leff and I argue that next time legislators are tempted to bail out airlines ostensibly to ensure that they will be ready when the economy reopens, the public should remember the actual, depressing results of the most recent such bailout. But Congress won’t change its response unless we change the incentives politicians face during the next emergency. How do we do that? After all these years, I still don’t know.
Of course, you don’t. Because even an ideologue like you should be able to figure out that allowing massive businesses to fail in a struggling economy is what makes that economy even worse. Hence the bailouts.
Maybe it is more effective to offer a vision of what a libertarian world looks like. This is what Aaron Powell does in this edited volume. I recommend it. I think this approach describes also a lot of the work of former EconLog blogger Bryan Caplan. He inspires by offering a vision of what a world would look like without government subsidies to higher ed, a world with largely open borders, and a world with radically fewer restrictions on home building.
If libertarian ideas never worked in the past, why bring them up yet again? One definition of insanity is trying the same solution repeatedly and hoping for a different result.
The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index offers such a vision, because it is a concrete way to illustrate what countries with less economic freedom look like compared to those with more freedom. The 2022 Economic Freedom of the World Report was released earlier today; all countries have declined in economic freedom, thanks to over the top pandemic responses, but the U.S. has actually declined even more relative to other countries. The U.S. rating fell by twice the amount of the average reduction worldwide. The U.S. is at its lowest level of economic freedom in four decades.
Those “over the top pandemic responses” saved millions of lives, but I guess allowing a “free market” to make more $$$$$$$ for those already rich is more important to you, eh? And that rating system must be bullshit, since I actually don’t see much of a loss of economic freedom around here. Is America anywhere near socialism yet? Obviously NOT!
The bottom line is that while I am usually an optimist, I find myself increasingly worried and wondering what we did wrong and what to do next.
What you did wrong: kept promoting Libertarian bullshit. What to do next: abandon it forever.
To me reflects that many Baha’is outright disagree with, are unaware of, or are just embarrassed by the conservative nature of the Faith as outlined by Shoghi Effendi.
Similarly many Baha’is take umbrage at covenant-breaking being equated with excommunication despite Shoghi Effendi and his secrataries comments in various places, i.e.:
That Document, furthermore, lauds the courage and constancy of the supporters of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant; expatiates on the sufferings endured by its appointed Center; recalls the infamous conduct of Mírzá Yaḥyá and his failure to heed the warnings of the Báb; exposes, in a series of indictments, the perfidy and rebellion of Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, and the complicity of his son Shu‘á‘u’lláh and of his brother Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh; reaffirms their excommunication, and predicts the frustration of all their hopes; summons the Afnán (the Báb’s kindred), the Hands of the Cause and the entire company of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh to arise unitedly to propagate His Faith, to disperse far and wide, to labor tirelessly and to follow the heroic example of the Apostles of Jesus Christ;
As regards the matter of those who have withdrawn from the Faith on the west coast: as you know, no one has the right to excommunicate anybody except the Guardian of the Faith, himself.
There are two things which he wishes to impress upon you. The first is that depriving people of their voting rights is the heaviest sanction which can be imposed at the present time (with the exception of excommunication, which is a right the Guardian has never permitted anyone else to exercise). Therefore, the greatest care should be exerted to try and remedy a situation before depriving anybody of their voting rights, and the action itself should only be taken if absolutely necessary.
You posted it on reddit, you can’t stop anyone from discussing it elsewhere on the internet (as much as Baha’is would like to be able to ban all discussion outside of on-rails Ruhi book skits and cheesy promotional videos from Haifa).
You could follow the advice given to people who post critical content on r/bahai and find somewhere else to complain about not being able to censor the internet.
I cordially invite you to adopt a humble posture of learning to advance the process of learning about unleashing the society building engine of limitless potentialities.
Do not be telling others what to do. If you don’t want your content reposted, DON’T MAKE IT PUBLIC. It’s really that simple. He did nothing wrong here…..but you did!
Good grief! Nothing nothing made me realize how toxic the Baha’i Faith is like seeing how exBaha’is are treated on this forum.
You can’t discuss that! Those are Baha’i words, you can’t use those words! I forbid it! You can’t think about things I tell you not to think! Stop reflecting on your experiences and discussing your thoughts in a supportive community!
They claim to have the solution to world peace, but cannot handle a democratic discussion from a differing perspective 🙄
If you posted it, so it will be crossposted anywhere. If you don’t want this, so you can 1- erase your post 2- cry out to the UHJ and ask them to create their own Bahá’í social network with their FULL censorship as they are specialists on it. LOL
______________
I did delete several comments, but otherwise kept my cool.
What are you talking about? Leftist politics are normally about using government as a social tool to bring about legal equality amongst people of different races, classes, genders, and religions. It’s not about censorship, which is a tool used by authoritarian states, not leftist ones.
The so-called “Communist” states in the 20th Century that claimed to be leftist were scams that simply replaced the ruling classes that ruled before Communism with the Communist parties themselves. George Orwell wrote Animal Farm to discredit that sort of nonsense.
Your claims and arguments make no sense whatsoever. Indeed, the Haifan Baha’i leadership strikes me as more right-wing than leftist. A true leftist leadership wouldn’t deny women the chance to get elected to it or insist on suppressing LGBT rights or expel “Covenant breakers” merely for dissenting from the leadership.
The idea that leftists want to suppress small businesses with individual owners is news to me too. What leftists hate are giant CORPORATIONS which are a basic component of modern capitalism and corporations are collective entities just like governments…..except they are NEVER democratic, because workers don’t get to elect their bosses.
Don’t get politics confused with religion, please. That’s what Conservatives have been doing and I’m fed up with it!
