Thread: Baha'i: The Best Faith You Aren't a Member of

In the interests of getting some non Atheist-Christian arguments going here. I thought I would start a thread explaining a different monotheistic faith. In the interests of showing why there are positive faiths out there that have to be tackled differently to Christianity.

Baha'i is good. It is at present the world's fastest growing religion, with six million believers spread over two hundred countries.

As I understand it, the religion is founded on the belief in progressive revelation. God did not finish his revelations with Judaism, he sent Jesus. This was also not the end, he then sent Mohammed. But this too was not the end. He then sent the Baha'u'llah to Persia. He declared that he was a messenger of God in 1863. There have also been many other prophets, because humanity wants to know and guide humanity.

Baha'i is based on three interlocking unities. There is the oneness of God, the oneness of his prophets through progressive revelation and the oneness of humanity. For this reason Baha'is believe in gender equality, a peaceful united humanity and that their faith must remain unified.

This leads to another unity, science and religion are both tools of Human understanding. Science alone leads to materialism, a tendency to understand the world by taking it apart, however religion must allow for obeidience to doctor's instructions and must take on ideas proven by science. Its just that things that can never be disproven by science are the domain of faith. This, at least is how I understand it, and it seems to make sense.

If you are a theist, conversion to Baha'i gives you a religion that accepts science and the rational search for truth, along with equality, unity and peace. The idea of world peace seems to be absent from the other major monotheistic faiths, with their belief in one revelation and hell for non-believers.

To an atheist, there can be no evidence for God. But Baha'i seems to leave room for rational, peaceful living. The only problems being its definition of homosexuality, gambling and alcohol as wrong. But the faith believes that membership to political parties is bad for unity, thus they are unlikely to force any of these views onto you.

Baha'i believes that you have a rational soul, thus, as I understand it, the ability to come to follow God based on the study of the words of His prophets. While there can be no direct proof of God, the evidence can point in favour of it.

The faith is young, but those who believe it have already suffered terrible persecution and stayed strong to their beliefs. I mean, Baha'i comes from fucking Iran. There is, I believe a good enough reason to look into it and see if it points to God; whether you believe in God or not.