In the exBaha’i forum in reddit, several teenagers and others have offered testimonies about losing their faith in their youth, even if they were raised in it. Still others have offered criticisms explaining why they would never convert to the Faith. One actual Baha’i even criticized the Faith in the Baha’i subreddit itself!
Category Archives: religion
Another former Christian rocker defects to non-theism
Read this story:
https://nypost.com/2020/05/27/christian-rocker-jonathan-steingard-no-longer-believes-in-god/
Christian rocker Jonathan Steingard reveals he no longer believes in God
The frontman of a leading Christian rock band has admitted he no longer believes in God.
“After growing up in a Christian home, being a pastor’s kid, playing and singing in a Christian band, and having the word ‘Christian’ in front of most of the things in my life — I am now finding that I no longer believe in God,” Hawk Nelson frontman Jonathan Steingard wrote in a nine-page confessional on Instagram.
The 36-year-old Canadian rocker admitted that losing his religion occurred over several years of serious doubts — even while penning some of the band’s most overtly Christian tunes.
He said he was only now ready to “share my deepest truth” because Hawk Nelson “isn’t playing shows or making new music at the moment” and he no longer needs the band to support his family.
He said he was only now ready to “share my deepest truth” because Hawk Nelson “isn’t playing shows or making new music at the moment” and he no longer needs the band to support his family.
While he did not say outright that he was leaving the band, he made it clear he was leaving the religious rock movement.
“I no longer fear losing my place in Christian music. I know this means giving it up voluntarily,” he said in the lengthy confessional.
Steingard says he had long felt “uncomfortable” with parts of worship that “felt like some kind of weird performance art.”
But his “belief in God truly began to unravel” when he started challenging different versions of Bible stories, he said. “Once I found that I didn’t believe the Bible was the Perfect Word of God — it didn’t take long to realize that I was no longer sure he was there at all,” he wrote.
That realization left him in a “very dark place for a while” as he feared being shunned by his family and friends.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAbHm10lt7w/
“I feel like I’ve mostly emerged from that dark place now — because I’ve discovered that life really does go on,” he said. “My family is showing me incredible love and support, even though I know this grieves them.”
He admitted being “terrified to post this” — and insisted he was “not looking for a debate.”
“Just a chance to share my story in the hopes some good can come from it. I love you all,” he wrote.
Hawk Nelson told People that “God is still for Jon and he still matters,” saying, “that truth doesn’t change just because we question it.”
“We are called to love one another unconditionally, as God loves us,” Daniel Biro, Micah Kuiper and David Niacaris said in a statement.
“Ever thankful and grateful for how God has used this band, the music and the relationships and how he continues to do so.”
It is clear that he was a Christian only because he was raised in it, and his being the son of a clergyman must have made him think he needed to measure up to his father’s example. But if his spiritual orientation was not Christian, that was a futile effort.
Once I found that I didn’t believe the Bible was the Perfect Word of God — it didn’t take long to realize that I was no longer sure he was there at all
That’s quite a leap from Christian fundamentalism to agnosticism, though I myself made that leap at age 20. But it should have been obvious from Day One that the Bible wasn’t perfect. Didn’t he ever read it before?
https://dalehusband.com/category/religion/bible/
He can still be a Christian and not be a delusional extremist, as I tried to explain here:
If your Spiritual Orientation is CHRISTIAN….
But if he really wants to defect, he can still find a spiritual home here:
He’s going to have a tough time finding a new purpose for himself, but at least he can get support here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/
And even talk to other Christian rockers that have also defected as mentioned here:
Rewriting a bigoted article about religion
Another Baha’i proves a mere annoyance on YouTube
Watch this video:
Naturally, Baha’is rushed to attack it and critics of the Baha’i Faith also showed up to deal with it, including me.
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What a wuss! Anyway, here’s another video from that same channel:
I wish Baha’is, Christians, Republicans and others would just stop with the propaganda tactics and just tell the TRUTH!
Pixelberry Studios, the Choices app, and Perfect Match.
In 2018, I downloaded and began playing an app on my new smartphone titled Choices: Stories You Play created by a mobile gaming company called Pixelberry Studios. It features stories of romance that you have some control over by making decisions on behalf of the stories’ Main Characters. The characters include teenagers in high school, young adults in college, older adults dealing with mysteries and fighting criminals and other powerful enemies, and even some historical scenarios.
https://choices-stories-you-play.fandom.com/wiki/Choices:_Stories_You_Play_Wikia
Of all the stories I have played so far, my favorite by far has been Perfect Match.