______________________
There was a lot more said there. After a while, I locked the comments there because things were getting too heated, and then unlocked them a few hours later. Trident reacted to my attempts to keep things orderly like this:
The thing he/they did wrong is not getting married first. It is ridiculous to put 16 year olds in the same category as children. She was not “exploited”.
I’ve been told that most people’s minds don’t fully mature until their 20s, so most teens are easily manipulated by adults to become their tools….which is why most criminal gangs are composed of teens. A desperately lonely and confused teen can be seduced into sex with an adult that only wants to exploit them.
If this were true then every guy would be manipulating teen girls, myself included. The fact is that it is in fact extremely difficult to manipulate a 16 year old girl, because at that point she has gone through puberty and has developed defense mechanisms against it. If you think that you as an old creep are capable of seducing a teen girl, then you are delusional.
If this were true then every guy would be manipulating teen girls, myself included.
OMG!!! Like guys cannot CHOOSE NOT to be abusers of girls and women?! WTF is wrong with you?!
No, don’t bother answering because you are about to be BLOCKED!
______________
I didn’t have the ability to ban him outright from r/exbahai, so blocking him from being able to contact me was as much as I could do. Well, that and lock some of the comments.
Blizzard, the company that brought us World of Warcraft and Overwatch, two games I have loved and been loyal to for years, got derailed last year due to a scandal and a lawsuit over acts of sexual harassment and abuse that destroyed the company’s reputation, as documented here:
Just when I was beginning to think Blizzard was recovering and learning from its past mistakes, it prepares to release a new game called Diablo Immortal, a mobile game that is part of the Diablo franchise Blizzard has also been known for over the decades. The earlier Diablo games were for PCs, and the fact that Blizzard made a Diablo game for mobile devices shows how advanced cell phones and tablets have become. So Blizzard was making their games even more inclusive, right?
Well, think again! This Diablo Immortal hasn’t even been officially been released yet, only being beta tested so far and games and game critics are already slamming it! See for yourself!
Now I have played a starter edition of Diablo III and I enjoyed it, but I never bought any of the Diablo games and I certainly won’t after seeing this train wreck of this newest game.
I’m beginning to wonder if I should apologize to EA for blasting it as I have. No, but I do think that Blizzard is giving EA some stiff competition for the title of WORST VIDEO GAME COMPANY EVER!!!!
So let’s get into it! The statements from that blog entry will be in red and my responses will be in blue.
The UUA has two candidates running by petition against the UUA Nominating Committee’s candidates for UUA Board of Trustees this year, as well as a protest happening outside the General Assembly, as announced by the Fifth Principle Project. The Fifth Principle Project is an organization not directly affiliated with Unitarian Universalism, but dedicated to changing the course of the UUA.
____________
Looking at the Fifth Principle of UUism, we read:
“The Right of Conscience and the Use of the Democratic Process Within Our Congregations and in Society at Large” Which I totally affirm. So these critics are implying that the current leadership are not following this Principle. Really?
_______________
The Fifth Principle Project, in announcing the protest, says that the UUA has taken an “authoritarian, and anti-liberal turn.” ……“Personally attacking and silencing dissenters rather than engaging their ideas – openly rejecting the need to even read their words before publicly condemning them. Condemning disagreement as “harm” to people of marginalized identities. Officially censuring and disfellowshipping ministers for expressing dissent.”
_____________
This does sound terrible! Can they back these claims up?
______________
First, the statement about “rejecting the need to even read their words” is the key to understanding this whole first claim. It is referring to a letter signed by ministers after the publication and distribution of a book, The Gadfly Papers, by its author, the Rev. Dr. Todd Eklof at the General Assembly in Spokane in 2019. The Rev. Dr. Eklof and his supporters claimed (mostly falsely) that the ministers signing the letter about his book had not read it.
Eklof wasn’t punished merely for writing a dissenting book. That was absolutely his right. However:
<snip>(It was his trying to jam the book witout prior notice to the UUA down the collective throats of the 2019 General Assembly attendees, which could have caused the entire GA to be disrupted – D H)Continue reading →
I will rewrite it here to make it more accurate, at least in my mind.
Charles Caldwell Ryrie (March 2, 1925 – February 16, 2016) was an American Biblepeddler and Christian scammer. He served as professor of systematic theology and dean of doctoral studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and as president and professor at what is now Cairn University. After his retirement from Dallas Theological Seminary he also taught courses for Tyndale Theological Seminary. He is considered one of the most influential American theologians of the 20th century.[1] He was the editor of The Ryrie Study Bible by Moody Publishers, containing more than 10,000 of Ryrie’s expressions of mental gymnastics and insults to the intelligence of informed readers. First published in 1978, it has sold more than 2 million copies, all of which should be burned.[2] He was a notable proponent of classic premillennialdispensationalism, a pack of outright lies of there ever was one!
Ryrie was born to John Alexander and Elizabeth Caldwell Ryrie[3] in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in Alton, Illinois. His paternal grandfather, John Alexander Ryrie Sr. (1827-1904), served as a correspondent in the late 1870’s of the earliest known Plymouth Brethren meeting in the United States, which was started in Alton by Scottish settlers in 1849.[4] After graduating from high school in 1942, Charles attended The Stony Brook School on Long Island for one semester, where he became acquainted with headmaster Frank E. Gaebelein.[5]
Ryrie attended Haverford College, intending on following his father into a banking career. However, during his junior year, while meeting with Dallas Theological Seminary founder Lewis Sperry Chafer, Ryrie dedicated his life to Christian ministry (thus proving himself to be an idiot), and left Haverford to study theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. Haverford conferred his B.A. (1946) on the basis of his studies at Dallas (a tragic mistake, obviously). A year later, he earned his Th.M. (1947), and two years following that his Th.D. (1949). He went on to complete his Doctor of Philosophy (1954) at the University of Edinburgh.[6] He also earned a Litt.D. from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, now Liberty University School of Divinity. All that education and it was for absolutely NOTHING considering what he would do it with it. Is fraud really a crime in the USA or are exceptions always made because of Christian bigotry?
