A Lost History of the Baha’i Faith

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Note:  This is a guest entry by Eric Stetson.

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Dale Husband, a fellow Unitarian Universalist and former Baha’i, invited me to write a short summary of a book I edited which has recently been published, A Lost History of the Baha’i Faith: The Progressive Tradition of Baha’u’llah’s Forgotten Family.

lost-history-bahai-faith-coverThis book tells the story of the Baha’i faith through the writings of some of the children and grandchildren of its founder, and others who knew Baha’u’llah personally. They called themselves “Unitarian Baha’is” and stood for a broad-minded faith based on reason and individual freedom of conscience. Because of their liberal views and skepticism of absolute religious authority, they were excommunicated and shunned as the Baha’i faith developed into an organized religion. In fact, all but three descendants of Baha’u’llah – totaling dozens of people – were excommunicated by their own relatives who led the religion after its founder’s death.

The Baha’i faith was founded in the mid 1800s by a Persian nobleman in exile who claimed to be a new messenger of God. Baha’u’llah taught that all nations, races, and religions should come together to build a global civilization of peace and justice for all. Although Baha’i began as a pluralistic, reform-oriented offshoot of Islam, it quickly relapsed into a form of fundamentalism based on claims of infallibility by its leaders.

The Baha’i organization expects its members to believe that Baha’u’llah’s successors were perfect and infallible and that their interpretations and decisions can never be changed. A Lost History of the Baha’i Faith offers a different perspective on what Baha’i could have become – an Islamic-inspired faith with similar progressive values as Unitarian Universalism – if the Baha’i prophet’s own descendants had not been ostracized and expelled as heretics.

This book reveals how even liberal religious movements can be hijacked by dogmatic thinking. A cautionary tale for people of conscience of any faith.

http://www.voxhumri.com/books/a-lost-history-of-the-bahai-faith/ —

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-History-Bahai-Faith-Progressive/dp/0692331352

 

Integrity at Freethought Blogs

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Having integrity means that you take action to enforce rules that are indeed based on clear standards of right and wrong even if doing so seems hurtful at times to certain individuals that otherwise are of value to a certain group. A clear example of this in my life is when I caught a  member of my World of Warcraft guild Stormchasers stealing from the guild’s bank to profit himself, causing me to expel him from the guild as punishment. This after he had offered to teach me and other members how to do better at player vs. player events. Sorry, but that does not allow you to ROB us!

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/lothar/Anide/simple

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Stop the Hypocrisy, NOW!

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On the blog Why Evolution is True, we find this entry that seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with evolution, biology, or even science at all.  Instead, it is all about hypocrisy in religion:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/dennett-and-lascola-study-on-nonbelieving-clergy/

Imagine being forced to go to work every day and, as part of the job, profess something that you absolutely don’t believe.  More than that: at least once a week you have to publicly profess it, and also counsel other people on the explicit premise that you share the beliefs you reject.  In other words, you’re forced to live a lie.

No one is forced to do anything like that.  The issue is that you have a job that makes you money and enables you to influence others. That sounds like a strong motivation to keep doing it, but there are alternatives.

Why do these preachers stay in the faith and on the job? Three reasons, mostly.  One is financial: what else could they do with their training if they left the ministry? Often they have neither equity (living in church-owned houses) nor pensions.

What about simply switching to become ministers of Unitarian Universalist churches or hold some other position in the Unitarian Universalist Association? You do not have to believe in the Bible as the Word of God to be a UU!

http://huumanists.org/

You can also profess liberal Christianity in the UUA and not be hypocritical:

http://www.uuchristian.org/

Another, and perhaps more important, reason is that an admission of unbelief  would shock and disappoint their friends and family.  This is a very powerful motive, for facing the truth would rip asunder your network of social and family support.

Where is the unconditional love that Christians are supposed to have for people? And wouldn’t being open and honest about unbelief be just as likely to cause others to defect as well?

Finally, many of these preachers like their work, especially the part of the job that involves helping troubled people……..There’s absolutely no doubt that faith, and religious institutions, have provided important help for those in need or in trouble.  Some religions do this more than others.