The tragic case of Betty Broderick
The story of Betty Broderick illustrates how a strong religious upbringing cannot always prevent acts of betrayal and violence.
Shoghi Effendi, Covenant Breaker
In a blog entry from over a decade ago, I directly assaulted the credibility of the Guardianship of Shoghi Effendi, who led the Baha’i Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957. To this day, I consider The Fatal Flaw of Baha’i Authority to be my one of my greatest works and the ultimate refutation of the Baha’i Faith as led by the leadership based in Haifa, Israel.
I have also debunked the credibility of Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament, the very document that Shoghi Effendi based his authority on.
https://bahai-writings-criticism.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-critical-analysis-of-will-and.html
It is shocking enough that the so-called Guardian did not uphold the Covenant at the time of his death. But what if I told you that he also broke it while he was alive?
When he was Guardian, Shoghi Effendi would often expel dissident Baha’is from the community, including nearly ALL his closest relatives. But a reading of the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha reveals that he should NOT have had that power and he was abusing his position as Guardian!
After declaring the absolute authority of the Guardian, Abdu’l-Baha says this:
My object is to show that the Hands of the Cause of God must be ever watchful and so soon as they find anyone beginning to oppose and protest against the Guardian of the Cause of God, cast him out from the congregation of the people of Bahá and in no wise accept any excuse from him.
So the Hands of the Cause of God are expected to expel those disloyal to the Guardian, not the Guardian himself. Meanwhile….
Should any of the members [of the Universal House of Justice] commit a sin, injurious to the common weal, the Guardian of the Cause of God hath at his own discretion the right to expel him, whereupon the people must elect another one in his stead.
So the only expulsion the Guardian is empowered to do is to remove members of the UHJ from that body, and not necessarily from the Baha’i community completely. So how did Shoghi Effendi gain the same power to expel Baha’is completely as the Hands of the Cause of God? By merely asserting he had that power already! But if he did, then the Will and Testament of Abdu’l-Baha really should have read:
My object is to show that the Guardian of the Cause of God must be ever watchful and so soon as he finds anyone beginning to oppose and protest against him, cast the Covenant breaker out from the congregation of the people of Bahá and in no wise accept any excuse from him.
The Constitution of the United States of America grants Congress, not the President, the power to declare war, but it also grants the President the rank of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. But the last time Congress did declare war was in December 1941, right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet the USA has fought wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq without a Congressional declaration of war, because of the President taking advantage of his position of Commander-in-Chief. This is straight up TYRANNY the American people should NEVER have tolerated!
Likewise, Baha’is the world over blindly assumed that Shoghi Effendi had the right to expel people from the Baha’i community. He didn’t even start to appoint living Hands of the Cause of God until 1951, thirty years after he began his Guardianship and he NEVER served as a member of the UHJ! Why not? Was his megalomania so problematic that he was never willing to share power with anyone in his early days as Guardian?
Then he never should have been Guardian to begin with.
Featured in a magazine critical of the Baha’i Faith
A few months ago, I was contacted via Facebook by Hamid Farnagh and he requested I provide material for his magazine, which is dedicated to criticizing the Baha’i Faith. I complied and soon portions of my writings appeared there, along with a description of me.
I then requested he send me an English translation of what was written so I could be sure my writings had been properly represented. He promised me he would do so, but his efforts were delayed by his contracting the coronavirus, which he survived. Once he got well, he kept his word to me and I got the translation in email, which I then downloaded and read. Now I will share that text with my readers.
Confronting a Christian evangelist in YouTube
Watch this video:
In the comments section, this person popped up to begin preaching, proving that some Christian idiots simply don’t know when to shut up and act like adults.
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So I decided to give this person a verbal body slam.
Then I nailed him to the wall with this:
Talk about shocking religious scandals!
How religious sects can be a farce for embarrassment
Read this ridiculous article:
https://blog.oup.com/2020/04/how-religious-sects-can-be-a-force-for-good/
How religious sects can be a force for good
On Sunday, 29 March, Russell M. Nelson, president of the 16-million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, released a video from Salt Lake City calling on church members everywhere to join in a fast “to pray for relief from the physical, emotional, and economic effects of this global pandemic.”