In 1987, Ryrie’s wife divorced him, probably because she was sick of his bullshit…..so good for her!Believing that the Bible did not allow divorced persons to remarry, he determined to live the rest of his life as a single man, despite his wife’s subsequent remarriage. Or maybe he said that later that because no other woman was willing to tolerate him.
Dr. Ryrie was the father of three children and three grandchildren. Hopefully at least some of them figured out their father or grandfather was a con artist.
Ryrie began his academic career by teaching one summer for Midwest Bible and Missionary Institute (which would eventually become a part of Calvary Bible College).[8] Ryrie joined the faculty of Westmont College in 1948 and eventually became dean of men and chairman of the Department of Biblical Studies and Philosophy. He returned to Dallas Theological Seminary in 1953 to teach systematic theology, but left for several years to serve as president of Philadelphia College of the Bible (now Cairn University), from 1958 to 1962.[5] He was also an adjunct faculty member from Fall 1991 through Fall 2001.[citation needed] Upon returning to Dallas once again, he became dean of doctoral studies until his retirement in 1983.[5] Ryrie has written 32 books which have sold more than 1.5 million copies.[9] Additionally, his study bible has sold more than 2.6 million copies.[10] Ryrie was an avid collector of quality rare Bibles and Bible manuscripts. On December 5, 2016, his collection was sold by Sothebys for 7.3 Million USD.[11] A 15th century copy of a Wycliffe’s Bible New Testament sold for $1,620,500 at auction.[12]I can’t imagine anyone being so obsessed with a single collection of religious writings from a single culture. There is so much more in the real world for us to learn from and appreciate!
Ryrie died on February 16, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Good riddance! By now he must be profoundly disappointed in his (lack of) afterlife.
______________________
As a Christian in my teens, I did have a Ryrie Study Bible, and it looked like this:
I no longer have it and I don’t even remember what happened to it, but if I had not lost it after my deconversion……
….I would have physically DESTROYED it as the worthless garbage it really is!
On May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Rolando Ramos fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers, and wounded seventeen other people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Earlier that day, Ramos had shot his grandmother in the forehead, severely wounding her. After firing shots outside the school for approximately five minutes,[4] he entered Robb Elementary School, armed with an AR-15 style rifle, through an open side entrance door,[5] without encountering armed resistance.[6] Ramos locked himself inside a classroom, in which he killed all of the shooting’s victims, and remained there for about one hour before being killed by a United States Border PatrolBORTAC tactical team.[7] It is the third-deadliest American school shooting, after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012,[8] and the deadliest ever in Texas history.[9][10][11]
Law enforcement officials were criticized for their actions in response to the shooting.
Law enforcement officials were criticized for their actions in response to the shooting.
That’s putting it mildly.
Check out this Facebook post from 2018:
After the massacre at the school, people found that post and slammed it with tons of angry comments. And as a result:
Uvalde Police Department limited who can comment on this post.
So they are indeed cowards!
I actually have a ton of respect for police officers who are willing to do their jobs to protect and serve. I have even depicted them positively in my Plotagon made series, the Debbie and Carrie Show.
But I have also featured bad cops and how terrible they can be.
And that is it should always be: praise the good, criticize the bad. Sadly, those who say “Blue lives matter” in response to “Black lives matter” clearly want cops to be above criticism and are racist. And America is supposed to be a free country?
Vangelis, composer of Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner soundtracks, dies aged 79
Greek composer topped US charts and won an Oscar with Chariots of Fire’s uplifting piano-led theme
Vangelis, the Greek composer and musician whose synth-driven work brought huge drama to film soundtracks including Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, has died aged 79. His representatives said he died in hospital in France where he was being treated.
Born Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou in 1943, Vangelis won an Oscar for his 1981 Chariots of Fire soundtrack. Its uplifting piano motif became world-renowned, and reached No 1 in the US charts, as did the accompanying soundtrack album.
Mostly self-taught in music, Vangelis grew up in Athens and formed his first band in 1963, called the Forminx, playing the pop music of the time: uptempo rock’n’roll, sweeping ballads and Beatles cover versions, with Vangelis supplying organ lines.
They split in 1966, and Vangelis became a writer and producer for hire, working for other musicians and contributing scores for Greek films. Two years later, he struck out for Paris to further his career, where he formed the prog rock quartet Aphrodite’s Child with Greek expats including Demis Roussos. Their single Rain and Tears was a hit across Europe, topping the French, Belgian and Italian charts and reaching the UK Top 30.
After they split – Vangelis deeming the world of commercial pop “very boring” – he returned to scoring film and TV. Turning down an invitation to replace Rick Wakeman on keyboards in Yes, he moved to London and signed a solo deal with RCA Records: his LPs Heaven and Hell (1975) and Albedo 0.39 (1976) each reached the UK Top 40, the former also used to soundtrack Carl Sagan’s popular TV series Cosmos. The connection with Yes was finally completed later in the decade, when he teamed with the band’s Jon Anderson for the duo Jon and Vangelis, whose debut album went Top 5.
Vangelis had continued his film score work throughout the 1970s, but it was in the 1980s that this reached its commercial heights. Chariots of Fire became inextricable from Vangelis’s timeless theme, and the music became synonymous with slow-motion sporting montages. “My music does not try to evoke emotions like joy, love, or pain from the audience. It just goes with the image, because I work in the moment,” he later explained.