There is no reason why they cannot do work like counseling or doing charity work, even if they are atheists.

But isn’t it a shame that there aren’t secular communities where those with altruistic instincts can “minister” without hypocrisy or fear?

That last remark irritates me.  The UUA may not be “secular”, but it provides exactly the sort of framework needed by those former Christian ministers. And then there are these many groups:

http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Secular_charities

Nice going, Jerry Coyne. Your obsession with bashing religion only made yourself look ignorant! And that would not be the only time you did that!

The downfall of Greenpeace

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Greenpeace is a hard-core environmental group that first become known for trying to stop whaling activities by direct interference with the whalers. But that was decades ago. And now it has pulled a stunt against another culture that has destroyed its credibility forever.
Peru Plans to Charge Greenpeace Activists for Damage to Nazca Lines

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Pie charts and privilege.

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The basic conflict between conservatives and liberals can be illustrated by the following pie charts.

In the first, we see a typical arrangement in which a certain class that is privileged gets most of what they want, leaving only a little for members of a non-privileged class.

PieOne A truly just society, one that liberals would favor, would have an arrangement like this:

PieTwoBut this would cause the formerly privileged group to have less, which would go against their interests. But what if we could enlarge the amount of resources so that everyone could have more?

PieThreeSounds ideal, no? But conservatism depends on social inequality, so instead they might push for THIS instead!

PieFourIt does not matter how large or how small the pie is, as long as a privileged class gets most of it, period!

Maybe that explains this:  https://dalehusband.com/2009/07/13/the-absurd-scam-of-reaganomics/

The Bible and a flat Earth

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About a decade ago, I was having a debate on evolution with a couple of Christian bigots. And the issue of the Bible teaching the Earth being flat came up. When I suggested this, they vehemently denied it.

The Bible says the Earth is round, Dale. He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. -Isaiah 40:22- So much for that argument…. Dale. Christians aren’t idiots.

And to prevent you from claiming that “Circle” does not mean “Sphere”, and playing a little word game, the English translation of the Bible was written in the English vernacular of that time. They used the word “circle” to describe the shape of anything round, like a melon, or a grapefruit, or a round rock. So don’t go there. This isn’t Geometry class.

But then again, how would they have explained THIS passage?

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%204&version=NIV

Matthew 4: 8-10

8 Again, the devil took him [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’[e]”

Why would the devil have to take Jesus to a mountain to show him anything? If the Earth is a sphere, such a move is pointless. Only if the Earth is indeed flat does it make sense. Which is why I did not believe my opponents then and I certainly don’t now!

Of course, the story could be only a metaphor. But that would apply to almost anything else in the Bible, including the creation stories in the book of Genesis.

The costs of slavery

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Until the American Civil War ended, slavery was a common institution in the United States. Often portrayed as cheap, it still had costs associated with it. These included:

1. Obtaining the slaves: They were often kidnapped from Africa and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean under cramped conditions. That cost money. The slave trade was eventually abolished long before slavery ended, but that had the effect of making the slaves already in America more valuable.

2. Buying the slaves.

3. Giving the slaves food, water, clothing and shelter.

4. Treating the slaves of illnesses and injuries.

4. Guarding the slaves to prevent them from revolting or escaping.

5. Burying or cremating the slaves after they died.

Now compare that with people who work today at minimum wage. If you can only afford food to feed yourself and your children, a place to live at, medical expenses, and to pay for your funeral when you die, how are you any better off, materially speaking, than slaves 200 years ago?

And if you wonder why some want the minimum wage increased, that is why!

Why did the Democrats lose this year?

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It seems that everything that could have gone wrong this election cycle, did go wrong. Texas elected yet another Republican governor, Greg Abbott (I am so tempted to tell jokes about the comedy duo Abbot and Costello), Kentucky re-elected Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republicans will control the Senate next year and the House of Representatives actually INCREASED its majority for next year! And that begs the obvious question: WHY?