Some 71 years before, on 6 April 1949, members of the True Jesus Church around the world responded to the call of their leader, Wei Yisa, to fast and “pray for peace.” Communist forces were advancing on the city of Nanjing, where the church headquarters was located. Shortages were severe and prices were skyrocketing.
“It is hard to buy even one grain of rice,” reported an article in the Holy Spirit Times, the church’s international periodical.
One month’s worth of contributions is not enough to cover basic needs such as a day’s vegetables. It is not enough to cover even one day’s postage. We have begun to take good wood beams intended for building and sell them for firewood.
A worldwide fast as a response to a life-threatening crisis, just as spring was beginning to warm the days and coax bright colors from the earth, is a lot for these two churches to have in common. But the parallels go far beyond this.
Both the True Jesus Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are restorationist churches, claiming to have restored the true gospel of Jesus Christ after centuries of apostasy. The Latter-day Saint tradition starts in the spring of 1820 when a New York farmboy named Joseph Smith said he had a vision in which God the Father and Jesus Christ told him none of the existing churches were true. The True Jesus Church tradition starts nearly a century later in the spring of 1917, when a rural northeastern Chinese man named Wei Enbo said he had a vision in which Jesus Christ commanded him to “correct the Church.”
Both Smith and Wei were charismatic leaders who claimed to receive divine revelation, were reported to have performed miraculous feats of healing, frequently got on the wrong side of the law, and died young. Both were succeeded by pragmatic leaders (Brigham Young and Wei Yisa) who solidified church institutions and ensured the movement’s long-term survival.
Both churches have continued to thrive and expand globally, though they remain tiny as far as world religious movements are concerned. In 2017 the True Jesus Church, now with 1.5 million members, commemorated the 100th anniversary of Wei Enbo’s founding vision. This year the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, claiming 16 million members, celebrates the 200th anniversary of Joseph Smith’s first vision (coincidentally, the day Smith formally organized the church in 1830 was 6 April—the same day as the True Jesus Church fast in 1949).
Restorationist churches are by nature exclusivist. For instance, Wei Enbo taught that no one could be saved unless they were baptized face-down and unless they had spoken in tongues. This exclusivist certainty leads to a universalistic orientation. In other words, the more a religious tradition insists that specific particulars of theology and practice are absolutely essential, the more likely it is to have mission outposts everywhere. If you believe your church is the only complete form of Christianity, when you move to another city or country, the local cathedral or neighborhood megachurch will not meet your needs. Wherever you go, you will seek out fellow believers like yourself, and if there are none, you will begin to seek converts.
Small, exclusivist religious groups tend to irritate people around them. Throughout their history, fellow Christians have labeled these two churches as disreputable and cultish. The Latter-day Saint movement began in upstate New York, but was driven west by flare-ups of mob violence and state suppression. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Communist party-state banned the True Jesus Church, imprisoning leaders and forcing rank-and-file members to meet secretly in their houses.
It’s sometimes difficult for upstart religious movements to strike the right balance between what sociologist Armand Mauss has called the twin dilemmas of respectability and disrepute. This is evident with the case of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus at the center of the coronavirus outbreak in South Korea. Also led by a charismatic individual, also accused of being a cult, and also with a membership that likes to do things together, the church is now under fire.
Yet the resonance between the worldwide fasts of the True Jesus Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the spring of 1949 and 2020 suggests that such small but distinctive religious traditions also have something uniquely positive to offer. In the aftermath of World War II and today at the beginning of the twenty-first century, concepts such as “global arena” or “global community” are certainly viable. Yet in actuality, with real people, global scale tends to be overwhelming. It is nearly impossible to cast a global net without being sunk by the size of the catch. Small religious movements, however, are better positioned to pull it off.
Like Wei Yisa’s appeal to the True Jesus Church members in 1949, Russell M. Nelson’s call for a fast at the beginning of the first week of April 2020 went out to believers in such places as China, Japan, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. Tens of thousands, possibly even millions of stomachs around the world went empty in concert. A fast offering was also collected to aid humanitarian efforts to ease the blow COVID-19 is dealing to the most vulnerable.
In times of global pandemic, inhabitants of the planet realize how inextricably we are connected, and also how little we usually have to do with each other, given vast divides in language, culture, space, and experience. In times like these, believers in tiny global communities who have long been eager to call each other sister and brother offer a sense of what is possible.