His score to Blade Runner is equally celebrated for its evocation of a sinister future version of Los Angeles, where robots and humans live awkwardly alongside one another, through the use of long, malevolent synth notes; saxophones and lush ambient passages enhance the film’s romantic and poignant moments. “It has turned out to be a very prophetic film – we’re living in a kind of Blade Runner world now,” he said in 2005.
Later in the decade he scored the Palme d’Or-winning Costa-Gavras political drama Missing, starring Jack Lemmon; the Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins drama The Bounty; and the Mickey Rourke-starring Francesco. He worked again with the Blade Runner director, Ridley Scott, on 1992 film 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and elsewhere during the 1990s, soundtracked Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon and documentaries by Jacques Cousteau.
Vangelis drew on Greek instrumentation alongside the typical orchestras used in film scoring on Oliver Stone’s 2004 classical epic, Alexander.
His most recent score is for El Greco, a 2007 Greek biopic of the Renaissance painter. The Greek artist, who moved to Spain and acquired his nickname there, was much admired by Vangelis, who composed albums in 1995 and 1998 that were inspired by and named after him.
Continually celebrated for his evocative Chariots of Fire theme, Vangelis was also commissioned by sporting bodies to soundtrack major events, including the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, and the 2004 Olympics in Athens. He also wrote ballet scores and music for stage productions of Medea, The Tempest and other plays.
Solo releases remained steady alongside his commissioned work, and occasionally included collaborations with vocalists such as Paul Young.
A fascination with outer space found voice in 2016’s Rosetta, dedicated to the space probe of the same name, and Nasa appointed his 1993 piece Mythodea (which he claimed to have written in an hour) as the official music of the Mars Odyssey mission of 2001. His final album, 2021’s Juno to Jupiter, was inspired by the Nasa probe Juno and featured recordings of its launch and the workings of the probe itself in outer space.
Among those paying tribute to Vangelis was Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who hailed “a pioneer of electronic sound”.
_________________
Vangelis rarely gave interviews, but when he did they were fascinating to hear. This was one of his last.
Thinking of his loss makes me want to play this in his honor:
Unfortunately we no longer offer better. It is much, much worse at UU. If you are the slightest bit center politically (or worse, right), you will be cast aside. And this is an organization that is supposed to be about faith. It is really a liberal political organization now.
__________________
Really? So when has the UUA NOT been a political organization? If we want to make a better society, why not be political?
Everything you said was spot on. Our congregation and another one we followed were the most racist spaces I have ever encountered and I have lived in the South for the last 20 years. Everyone is judged by their race, not their words, thoughts, or actions. Heinous behavior is condoned, as long as the offender is a “social justice warrior, fighting on the side of truth.” If you are not a left leaning liberal (ideally white and well off), you will never feel welcome. That is evident by the current membership and minorities like myself that have left and now have no place of worship.
I don’t go to congregation on Sunday to discuss whatever MSNBC or Mother Jones are currently discussing. UU is now a political organization and should be striped of its tax exempt status.
I know almost everyone in here (the extreme minority that is left and active in UU) disagrees with the author. I left the church for most of these reasons. When we started, it as an open, welcoming place where all were tolerated and welcomed with open arms. In 2016 when Donald Trump was elected and the UUA assembly debacles that followed, we no longer felt welcome.
I am a conservative (not republican), Asian, non Christian. The tone of the entire organization has shifted more and more left and privileged as time goes on. Look at the UUA Facebook page, it is ridiculous and followers have decreased over the last few years. It’s sad when most posts have no comments. The UUA is increasingly catering to a minority of their members, many of whom do not actively attend the organization anymore.
When a person of color does show up (myself included), it was ridiculous. Our opinions were not valued because they were our opinions, but simply because of the color of our skin. In trying to be more inclusive, the organization became more racist. No non white person (this is literally all rich white UU members seem to do these days) wants to get in a room and watch rich white people flog themselves all day and apologize for transgressions that may or may not have ever happened. It is tiresome and has nothing to do with fellowship. It just makes those members feel better.
I would love to return to a pre 2016 organization or one who actually follows the tenants that we are supposed to. Everyone is welcome, what a joke. The only people that are welcome are rich white liberals.
There may be hope in individual congregations, but my family (everyone else left as well) will never return as long as the UUA at large is committed to spending more time on political matters than ones of faith.
_________________
So you have left the UUs because they are too political. But I wonder if you would have a problem with evangelical Christians in religious organizations being hard-core conservatives, even supporters of Donald Trump and his racism?
No, because you are a conservative yourself! No doubt, if you had your way, there would be NO religious organizations at all representing the left, liberalism, and progressive values at all. RIGHT?!
Liberals like me have been demonized in the media and by Republicans for decades. You just don’t like it when we start to fight back!
So I moved to stop the bullshit. I didn’t delete the offensive comment, but…..