You see, the Republicans these days have literally NOTHING to offer the American people but bigotry and have nothing to do but express HATRED for President Obama based on that bigotry. Over the past two years, the Republicans running the House tried dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even while knowing those attempts would fail in the Democratic controlled Senate. Now they may try again next year, but President Obama will simply veto such attempts. As the old saying goes, “To repeat the same action, and expect different results, is madness!” The Republicans may even attempt to impeach and remove Obama from office like they tried to do to President Clinton, and that will most likely fail too.

So why did the Republicans win so massively this year? Because, quite simply, many people assume that anything bad that happens to America must be the fault of the President, so they blame him for those bad events, then they vote for the party that opposes the President, even though he had nothing to do with the issues involved. For example, President Bush Jr was not responsible for the screw ups of federal agencies that followed the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005. Likewise, Obama was not responsible for things like the ebola scare this year right before the election.  THAT WAS THE MEDIA’S FAULT! Hmmmm….

Part of the problem is that the Democrats as a party are much more diverse than the Republicans. Obama originally ran as a dedicated liberal but over time due to Republican opposition has moved toward the right, but that alienated many liberals who also consider themselves Democrats, resulting in them being reluctant to consistently support the President.

In fact, I would say the only reason Obama got elected at all was because the previous Republican President was so TERRIBLE! If Bush Jr had been half the President Bill Clinton had been, we would have elected McCain in 2008.

And maybe that is just the real issue, sadly. America as a nation just was not ready for an African-American President. We are still mostly racist bigots!

The ultimate discrediting of Libertarianism

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Over the past several years I have gone from being sympathetic to the ideals of Libertarians because of their opposition to the Iraq War and their support for drug decriminalization, to being highly skeptical of some of their claims and dogmas because of practical experience. But now, I am ready to publicly declare that Libertarianism as a political force has been completely debunked and should be abandoned as unworkable. It should not be contained in either a political party called the Libertarian Party, nor in the Republican Party. And here is why: http://www.viralnova.com/walmart-turned-library/

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The Health Ranger and the ebola virus.

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I guess it was only a matter of time before that degenerate fraud calling himself the “Health Ranger”, Mike Adams, would jump on the ebola bandwagon to continue to promote the delusional views he professes about the health care professions.  For a background of why I despise that man, look at these earlier entries on my blog:

https://dalehusband.com/category/skepticism/natural-news/

He published THIS nonsense today! His words will be in bold red and my responses will be in italics and blue.

Ultraviolet light robot kills Ebola in two minutes; why doesn’t every hospital have one of these?

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Canadian Content Laws

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In a previous blog entry, I gave details about Adam Buckley, a Canadian radio personality. I usually think of Canada as a better place to live than the USA, despite being up north with the harsh winters that come with that location. This is mainly due to it having a more socialist economy and no “Tea Party” insanity to screw up elections.  But there is one thing about Canada I absolutely hate:  its “Canadian content” laws which force radio stations to broadcast a certain percentage of music by Canadian artists. I did not even know they existed before learning about them from Buckley! While Canada has produced some great rock bands such as Rush, Loverboy and Nickleback, it has also produced……..Justin Bieber. And there are others far worse than him in Canada who do not deserve a hearing, but get one because the system is rigged in their favor. That in essence is  cheating.

Watch this video:

Need I remind you that we Americans have a First Amendment for a reason? If freedom means anything in a society, a government should not be telling radio stations what to play!

Canadian content laws do not protect Canadian culture, they degrade it! Inferior artists from Canada that would never make a dent in American music markets are enabled to become fairly successful in their home country because of their government. This creates a false impression of what Canadian musical culture is about, that Canadians themselves in general are inferior people. Eventually, Canada will be the laughingstock of the rest of the world as more and more people learn of this nonsense. No one admires cheaters.

I hope most Canadian radio DJs form a union and rebel against these laws en masse, practicing civil disobedience in order to force Canada to repeal those laws, or lose most of its radio broadcasting.

Michael Shermer, TRAITOR!

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Take a look at this outrageous letter:

BxQuxvfCYAAiitS.png largeDinesh D’Souza was just convicted of a crime and he is also a conservative and Christian bigot and a supposed leader of skepticism is DEFENDING him by calling him honest and fair?! What next, Michael Shermer claiming the Earth is really flat and at the center of the universe?! D’Souza’s lawyer can defend him, so he does not need Shermer. And Shermer did not need to do this and make himself look like a backstabber of most of his fellow skeptics, including ME!!!