First, how can it be “good” to set up and promote sects within ANY religion that divide followers of the same religion against each other? That only appeals to egomaniacs and idiots.
I addressed this nonsense here:
In most cases, you must be a CHRISTIAN and nothing else. Do NOT claim as your primary religious identity any subdivision within Christianity, such as Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Mormon, or anything else. You would be a Christian who might go to a Baptist or Catholic church, but that’s it. Reject as necessary or justified any division within the Christian community that claims to be the one true religion. It is only CHRISTIANITY itself that ever should have made that claim. Not Mormonism, not the Jehovah’s Witnesses, nor any other such radical “reformist” or “restorationist” group within Christianity. These are simply additional divisions that do more damage to the credibility of Christianity itself.
I always thought it was the height of hubris that efforts to reform the Christian churches in the past, like that of Martin Luther and John Calvin during the Protestant Reformation were considered inadequate, but only with someone like Joseph Smith could restoration of true Christianity be accomplished and that only that specific path within Christianity could bring salvation to followers. That actually contradicts what Jesus said.
Matthew 16:18
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Emphasis mine)
Also:
Mark 9:38-40
John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons, but we told him to stop because he wasn’t in our group.”
“Don’t stop him!” Jesus said. “No one who performs a miracle in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me.
Anyone who is not against us is for us.
So a Christian is a Christian, period. All those conflicts and even outright persecutions of various Christian factions by other Christians were a violation of Jesus’ true teachings.
Even more stupid is the commandments of religious leaders to merely pray and fast rather than actually get up and do some practical work to deal with a crisis, like the current coronavirus pandemic. Even the many people that have been thrown out of work recently can still go volunteer at hospitals to help treat patients, but that option was not even mentioned.
Oh, wait….
Matthew 7:21-23
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’
Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
So…..it IS possible to do miracles in Jesus’s name but still be rejected by him in the end. You know, that could refer to charlatans like Joseph Smith and other cult founders that have turned believers in Jesus against each other.
Of course, such inconsistency even in the explicit teachings of Jesus himself would explain the fragmented nature of Christians around the world too.
From brothers to enemies
To me, one of the most damning things about Baha’i history is the way the family of Baha’u’llah repeatedly tore itself apart over the “Covenant” of the Faith. The first such split was between Baha’u’llah and his brother Mirza Yahya (Sub-i-Azal). Yahya had been appointed by the Bab to lead the Babi community, but after a few years it became increasingly clear to most Babis that Baha’u’llah was the better leader and so when he declared himself to be the one the Bab had foretold would come after him, most of the Babis promptly became Baha’is. Perhaps ALL of them might have done so if Mirza Yahya had not rejected Baha’u’llah. In the Kitab-i-Aqdas, Baha’u’llah condemned his brother for his alleged disloyalty.
Dale the Hammer Strikes Again!
I’m loving reddit as a web community more than ever.
An apparent follower of the Bab, but not Baha’u’llah, came to the exBaha’i subreddit. I naturally suspected them of being an agent of Wahid Azal, sent like the others to disrupt our work. Continue reading
Joshua, a Biblical Book of Genocide and Scientific Absurdity
In two previous blog entries, I focused on how the Bible contains both an erroneous statement inconsistent with modern astronomy, as well as a story depicting outright genocide.
Those were bad. But the book of Joshua depicts both at the same time!
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/jos/10.html
Joshua 10
10:1 Now it came to pass, when Adonizedec king of Jerusalem had heard how Joshua had taken Ai, and had utterly destroyed it; as he had done to Jericho and her king, so he had done to Ai and her king; and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel, and were among them;10:2 That they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty.
10:3 Wherefore Adonizedec king of Jerusalem, sent unto Hoham king of Hebron, and unto Piram king of Jarmuth, and unto Japhia king of Lachish, and unto Debir king of Eglon, saying,
10:4 Come up unto me, and help me, that we may smite Gibeon: for it hath made peace with Joshua and with the children of Israel.
10:5 Therefore the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon, gathered themselves together, and went up, they and all their hosts, and encamped before Gibeon, and made war against it.
10:6 And the men of Gibeon sent unto Joshua to the camp to Gilgal, saying, Slack not thy hand from thy servants; come up to us quickly, and save us, and help us: for all the kings of the Amorites that dwell in the mountains are gathered together against us.