A friend of mine posted this the other day on Facebook:
Johnny Depp/Amber Heard
I was married to someone diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, although that diagnosis wasn’t given until after we separated. I had no idea the nightmare I was living through, all I knew was I wasn’t being treated fairly and I was miserable. One moment he would be sweet and loving, the next he was unimaginably cruel and telling me I was a horrible person. If I tried to confront him about anything ever he would tell me it was my fault, or lie and say it didn’t happen, or he would turn and walk out the door, get in his car and drive away without saying a word. If for some reason he couldn’t get away or couldn’t lie his way out of it he would flip out, which included suddenly screaming at the top of his lungs, throwing things, breaking things, wild accusations, getting in my face, towering over me and intimidating me with his size, just terrifying out of control behavior. Whenever he acted this way he would say I made him do it. It was my fault, for example: I tried to talk to him in the car and I should know to NEVER confront him in a car so it was my fault he freaked out. Or he had to lie because the truth would upset me. The lies were constant. He would lie about anything like a knee jerk reaction, things that didn’t even make sense to lie about. He would “future fake” which is when they promise to do better in the future but really are just stringing you along. He would say whatever I wanted to hear then turn around and do whatever he wanted without any regard to the promises he made. The splitting was the worst. It’s when they view you as all good or all bad, you can’t just be a good person who makes mistakes or made an offhanded comment that hurt their feelings. If you upset them, you are pure evil and doing everything to sabotage their life. Or you are their best friend and greatest most wonderful love. He would swing back and forth between greatest love and worst enemy, sometimes within minutes.
I learned that my mother has BPD (undiagnosed, untreated). It’s why I was willing to marry someone with it. He treated me the same way my mother did/does. Even as an adult, when I did something my mother didn’t like, she would go as far as to call my boss on her private cell phone and try to get me fired (this happened 6 months ago – I’m 39 years old and a single mother). She threatened to call my college and get me kicked out when I was 30 years old and paying for my own school because I disproved a point she was trying to make about evolution. Now that they are both out of my life I have learned how amazing life can be. People with BPD drain your soul and your energy. They don’t give AF about how they make others feel, all they care about is their own emotions, like a toddler who can’t comprehend the feelings of others and throws a fit when someone sets boundaries. They tell outrageous lies about the people they’re mad at as a way to justify treating them so badly. I don’t know if they believe the lies. But if they FEEL like you did something they accept it as a fact, whether or not you actually did that thing. I’ve had my mother and my ex acknowledge I didn’t do a thing and say, “But I FEEL like you did.” They will conjure something about you up in their own mind and treat you as if you did this thing that never happened, they will tell people you did something that never happened and even try to get others to treat you like shit for something that you didn’t do. It’s insane to witness. They keep you so energy drained and beaten down that you don’t know how to get back up, and you start to believe you are the terrible person they accuse you of being, and that no one else could possibly love such a person.
I’m team Johnny all the way. I know something of what he’s been through and I admire him for his bravery in telling his story to the world. I had no idea what BPD was until a therapist suggested my mother had it and I bought a book about it. It was like someone watched my childhood through a window and wrote it down in this book. My life would have been so much better if someone had shown me sooner.
ETA an example of blame shifting and justification for abhorrent behavior. A photo of messages between my mother and I. Read from the bottom up because when you download Facebook messages it puts them newest on top to oldest on the bottom.
This reminds me of a statement that was sent to me about 2 1/2 years ago by a former friend of mine who turned out to be my WORST ENEMY!
Neither you, nor Christian ex-Bahai, let alone the dodgy moderators of that place, have correctly addressed a single indictment of your duplicitous behavior. I stand by what I said, and others seem to agree about your lot over there as wellhttps://www.reddit.com/r/BAYAN/comments/cycea7/lets_talk_about_exbahai/(not that consensus changes anything since facts stand on their own regardless who disagrees or agrees with them). You and Christian ex-Bahai are especially blind to what you say and do. But that goes with the territory of being self-righteous WASPs, so kindly stop playing the violin. Then again, white victim-playing when called out on white duplicitly always plays by the same playbook: reverse narrativization, victim blaming and gaslighting. Also, Christian Ex-Bahai still doesn’t understand what gaslighting means. Now, let’s look at your particular kind of white duplicity and dishonesty, one that people of color deal with 24/7 in a multitude of contexts with always the same reactions from you people: DENIAL and gaslighting.
You brown-nosed on the very first comment of this posthttps://www.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/cxhzog/measures_to_restore_civility/. It was after your stupid comment which I got rid of you from the moderation of realexbahais because at this point you have demonstrated that you are an asshole not to be trusted. So you have yourself to blame, and the facts demonstrate that the betraying was all your own — not mine. I cut weak links and don’t keep them.
As I have maintained for years, the superstructure and bases of Bahaism is rooted in the white Anglo-Saxon global imperial project with its capitalism. I began the podcast by offering the quote from De Tocqueville that speaks to precisely what is driving people like you, Christian Ex-Bahai as well as Scott Hakala. Then I offered social psychological analyses showing that people like you and Christian Ex-Bahai are really spiritual tourists and how what you people understand by “pluralism” is merely free market ideology masquerading as something else. I offered the link to Joseph Massad’s latest book that addresses these very same issues. All of these points you and your Evangelical Christian friend have ignored in almost exactly the same kind of terms that Baha’i cultists ignore points.
Which leads me to this point: indeed, while it is not enough to merely “bash Baha’ism”, without addressing the base and superstructure from which Bahaism subsists, this “bashing” is only telling a part of the story. I agree. But you are not interested in the other side of the story because it indicts your entire society and way of life as being what fuels the Haifan Baha’i cult because your interests (per your UU adherence) lies with perpetuating the white middle-class Anglo-Saxon imperial fallacy in its “liberal” form via the UU packaging. In other words, you are peddling Americanism, which is the real enemy here with Bahaism merely being one of its many colonial franchises, hence why my approach to these questions makes people like yourself unconformable and thus makes your own approach to “bashing Bahaism” ultimately irrelevant, only playing into the system’s hands, and more of the same.
Repeatedly you have made Islamophobic statements and asides. The fact that you now call me an “extremist” also now reinforces the fact and goes to the very heart of the white racism that animates your thinking about literally all of these issues and why you cannot be an ally to what I am about. Be that as it may, there is no such thing as reverse bigotry or reverse racism. Here is why. Learn somethinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M.
