Someone made a comment below one of my oldest blog entries here and it ended up in my spam folder. I not only pulled it out of that folder and approved it, I wish to respond directly to it here to make sure that it gets maximum exposure, because I found it to be sheer nonsense! The original parts of the statement will be in red italics and my responses will be in green bold.

https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/why-i-quit-the-baha%e2%80%99i-faith/#comment-3010

Mac
worldcitizen999@gmail.com
121.212.2.11

Dear Dale.

Sorry, but unless you are writing a letter to me or you are a friend of mine, do not address me like this; it just looks silly to me.

When I look around me at nature or the stars and its order and complexity even down to the atom I cannot deny the existence of a God.

The argument from complexity was blown away by Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, and the interaction of the known physical and chemical laws of nature can easily create the illusion of complexity. Your lack of imagination proves nothing.

Even when I see a very beautiful woman I know that it’s impossible for us to ever have created such beauty not to mention the workings of the human mind.

Tell that to the makers of World of Warcraft, who have designed some very beautiful models of game characters. Are they gods?

So I easily accept we were fashioned and designed and powered by God and that with our random diversity we often make decisions against our best interests which cause us suffering and unhappiness. But as God has decided for us to be free agents He Himself has only chosen to be an advisor but left the hard choices up to us and given us the freedom to follow His Ways or ignore them.

It would make sense to deduce that God punishes people for their bad decisions  if only people who made such decisions suffered from disasters, injuries, or diseases of any kind. What about completely innocent children who suffer and even die from such things? Is that why the early Christians came up with the absurdity of Original Sin? Or why a certain Hebrew writer came up with the long winded nonsense found in the book of Job?

To offer us a way to live happily and abundantly He sends Messengers from time to time with Infallible Guidance. We do not have to follow it. That is our choice as you have found. But for me and my life I personally would trust God on this as He created life and knows what He’s doing and I acknowledge His Wisdom is far greater than mine and I have much more to gain by following His advice than mine.

How do you know what Messengers are really from God? How can you trust God at all when you cannot contact Him directly and he has to send Messengers? That is itself a severe limitation of God that destroys His credibility from the start. What you are really doing is following the advice and commandments of PEOPLE who claim to be Messengers of God. You have a mind of your own, why not use it?

But in the end its a matter of knowing that we don’t know everything and are in need of perfect knowledge that makes me bow down and worship the God Who created the universe and man and the human mind instead of assuming I know it all when I don’t. Have I ever created even a speck of dust from emptiness or nothing? The person who can do these things has got my ears and heart and I take seriously what He says because He is All Powerful and All Knowing. So if He says that Baha’u’llah’s mind and advice was perfect and infallible as well as the Universal House of Justice I trust Him Who created life itself and the universe on this one.

Humility is a wonderful thing to have, as long as it is had by EVERYONE involved. To me, no one is more arrogant than a person who claims to be a Messenger from God, who fails to prove himself. How do you know what is true and best? By seeing how claims measure up to reality. That’s what science does. Religion does not and that is why it so often fails. Science has never even provided direct evidence for the existence of any god let alone the specific God of the Abrahamic religions. Until that is done, all the other issues in religion are pointless.

Everything in my home, every single item had a maker, a designer. So the universe and this world and man’s complex mind and thought patterns just came out of an explosion and somehow randomly organised itself into complex intelligence?? No way!!

This is total ignorance about how both evolution and the Big Bang theory was supposed to have worked.

This issue is all about acknowledging and trusting in a God Who can create life and instill intelligence into it and trusting that He Knows what’s best for us. Our ways where have they led us? Wars, bloodshed, unhappiness and misery. Widespread poverty and moral bankruptness.

Religion has caused plenty of wars, bloodshed, unhappiness, and misery as well. Too often it has been used as a tool of oppression and bigotry.

Whether we choose to follow them or not I find God’s Ways far better than mans. He’s urging us to love and unity while man is urging us to ignore these things and just go chasing after money and pleasures. In the end its OUR choice. If we choose to have a corrupt promiscuous world then God doesn’t interfere He only offers us a better way. But if we don’t want it we can choose to live in a world filled with corruption, greed, poverty, wars and hatred. If that’s what we want God, as you see is not stopping us from having this hell. And we can have this hell for however long we want it. God is not interfering only offering a way out if we so choose.

It’s not and can never be a strict either/or situation. We can find a path that deals strictly with reality and that produces a more decent society as well. But it will never be perfect whether we follow religions or not. Why? Because perfection is entirely a subjective construction of the human mind. In the real world, it does not exist!

The person who wrote the comment above should read all my other blog entries about the Baha’i Faith and about religion in general. I’m tired of the sheer stupidity of things like that.