10:7 So Joshua ascended from Gilgal, he, and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valour. So Joshua and his mighty men of valor came to fight the Amorites.
10:8And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear them not: for I have delivered them into thine hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee.
10:9 Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly, and went up from Gilgal all night.So Joshua attacked.
10:10And the LORD discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth up to Bethhoron, and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah. And God discomfited the Amorites at Gibeon, killing them with a great slaughter, and chasing them along the way.
10:11 And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.
10:12 Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
10:13And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.And the sun stood and moon stood still, until Joshua finished killing his enemies. [2]10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel.
This is literally impossible. First, because the apparent movement of the Sun is caused by the rotation of Earth, the sudden stopping of Earth would have caused everything on Earth not attached to the ground to be thrown sideways, including water in the oceans, rivers and lakes. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Likewise, the stopping of the moon in its orbit would have caused it to fall towards Earth, eventually crashing into Earth in only a few days.
Therefore the writer of that story above was not sharing the Word of God at all. And one wonders why so many people consider the Bible to be infallible even now.
The Hajj, the Coronavirus, and Islamophobia.
A debate in the UU subreddit over the 2017 hiring controversy.
For some background, read these:
What integrity in leadership looks like
Stop whining about “censorship”!
A Critical Mistake in the UU World
Reopening Old Wounds Among Unitarian Universalists
Now, the issues dealt with in those blog entries are being rehashed yet again in a UU subreddit.
Destroying Wahid Azal’s credibility forever!
Previous blog entries dealing with Wahid Azal are as follows.
Baha’i government would be totally tyrannical
(Azal made a couple of comments there)
Baha’is must reject the Guardianship!
(He made several comments there.)
Another Battle with a Haifan Baha’i, this time on Blogspot
Another Baha’i picks a fight with me on YouTube
A Podcast/Interview featuring myself and Wahid Azal
Confronting Scott Hakala on Quora
Wahid Azal Slanders Me and Others in Reddit
Betrayed by Wahid Azal (podcast)
Suspended from reddit!
Wahid Azal strikes again!
Restoring my presence in reddit
Restoring my presence in reddit
First, watch this video:
After realizing that my previous tactics against Wahid Azal and his allies in reddit only hurt me, I changed my strategy.
And in the process, I have gained a new ally.
The Persian Baha’i dilemma
For over a century, the leadership of the Baha’i community has sought to make their religion a world one and not just one centered on the Middle East and people of Persian/Shiite descent. Yet because the Faith was founded by such people, they tended to be a privileged class in Baha’i communities around the world. Now, however, not so much. It seem ironic that Baha’is taking the anti-racist teachings to heart are now causing problems for some Persian Baha’is.
Read this first: https://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-distress-of-the-privileged/
As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change. The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.
Now read this:
https://bahaism.blogspot.com/2019/09/an-open-letter-to-kenneth-bowers-from.html
To
Mr. Kenneth E. Bowers
Secretary
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United StatesI have just read your letter/warnings regarding the activities of one Ms. Bahareh Moghaddam, who you feel is trying to deceive and misguide the Baha’is of Iranian descent by sowing the ‘seeds of discord’. Well, you may or may not be right in your analysis, but as a sincere and third generation Baha’i, I wish to mention that before breaking into pen please follow the principle that Ignorance sometimes is a Bliss (i.e you could have ignored her). Now I am sure many Baha’is will take a chance to connect themselves with the ‘misguided soul’.
Having given my advice to you regarding the Enemies of Faith, I have some very rough and tough questions to ask. You may forward it to Beloved Universal House of Justice for its explanation.
We, Persian Baha’is are concluding that PERSECUTION is something which is destined to us. We face persecution in the country where we pioneer, we face persecution in our own country and now we are facing persecution in our own Faith by fellow Baha’is.
Dear Secretary, we see a very systematic persecution of Persian Baha’is in the Baha’i Administration. It looks like there is systematic cleansing of Persian Baha’is from the Baha’i Administration.
The representation of the Persian Baha’is in the Universal House of Justice has gone down tremendously, and they are being replaced by unskilled, ignorant Baha’is.
The ITC has been cleansed of many Persian Baha’i except Muna Tehrani. The number of Persian Bahai’s as counsellors have come down drastically and the story is not different for the ABMs.
They were asked to leave their place of pioneer where they had established themselves, gained respect, involved themselves in Teaching of the Faith and then asked to settle in some other parts of the world. This is nothing but humiliation and harassment.