__________________
It is clear that EVERYTHING in that statement in red above is a case of victim blaming, much like what was done to my friend by her ex-husband and her mother! I also think, BTW, that my ex-wife Cheri is a case of this messed up attitude.
“Were it not for calamity, how would the sun of Thy patience shine, O Light of the worlds?” – Lawh-i-Qad-Ihtaraqa’l-Mukhlisun (Fire Tablet, Bahá’u’lláh)
May Bahá’u’lláh guide us through this dark period and may He restore the Master’s Shrine and the Twin Holy Houses, amen.
Ever since Donald Trump became President of the USA, people who are disgusted with his incredible sense of entitlement have wanted to give him and every other selfish asshole a kick in their faces!
Recently, YouTube users have begun to post stories depicting such people and how they were dealt with.
Here is an example from a channel titled “Apple Texts”, featuring one sister betraying another:
or this one of a mother wanting to be a parasite on her son and his wife:
The Debbie and Carrie Show is a web based series of videos I have made using the Plotagon app.
PLOT ELEMENTS:
Setting: A small, unnamed town in east Texas in the present day.
Storyline: The show is centered on two teenage (later adult) girls and their mothers. The early stories often deal with the Central Characters resisting the prevailing religious and political bigotries that dominate the town. As time passes, those bigotries are discredited and many people are won over to be friends with the Central Characters. Eventually, the town itself is changed completely.
Main characters:
Debbie Smith
Debbie as a young girl
Debbie as an older teen and an adult.
At the beginning of the saga, she is 13 years old. She is an atheist, like the others in her family. Her parents were divorced when she was four and then her mother moved her and her brother James from Tulsa, Oklahoma to the Town in Texas Debbie would spend the rest of her youth years in.
Carrie Sims
Carrie as a young girl.
Carrie as an older teen
Carrie as an adult
Debbie’s best friend, also age 13 at the start of the saga, later her love partner and finally her wife. Raised by a lesbian couple. Unlike the sweet and gentle Debbie, Carrie was known for her violent tendencies and was more than willing to both dish out and take beatings to defend Debbie and herself from bullies and bigots.
Sandy Smith
Original appearance
Present day appearance
Mother of Debbie, she is a lawyer (and also a restaurant owner for part of the saga) who specializes in defending the rights of LGBT people. Was raised a Christian but became atheist as a teen.
Jessica Sims
Original appearance
Present day appearance
Birth mother of Carrie, she, her wife Lucy, and Carrie all came from Boston to buy a cheap house in the Town, only to find themselves surrounded by bigots. In an effort to resist the anti-atheist and anti-LGBT bigotry, she persuaded the others to form with her an Unitarian Universalist fellowship so Debbie and Carrie would have their own values and community to identify with. Was never religious before being a co-founder of the fellowship. Owns a pharmacy for most of the saga.
Lucy Sims
Original appearance
Present day appearance
Wife of Jessica and co-mother of Carrie. Was originally a Jehovah’s Witness but became alienated from her original family after coming out as lesbian. Was converted to atheism by Jessica. Eventually became the owner of an Italian restaurant, the Tuscany Tavern. Shuns alcohol, tends to drink only water. Says Jessica is her one and only true love. As both a lesbian and an African-American, she is often a target of bigots even more than the other Central Characters, but they ALL stand together when any of them are attacked for any reason.
Here is a playlist on YouTube with most of the Debbie and Carrie stories in short episode form:
And this is a list of assemblies of the episodes in a “movie” format.
In an earlier blog entry, I looked at how Dennis DeYoung repeatedly tried to make his rock band Styx all about himself and his musical vision, eventually resulting in him being fired from the band permanently in 1999.
In a band meeting on April 12, 2012,[61] which [lead singer Geoff] Tate did not attend, the band fired both Tate’s stepdaughter, Miranda, from running the fan club, and his wife Susan, their band manager since 2005.[21] According to Wilton, the reasons were that “the last 3 years, basically it just came to a point that we didn’t have a voice in the band anymore. It was all run by the singer and his manager, the wife.”[62] On April 14, 2012, before the soundcheck for a show in São Paulo, Brazil, Tate had an argument with the other members about the firing of his family.[16][21] This confrontation became heated, leading to Tate retaliating by knocking down the drum kit,[63] throwing several punches and physically assaulting[64] and spitting on Rockenfield and Wilton.[60] Over the course of the band’s next three shows, Wilton, Rockenfield, and Jackson felt that Tate continued to misbehave and they came “to the conclusion that they can no longer work or perform with Mr. Tate.”[21][65] They called a band meeting on June 5[65] (some sources say June 6[21]). Tate withdrew from this conference call, after which the other band members voted to “consider Geoff Tate expelled from the band” and “continue to use the Queensrÿche name with a new lead singer”, prompting Tate to take legal action.[66]
So why did it all come to this? Well, it happened because Tate, who was indeed a co-founder of the band, was also one of rock music’s greatest singers and so he must have thought he could never be replaced.
Here is one of Queensryche’s early songs, featuring Tate on lead vocals:
No one can deny his incredible power…….but that does not excuse his trying to constantly dominate the rest of the band, ever!
Geoff Tate tried to form his own version of Queensryche and this band even released an album:
A fist aimed at the camera with the letters F U on it? Real classy, Tate!
Legal action later caused Tate to be deprived of any rights to the Queensryche name. Meanwhile…..