How NOT to rape someone

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Here are some rules for men who do not want to be accused of raping a woman:

1. ALWAYS ask the women directly during a date in a private setting, “Do you want to have sex with me?”   If her response is anything other than, “Yes,” drop the issue and do not bring it up again until she does.

2. Never talk about the experience of having sex with anyone other than a licensed therapist, your parents or other guardians (if you are underaged), or a clergyperson in a counseling session. PRIVATE MATTERS MUST REMAIN PRIVATE. Other men do not need to know how you “banged that hot chick last night”.

3. The claim that women claim to be raped because they regret having sex with a man long after the fact is simply self-serving bullshit. Do not repeat that claim, ever.

4. Even if you use protection or any form of birth control, PROMISE the woman that if she gets pregnant, you will either support the child or pay for an abortion, whichever she decides.

5. Do not merely be a woman’s sex partner…..be her LOVER. Be willing to share in anything she does or is involved in or ask her to share in things you enjoy. If you do not want a complete relationship with a woman, you can always masturbate by yourself.

6. Unless your partner is a porn star, you do not need to take or possess nude pics of her. And NEVER post them online!

That is all for now.  If I think of more, or if you have your own suggestions for rules, this list will be added to.

Pamela Geller, pathological liar, hypocrite and bigot

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As opposed to radical Islam as I may be, and as offensive as I find many Islamic dogmas to be, I would never lie to try to either discredit Islam or attack Muslims or people who do not hate Muslims. But Pamela Geller, a right-wing extremist who would have been at home in the John Bitch [pun intended] Society of the 1950s (when it accused President Eisenhower of being under Communist influence), would lie and in the worst way.
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What if the American Civil War had never been fought?

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The election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States in 1860 triggered the succession of most of the southern states where slavery was legal, because the wealthy whites who dominated those states feared that the federal government would force them to give up slavery. The result was the four bloodiest years in all of American history. But what if cooler heads had prevailed and the Civil War had never happened? What if instead the South had remained in the Union?

For one thing, the fact that so many young men had not died in battle meant that the USA would have been able to conquer the western regions much faster than it actually did, and the Native American tribes living on those lands would have been even more brutalized in the process. Anti-immigrant sentiments would have been greater in the late 19th Century then they were, since there would be no perceived need for more people to come to the USA from other parts of the world. States that entered the Union after the 1860s might still have had slaves if they were in the southwest, but the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th Century would at the same time had made slavery largely unprofitable. Both northern abolitionists and European states opposed to slavery might have succeeded in putting enough pressure on the United States for it to pass a Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery, but the southern states would have been able to block amendments granting citizenship and voting rights to freed blacks. As a result, the Supreme Court of the United States would have had no legal basis to condemn the Jim Crow laws and procedures of the South, resulting in racial segregation continuing to this very day. Many aspects of American culture, such as rock & roll and hip/hop music, would never have become popular among white youths. The United States would have regarded Mexico as an invader due to so many of its people coming undocumented across the border between them and this might have eventually led to another war with Mexico by the end of the 20th Century. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union would have lasted much longer and been more damaging to the interests of the USA around the world because most other nations would see the Soviets as more enlightened and honorable than the racist Americans. Most black Americans would have been far more supportive of Communism and this in turn would have made capitalist supporting whites hate blacks even more.

.So the ultimate result would have been an America that was even MORE racist than today!

Damn you, Stephen Birkland!

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Read this about a certain Baha’i leader:

http://bahaikipedia.org/Stephen_Birkland

Mr. Stephen Birkland is currently serving as a member of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Bahá’í Faith. Before his election to the House of Justice, he was a member of the International Teaching Center.[1] Prior to his service at the World Center, Mr. Birkland served as an Auxiliary Board member beginning in 1976 and a Counsellor from 1993. He also served on the board of Trustees for Huqúqu’lláh in the United States for 10 years.[2]
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The downfall of Eric Cantor

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A lot of ink (and pixels) has been used in reference to the stunning upset of a Tea Party challenger defeating House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor. Some thoughts of my own about that:

1. No politician should ever take his position in office for granted. You should be willing to fight tirelessly for your office against any challengers.