The case of Baha’i Scholar Mr. Ahang Rabbani has not been forgotten. After working for 15 years at the World Centre, he died Heart broken.
The way Mr. Ali Nakhjavani was hunted for his misunderstood statement resulting into ignorant Baha’is daring to ask him that why he gave such a statement?
A sincere Persian Baha’i in India was threatened by one of the members of UHJ that he should come in line with the UHJ or face severe consequences.
Jamshed Fozdar and Firoz Anarki were on the brink of being declared Covenant Breakers but some better reasoning prevailed on the UHJ and they stopped from doing such an atrocious act.
There are some misguided Baha’is who are making fake sites in the name of sincere Baha’is for defamation.
A Norwegian Baha’i sent to India made the life of Persian pioneer miserable in India. He was an arch enemy of Persian Baha’is.
Wife of a well-respected former counsellor wanted to attend a Baha’i programme but was refused permission. It was well evident that she was accused of being siding with Persian Baha’is.
The Late Mr. Hasan Sabri along with Isabella Sabri made fun of Persian Baha’is and use to call them KHAR (donkey) and used to say that Persian Baha’is are misguiding other Baha’is.
Many sincere Baha’is were asked not to enter any other countries else face consequences!
We see that if a non-Persian Counsellor retires from his post, he is immediately offered another post in his own country, but if the counsellor is a Persian, and that too a pioneer, never this opportunity of service had been offered to him or his experience used for promotion of the Faith.
A retired counsellor wanted to attend a conference in a foreign country at his own expense but was denied permission by the NSA of that country.
I don’t understand how just for expressing one’s feelings about injustice, is categorized as ‘sowing the seeds of discord’?
I can’t help but think these statements are gross exaggerations. What the writer calls “PERSECUTION” is merely non-Persian Baha’is demanding and getting equality with Persians in terms of social power within the Baha’i communities. If the Baha’i communities around the world have grown to the point that Persians are no longer the overwhelming majority, then the leadership of the Faith needs to reflect that reality. Persians need to stop expecting everything to be handed to them without merit. The Unitarian Universalist Association, a denomination with a white majority, faced a problem of racial justice among themselves in 2017 that forced them to change. If they can do it, so can Baha’is.
For over 300 years, the Roman Catholic Church only elected Italians to the Papacy. It wasn’t until 1978 that John Paul II, who was Polish, became Pope. Since then, it seems Italians have been shut out of becoming Pope, for the two others that have become Pope are also non-Italian (German and Argentinian). I wonder how Italians feel about that.
Jews founded Christianity, only to be excluded and persecuted by Christians later. That was not justice, but neither would have been keeping the Christian communities Jewish dominated, no matter their ethnic makeup. We should keep things balanced and fair for all.
You can either have a single ethnic/linguistic group dominate a religious community forever, or you can have a diverse community spreading around the world. It is wrong to expect both, ever.
Suspended from reddit!
On the afternoon of Friday, November 22, 2019, I got this message:
Your account has been suspended from Reddit for posting personal information. The suspension will last 3 day(s).
This is an automated message; responses will not be received by Reddit admins.
Rebecca Watson warns about scammers
Watch this video:
Infomercials featuring techniques for “house-flipping” are often shown on TV late at night. I wonder if we should start protesting such crap. For my own view of “censorshit” on YouTube, see:
https://dalehusband.com/2013/02/20/copyright-abuse/
NOTE: That blog entry is now obsolete; YouTube no longer shuts down questionable videos due to copyright claims so quickly. Here’s hoping they won’t again.
Rebecca bashes another feminist for bullshitting:
Of course, opponents of feminism use such incidents to claim feminism itself is bullshit, so this fact checking is extremely important.
And can we PLEASE have fewer idiots and lunatics running for President of the United States? We already elected one such train wrecker in 2016!
Not to mention her condemnation of former friend Michael Shermer:
Who I wrote about here, here, and here.
She also slams warped and bigoted religious crap:
It is incredible how much alike the two of us are. Could we be siblings?
Purity Culture vs. Our Whole Lives
One of the many things that makes me so proud to be a Unitarian Universalist and not an evangelical Christian is that UUs have no qualms about being open and honest about human sexuality, even when it comes to teaching children about it, especially girls.