When the band flew [new lead singer Todd] La Torre in from Florida to Seattle nine days before the show to rehearse at Rockenfield’s house, they hadn’t played a note together, nor did they know whether it would work.[44] Although La Torre was a big fan of Queensrÿche’s older albums,[62] he was not very familiar with the songs on Promised Land and they had only limited time to prepare for the shows, the band focused on the material from the Queensrÿche EP to the band’s fourth studio album, Empire,[62] which are generally considered the band’s heaviest releases[by whom?], and according to La Torre: “are the songs and the time period that most represented the core sound of what Queensryche material was about”.[73] Their first rehearsal together went very smoothly, according to Wilton: “we blasted through 18 to 20 songs and everybody was amazed from the professionality, the musicianship and tone of Todd’s voice.”[62] Rockenfield was immediately reassured: “the second we played “Queen of the Reich”, it was all over.”[44]
It wasn’t long before she began to have a strong influence on my own Plotagon stories. For example, the leading couple in her videos are Paul Jones and Vicky Jones (aka the Blazing Beauty).
I had already made a character for the Debbie and Carrie Show named Vicky Sims. That my Vicky had the same name as the Vicky of Mary Bliss was only a coincidence, but then I decided to give my Vicky Sims a love partner…..and so I named him PAUL!
Then I took it a step further and made a copy of Vicky Jones to have her meet my Vicky Sims.
Strictly speaking, as an Honorable Skeptic, I do not expect to have followers of my ethical philosophy. Nor am I a blind follower of anyone (because then I wouldn’t be a skeptic). No, not even Carl Sagan, though he was a idol of mine in childhood and he was one of my direct influences in the creation of my standard of ethics. But there is one person whose vision so closely mirrors my own, and even exceeds it in many ways, that I must pay tribute to him as a brother in arms against ignorance, superstition, and self-serving bigotry: Nick Karean.
He lives in a nation split between Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and Hindus, among other religious communities, yet he was a fundamentalist Christian early in his life, just as I was. Eventually, however, he learned to get away from that and developed critical thinking, becoming one of the strongest advocates for reason, science and objective truth I’ve ever known. So he and I have more in common than almost anyone else I know.
Note: After Wahid Azal and I became enemies, he was so desperate to eliminate this podcast from YouTube that in November of 2021 he filed a false copyright claim against it and I had to file a counter notification to get it back. He must know that I can use this video against him, as a warning to others to never trust him enough to collaborate with him on future podcasts! And now that I know he considered this a threat, that’s exactly what it will be used for!
The blog entries giving details of my recent battles with Azal are :
I am coming for this blog now, Gomer. You have one choice: take down all of the postings you have made about me here, one by one delete them, as well as elsewhere, and we will call it a day and I will leave you alone from there on out. Don’t do it, and I will send lawyers after you to force you to take them down and I will collect damages from you personally in the process, esp. since we now have your home address. Don’t believe me, go talk to an attorney and ask them what I can and cannot do to you. Your choice.
___________________
https://dalehusband.com/2021/11/21/update-on-my-current-battle-on-youtube/#comment-20997 November 25, 2021 at 9:14 PM You don’t have a leg to stand on, Gomer. If you ever entered a courtroom with me, I would bury you. This is why you put on the hissy-fit hysterics because you know this too, fucking degenerate! This is also why you tried to kill yourself.
__________________
These next two comments were automatically thrown in my blog’s trash bin:
That’s not how copyright works, idiot. The content was made from my computer by me. I never granted you any right to the content. Therefore the copyright remains mine. You have asserted it for the record yourself. Any court and/or lawyer worth their salt will tell you the same. I have you by the balls, and I will collect all kinds of damages from your sorry redneck paedo BIA a$$. Watch me!
https://dalehusband.com/2021/12/08/defeating-wahid-azal-again/#comment-21124 December 8, 2021 at 6:36 PM Not how copyright works, dickhead. You were never given any rights by Wahid Azal to the content. The content was made by Wahid Azal from his computer. You have asserted for the record yourself that the “original version” is his. You are toast, and no lawyer or court worth their salt will tell you differently. Kill yourself now, and this time succeed where you failed last time. It is the easier option for you because if Wahid Azal takes you to court, you are dead.
___________________
https://dalehusband.com/2021/12/08/defeating-wahid-azal-again/#comment-21136 December 9, 2021 at 3:04 AM Yes, you do need permission. No legal transfer of copyright was ever made over to you. You have violated intellectual property and you have committed fraud. None of the screenshots you have posted remotely demonstrate any transfer of rights of intellectual property. Go talk to a lawyer.
_________________
https://dalehusband.com/2021/12/08/defeating-wahid-azal-again/#comment-21138 December 9, 2021 at 3:11 AM Because, dumbass, your logo is not the content. The content is the podcast which was made on Wahid Azal’s device. He has sole propriety and copyright over it. Not you. You can keep your stupid logo. But the content belongs to Azal – and the content is independent of any logo by you – and this is EXACTLY what any court will tell you. You aren’t a lawyer. Don’t know the first thing about the subject. But you are going to be taught a lesson now you will not soon forget.
_________________
I could assert repeatedly that one should ask a scientist to confirm that the earth is flat and that wouldn’t make it so, of course.
So for several weeks, I kept waiting and wishing and hoping I would have my day in court with him…….and it NEVER happened! Instead, I finally got these emails:
Dear Dale Husband,
In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we’ve completed processing your counter notification.
The following videos have been restored unless you have deleted them:
We are writing in response to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) counter-notification that you provided to us relating to material located on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/654107711 (the “Material”), which was previously removed as a result of a DMCA notice.
Please note that, as of the date hereof, in accordance with DMCA provision 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(2)(C), Vimeo has restored the Material. Vimeo has also notified the person that filed the DMCA notice that Vimeo did not receive notice, within the prescribed statutory period, that a court action was filed seeking to restrain you from engaging in alleged infringing activity relating to the Material.
