Re: Stoning to death - Barbaric

Dear Gilberto-

Once again you raise the same objections to the principle of progressive revelation and the oneness of God's Prophets and His religion but in a different way and I'd like to respond to each of your points as best I can. Please see below.



On Jan 5, 2006, at 10:23 AM, Gilberto Simpson wrote:

On 1/4/06, Douglas McAdam <douglasmcadam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 4, 2006, at 10:01 AM, Gilberto Simpson wrote:
On 1/3/06, Douglas McAdam <douglasmcadam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
Hi Firouz and Gilberto-
this whole idea of Jesus, Muhammad etc. not needing to come does not
seem to fit logic for me.


From my perspective (at the risk of restarting an old debate) it is
simply the flipside of not tying God's hands. God is God. God can do
whatever the hell he wants. He doesn't HAVE to do anything. [...]
What's the Bahai phrase?: He does whatsoever he willeth?


Dear Gilberto-
I realize God can do whatever He willeth but at the same time what He
has willed up to now appears to me to be very logical.


And that's pretty much all you can say. For each individual, some
things which happen in the world make sense and other things don't.
And folks will disagree on what is "logical" and what isn't.

Yes my friend but the difference is that we post Baha'u'llah's exact words and
also have posted the Word of God from the Qur'an and still there is an argument. 

 The only conflict seems to be in
social laws or teachings for the spiritual are all the same in each
religion.


I think that is a little too easy. There are other differences between
religions. Theology, view of the afterlife, philosophy, etc.

Well there is nothing wrong with these differences except when one believer
in one religion tries to tell others they are wrong. This is the main problem
we face in that new religions are being put down and the Prophet put to death
or victimized somehow. The overall spiritual teachings, the essential ones, are the same,
i.e. that we love God and love one another.

It just makes sense to me that God would teach us what we
need when we need it and suited to our capacity at a given time. We do
the same thing with children. Although we may know geometry we don't
try to teach it to a child who has no basic math. 

I have two basic responses.

Firstly, the analogy you are using seems to treat large collections of
people, or humanity generally, as an individual which learns, matures
and grows. I would tend to treat individuals as individuals. So each
individual human being is born basically ignorant and they each have
to learn all the basic moral spiritual lessons from scratch. I would
say all the religions try to do this. It doesn't make sense to
prioritize religions, saying that one is like "geometry" and the other
is like "basic math".

Secondly, if you insist on ranking religions in this way, it makes
ALOT more sense to think of the older religions as the most advanced
because they have more history, culture, philosophy and civilization
under their belt.


So then why did we need the Muslim faith and the appearance of Muhammad
and the Qur'an?

If an individual starts in ignorance and then learns to be a teen,
then adult etc. wouldn't that apply to mankind in general. I mean we
can look back and see how man thousands of years ago was childlike, had no
academic knowledge, no sciences, no high technology like we have today.
They were in a family and tribal state and the knowledge they possessed
suited them until a new Prophet appeared and raised them to a new level.

For God to give man a capacity and reveal knowledge to develop that and
then all of a sudden say I'm not going to develop you any more would be
unmerciful in my view and God cannot be unmerciful, can He? 

Who said anything about not developing? After Muhammad, Islamic
civilization still produced Ali and the imams, and Rumi, and Abu
Hanifa, and Shafi,  and Ghazzali, and Hafiz, and Shah Waliullah, and
Amadu Bamba, and Malcolm X, and Muhasibi and Rabia, and many many
others.


Yes and after all this Baha'u'llah has brought a new Revelation and
knowledge has increased so dramatically we cannot keep up to it.


The question you should be asking is what sense does it make to throw
away those treasures of wisdom, and start over basically relearning
the same lessons?

I agree. We should not throw away such treasures, but who is saying we
should? It all depends on whether you accept Baha'u'llah or not Gilberto.
If you don't and want to investigate independently like we should, and I
think the Qur'an teaches this principle too, then we need to be independent
and divest ourselves of previous man made knowledge and test the fruits,
like advised.
We have often mentioned about the continuum of revelation and how we move through
various stages of unity, i.e. family, tribal, city, nation and now working on
unification of the entire world which is made up of these successive and
successful stages of growth and the fact is that unity is being expressed in
higher and higher or more subtle stages but the principle is the same, i.e.
Unity with Diversity. However we do need to relearn some of this because it
is obvious we have strayed and are in states of disunity.

It the ancient religions have further developed as you say then why have they
been separating people into sects and denominations, some even warring with
each other, killing each other, etc. If there is family unity there will
be world unity too but that is not what we are seeing in the world. We are
seeing religion against religion, believer against believer, govt. against
govt., culture against culture, still a practice of imperialism at work
and material progress at all costs with an ends justifies the means philosophy.

Baha'u'llah has come to Remedy all this and we Baha'is are doing all we can to
learn and be of service but we are being attacked in many ways, mostly intellectually
now in the western world and you know something Gilberto, we love it. Yes, we
know that the only reason this is happening is because mankind is in opposition
to changing their ways. Just witness what has happened to the Prophets of God.

Gilberto, do you believe there is only One God, One Religion of God and One Mankind?
It sounds to me like you do and if you do we are on the same page.

regards,
doug


.

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