Read this post:
https://www.cbeinternational.org/blogs/7-lies-purity-culture-teaches-women
Betrayed by Wahid Azal (podcast)
Hello. I am Dale Husband, and today I’d like to talk about a certain individual known across the internet as Wahid Azal. Last month, he and I were friends and we made a podcast together in which we discussed the Baha’i Faith and I also talked briefly about my allegiance to Unitarian Universalism. A link to that is below in the description.
Well, a couple of weeks after this, Wahid was banned from the ExBahai subreddit, a link to which is also below,
https://www.reddit.com/r/exbahai/
and this was done for him fighting with another member and also making threats at the moderators of the subreddit. I expressed my profound disappointment over this, since he had clearly brought this punishment on himself.
His response to this was to turn completely against me and begin to attack me in the most ridiculous terms. A link to the blog entry documenting this is also below.
https://dalehusband.com/2019/09/02/wahid-azal-slanders-me-and-others-in-reddit/
Not content with this slander, he further defamed my character with a second video in which he accused me of somehow being racist. A link to THAT video is also below, so watch that diatribe and then come back and finish this.
OK? Question: How could it have been acceptable for him to collaborate with me only a month before and then begin slamming me for views and perspectives I do NOT have and he cannot prove I have regarding race relations? The simple truth is that Wahid Azal has always had a psychotic, bigoted hatred of white people. Now, of course white people in power have been responsible for a great many evil things over the past several centuries. Does that mean that ALL white people should be condemned for what their ancestors have done? Wahid Azal clearly thinks so. He only found me useful because of my devastating attacks against the Baha’i Faith, and thus I was an outlier to him, one of the “good” white people. Much like a white supremacist like Donald Trump can find “good” blacks useful to them even while demonizing blacks in general, such as Barack Obama. But the moment I stopped being useful to Azal, he began to treat me instead like he has always treated white people, as an enemy.
In addition to slandering me, he also attacked a reddit user named “Christian ExBahai” for being a white American and also repeatedly accused the moderators of the exbahai subreddit of being “gatekeepers” working for the Haifan Bahai leadership in some fashion. There is NO evidence for that claim either and it is certainly irrational for anyone to assume that all white people by their very nature MUST be racist. What would you call someone who asserts things as truth that are not factual?
His anger towards me stems solely from my refusing to be one of his few sycophants. Indeed, I am a sycophant to NO ONE; I am always my own person. If you work with me, we must be equals, I don’t blindly follow anyone. If he was thinking of me in those lowly terms, then he was wrong.
Many times he addressed me as a brother in our battles against the Baha’i Faith, but the thing about being someone’s brother is that you don’t allow simple disagreements to pull you apart from that other person. Wahid Azal is a liar, backstabber and bigot and no one should ever take his insane rants seriously.
Now, I have to wonder if others have also been betrayed and backstabbed by Wahid Azal just as I was. If that has happened to you, please send your story to dale_husband1@att.net and If I get one or more of those stories in the next few weeks, I will publish them in a future blog entry. In any case, beware of that extremist. Trust him at your peril.
Damage Control by Shoghi Effendi
If you have not yet read this blog entry, do so now:
https://dalehusband.com/2018/06/07/the-bogus-issue-of-infallibility-in-the-bahai-faith/
Abdu’l-Baha’s claim of infalliblity was directly opposed by his brother Mirza Muhammad Ali, resulting in the latter being declared a violator of Baha’u’llah’s Covenant, which was an outright lie. You don’t violate a covenant by upholding the actual teachings of Baha’u’llah!
A Mistitled Article and a Challenge for Unitarian Universalists across America
Religion can’t always save people, Round 2
Read this depressing story:
Wahid Azal Slanders Me and Others in Reddit
Only two weeks after Wahid Azal and I did a podcast together, and after I intervened to prevent the moderators of the ExBahai subreddit from banning him, he repaid my help by stabbing me in the back! And he was expelled from the subreddit anyway. He is proof that not all arguments against the Baha’i Faith and not all critics of the Baha’i Faith are created equal and I will work with him no more.
Anyway, here is the podcast he made attacking me.
He speaks of me starting about two minutes in. He accuses me of “shiftiness” and “brownnosing”, which I did not understand. He also calls me racist and says that I, like all American liberals, are anti-Muslim, anti-Iranian, and pro-capitalist. Note: Making bigoted statements does nothing to defeat the bigotry of others, especially when that supposed bigotry of others is not even a real issue. Continue reading
Confronting Scott Hakala on Quora
Quora is a social media site where people can pose questions on all sorts of subjects and get answers from others. One of the most frequent posters on it is Scott Hakala, a Baha’i apologist.