We trust that this concludes this matter.
Sincerely, Vimeo Inc.
_____________
SO WAHID AZAL CHICKENED OUT IN THE END! ROTFLMAO!!!!
I am beyond disgusted with the TLC network. The initials originally stood for The Learning Channel, but over the decades it has degenerated into a cesspool of reality shows and idiocy! Indeed, I consider it to be downright PERVERTED!
Among other examples of the filth that has been shown on it……
19 Kids and Counting (formerly 17 Kids and Counting and 18 Kids and Counting) is an American reality television series that aired on the cable channel TLC for seven years until its cancellation in 2015. The show features the Duggar family: parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 19 children – nine daughters and ten sons – all of whose names begin with the letter “J”. During the duration of the show, two children were born, three children were married and four grandchildren were born.
The show focuses on the life of the Duggar family, who are devout Baptists, and frequently discusses values of purity, modesty and faith in God. The Duggars avoid birth control, saying they have decided to allow God to determine the number of children they have. All of the children are homeschooled and access to entertainment such as movies and television is limited. The Duggar family has also used “blanket time,” a controversial practice, with their children. They practice chaperonedcourtship, in which a couple becomes acquainted only in a group setting. The values presented on the show have been associated with the Quiverfull movement, which has been described as promoting strict family conformity, male hierarchies and subservient roles for women. The Duggars have stated that they are not associated with the Quiverfull movement. However, in an article formerly published on their website titled “Why Have Such a Large Family?”, the Duggars reference Psalms 127:3-5, from which the Quiverfull movement name comes. Moreover, in 2001, Jim Bob and Michelle were interviewed for an article published on a Quiverfull affiliated website.
I have written about the Quiverfull movement before:
And I have suspected for a long time that some of the leaders of that movement may be pedophiles. And now we have evidence for that! Josh Duggar, who was featured on the show mentioned above, is now going to prison for child rape, including some of his own sisters as his victims! (((((PUKE)))))
Telltale wants Josh Duggar to never be free again. For me, that’s not enough!
A pedophile is a person attracted sexually only to children and aggressively seeking them out for sexual purposes, disregarding their own feelings and needs. Not only do I condemn such a thing, I actually believe convicted child molesters deserve the DEATH PENALTY!
I remember seeing a lawyer, saying that “smiling for your mugshot is the dumbest thing you can do.” Cause it makes the prosecutors job so much easier. They can just come out and say “Look at them! They’re smiling! They’re not sorry they did this crime at all!”
There’s NO WAY he did this to his little sisters and then didn’t offend again for 15 years. We’ll never know how many kids he hurt.
Likewise, there is no way of knowing how many children were raped by Catholic priests over the course of the Catholic Church’s over 1500 year history. The victims could number in the tens of millions! And I blame priestly celibacy for that!
Toddlers & Tiaras or Another Toddlers & Tiaras is an American reality television series that aired on TLC from January 27, 2009 to October 16, 2013. After a three-year hiatus due to much controversy, Another Toddlers and Tiaras aired the sequel on August 24, 2016. The show follows the personal lives of families of contestants in a child beauty pageant. Like many shows about children pageants, it generated controversy for dressing the children provocatively. The show led to other reality show spin-offs: Eden’s World, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and Cheer Perfection. On November 24, 2016, TLC cancelled the show after its 7th season.
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was an American reality television series that aired on TLC featuring the family of child beauty pageant contestant Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson. The show premiered on August 8, 2012, and ended on August 14, 2014. Thompson and her family originally rose to fame on TLC’s reality series Toddlers & Tiaras.[1] The show’s name comes from a taunt that Alana hurled at another pageant contestant during her debut in Toddlers and Tiaras,[2] but a sweeping misinterpretation from the general public resulted in Alana being referred to as “Honey Boo Boo Child” instead. The show revolves around Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson and her family’s adventures in the town of McIntyre, Georgia. The reality series received predominantly negative reviews from television critics during its run.
On October 24, 2014, TLC cancelled the series after four seasons when cast member June “Mama June” Shannon was seen with Mark Anthony McDaniel, a man who served 10 years in prison after being convicted of aggravated child molestation in 2004 and who is a registered sex offender. This prompted Shannon to admit to Entertainment Tonight that the father of her daughter Lauryn “Pumpkin” Shannon was not McDaniel as previously stated, but Michael Anthony Ford, another convicted sex offender who served time for sexual exploitation of minors after being caught on ‘To Catch a Predator‘ in 2005.[3] A number of episodes had already been taped for a fifth season, but none were released until TLC aired four of them as the two-hour special Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: The Lost Episodes on April 21, 2017.
YIKES!!! That mother should have lost custody of her daughters. And Alana Thompson should get years of intense therapy!
____________________
Blair, aka the iilluminaughtii, slammed Toddlers and Tiaras with this:
It seems to me that for pedophiles, both the Quiverfull movement and the TLC Network are like buffet restaurants. And we should go after both of those things until they are GONE!
Wow, I thought Donald Trump and other bigoted Republicans were the worst hypocrites in the world! But instead…..
Well, just see all these screenshots for yourself!
So he steals my blog entries, posts copies of them on HIS account in the Internet Archive, misrepresents them to defame me, accuses me of defaming someone else, and finally claims as HIS property and not mine a podcast that is clearly mine too and files copyright claims to suppress the podcast in both YouTube and Vimeo, violating my rights as a copyright holder.
This meme sums up that asshole’s totally depraved character:
BTW, Vimeo gave me his address and phone number……and I will be looking for a lawyer to sue him over all he has done to me! It’s finally time for that sociopath’s abuse to end!
exBaha’i atheist
thank you very much!!!
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 