2. It really does not matter how much money is spent on your campaign. If your constituents have lost faith in you, then you should go down to defeat. So maybe there is hope for us after the Citizens United decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, even though it is still one of the worst such decisions in its history.

3. David Brat, the professor who defeated Cantor, is a Tea Party activist who is a hard-liner against immigration reform, and claimed that Cantor was too willing to compromise on it. Of course, that only means Brat is a bigoted @$$hole who does not deserve to be in Congress. Damn him!

4. Remember this I wrote years ago? I love being proven right!

5. Primaries of political parties tend to be dominated by hard-line supporters of that party, but then the winner of those primaries must then appeal to the general population, perhaps resulting in flip-flopping on certain issues.  All Democrat Jack Trammell, who will face Brat in the general election, has to do is present a moderate stance on the issues he supports from start to finish and thus come across as the candidate who will represent the most people in his district, as well as someone who is NOT A HYPOCRITE!

Adam Buckley

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This is a Canadian DJ and radio personality who I have gotten to know from his YouTube videos rather than from his radio programs, which I have never heard. I happen to agree with almost everything he says, for he presents a well-balanced and enlightened view of almost everything. The only drawback is his tendency to use a lot of profanity, which has caused me to label him, “Sir Swear-a-Lot”. But if that is the worst thing about him, I will gladly overlook it, for he deals with a lot of the subjects I have covered on this blog for years.
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Four Ways to Create a Religion of Hypocrites

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1. State that religion no longer needs clergy……and replace them with leaders that are as authoritarian as the clergy ever was.
2. Claim that men and women should be equal……but then deny women membership in the all-powerful leadership council of the religion.
3. Condemn as heretics those who believe in your religion but dare to challenge the claims of your religion’s current leadership, while at the same time claiming to welcome as friends the followers of other religions.
4. Claim there is harmony between science and religion, but also claim that anything your leaders say is absolutely true, even if on topics science is expected to address.
Any one of these makes a religion not worth following, but what do you do if you find a religion that has all four such contradictions?

The Possible Role of Nondisjunction in Evolution

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A common objection to natural selection as the mechanism for evolution is that while it may act as an editor, it cannot be an author. That is, it may change genetic information through mutation, but it cannot cause genetic information to increase. And they are right, but genetic information can still increase across the generations of organisms through a process called nondisjunction. This occurs when an unequal amount of genetic material is passed on to two daughter cells after the process of a cell dividing. One cell will have slightly less genetic material, and the other will have slightly more. The most famous example of nondisjunction is the kind that causes Down’s Syndrome, when a human embryo receives three 21st chromosomes from its parents rather than the normal number of two. But nondisjunction can occur regarding any chromosome in any organism and may not even involve chromosomes at all, such as in the case of bacteria.

Let us imagine that three billion years ago, a bacterial cell was dividing, but because of a chemical malfunction, slightly less genetic material ended up in one daughter cell, and slightly more in the other. The cell with less material will probably end up smaller, while the cell with more material may end up larger, because a greater amount of genetic material can produce a greater amount of proteins, the molecules that provide the structural basis for all organisms. Larger cells (assuming the reproductive potential of the different cells was the same) would have an advantage over smaller cells in the race to gain food, thus natural selection would favor larger cells.

If this process was repeated many times, then it is possible that over a billion years a bacterial cell would have emerged that had hundreds of times more genetic material than the first primitive organisms that arose on Earth about four billion years ago. And that would have enabled the evolution of more complex organisms than bacteria…including us!

Wayne Christian and Todd Staples, libeled!

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Texas politicians are overwhelmingly Conservative and Republican, which as a liberal often makes me feel like an alien in my own state, despite being born and raised here. In looking at the candidates running for office in Texas, I stumbled upon some propaganda against them. Specifically, Wayne Christian and Todd Staples. Continue reading →