Before I tell about my fight with him there, I must supply a bit of background.
For more than a year and a half after I made an account on reddit, Hakala, using the pseudonym “DavidBinOwen”, would often invade the ExBaha’i subreddit and relentlessly attack its members with counter arguments to things they would write. Then after wreaking havoc for a few days or weeks, he would disappear only to return weeks or months later. Things got so frustrating that Wahid Azal decided to do something to force the admin of that subreddit to deal with Hakala once and for all. So he posted these:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/cnzclf/why_are_the_moderators_of_this_site_consistently/
https://www.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/co4u0o/beware_non_and_exbahais_of_this_subreddit/
I knew this might lead to Azal being banned from the subreddit, so to prevent that, I sent private messages to all the admin, playing “good cop” to Wahid Azal’s “bad cop”. My efforts paid off; nothing was done to Azal, but Hakala was FINALLY banned permanently from the subreddit.
The Absurdity of the “Orthodox Baha’i” Claims.
This is a direct sequel to I am NOT an “Orthodox” Baha’i!
I recently found a small group on reddit devoted to the teachings of a faction of Baha’is called “Orthodox”. This was one of the groups arising from the attempt by Hand of the Cause of God Charles Mason Remey to take over the Baha’i Faith in 1960 by claiming to be its second Guardian.
https://www.reddit.com/r/orthodoxbahai/
I looked into it and then made a crosspost between it and the exbahai subreddit with this:
This prompted a member of the first group to come in ours to defend his beliefs.
A Critical Analysis of the Kitáb-i-‘Ahd (Book of the Covenant)
This is the 13th in a series of blog entries that subject the Baha’i Writings to a skeptical, non-Baha’i analysis. A list of the previous blog entries is here.
The Book of the Covenant is the will and testament of Baha’u’llah, which he had made public after his death. Baha’u’llah himself had commanded his followers to make their own wills in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas:
Unto everyone hath been enjoined the writing of a will. The testator should head this document with the adornment of the Most Great Name, bear witness therein unto the oneness of God in the Dayspring of His Revelation, and make mention, as he may wish, of that which is praiseworthy, so that it may be a testimony for him in the kingdoms of Revelation and Creation and a treasure with his Lord, the Supreme Protector, the Faithful.
Baha’u’llah is said to have written this will with his own hand, thus allowing anyone familiar with his writing style to authenticate it. I will include quotes from the Kitáb-i-‘Ahd in orange and bold. My source for this document is:
https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/tablets-bahaullah/6#301774724
My Spiritual Odyssey
On October 20, 2018, I gave a talk about 50 minutes long at Westside Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Worth detailing my life and religious and political views and how they evolved over the course of my life. I spent the first half of the discussion merely speaking for myself in general, and the last half answering questions from the audience to focus more on specific topics.
For a short version of that story see:
My Spiritual Journeys
I made reference to other issues that I have also dealt with on this blog, including:
An Honorable Skeptic
Why more people should join the Unitarian Universalists
Why I Abandoned the (Haifan) Baha’i Faith
Spiritual Orientation
Radical Reincarnation
Misdefining terms for purposes of propaganda
A bitter rant about Ayn Rand
Reopening Old Wounds Among Unitarian Universalists
Over two years ago, a massive controversy over racially biased hiring practices in the Unitarian Universalist Association caused its leadership to experience a turnover to try to solve the problem of white supremacy among them.
With the election of a new President of the UUA at the 2017 General Assembly (GA), it seemed like we could start to move forward to heal the racial divisions. But then came the GA of June 2019, which was held at Spokane, Washington. Imagine the shock among the attendees when the minister of the UU church at that city, Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof, backstabbed the rest of them with a book he had written and was trying to distribute at the GA without prior notice. This book, titled The Gadfly Papers: Three Inconvenient Essays by One Pesky Minister, attacked all the efforts to solve the racial problems, angering many non-white UUs. When the UUA leadership tried to talk to Eklof about what he was doing, he refused to meet with them, putting them in the awkward position of expelling him from the GA itself! After that happened, UUs in both Facebook and Reddit had an uproar about it.