There own religion doesn't make Abraham and Moses into manifestations.
That's quite true. Moses is a prophet according to them, but we see that as meaning a Manifestation in our own terms. As to Abraham, they don't even see him as a prophet, but the Qur'an does. In the Bible he is just the father of the Hebrews who believed God when He said his "seed" would be a multitude. To us because the Qur'an and the Baha'i Writings come from God, we consider that more reliable than scriptures written down 1,500 years after Abraham.
And how does the Buddha become a manifestation of a God he didn't even talk about?
Here's a reply from BahaiTeachings.org:
Is There a God in Buddhism?
Understanding a few of the historic problems in Buddhist history and the authenticity of its scripture, we can now examine the most basic question about Buddhism: is it theistic? Do Buddhists believe in God?
To even understand the question, the Buddha’s ministry should be seen in historical perspective. The pre-Buddhist Vedic religion in India was in a period of decline when Gautama Buddha appeared. The Buddhist narrative says that the privileged caste of Vedic priests at the time, the brahmins, had become corrupt and knew little of the true spirit of religion. Thus, they could not show others the path to God. A disciple of the Buddha, Vasettha, commented on this situation to the Buddha. The Buddha reportedly replied:
Then you say, too, Vasettha, that the brahmins [priests] bear anger and malice in their hearts, and are sinful and uncontrolled, whilst Brahman [God] is free from anger and malice, and sinless, and has self-mastery. Now can there, then, be concord and likeness between the brahmins and Brahman?
Here, the Buddha is talking about God — Brahman — and says that he is concerned about the character and actions of priests who do not faithfully reflect God’s pure light. Already this puts Buddhism in the realm of theistic religions, as do many similar references in Buddhist scripture.
The Buddha, however, lived in a time and place when people were drowning in a sea of gods and theological parsing. It is reasonable, then, that he would not want to add to the intellectual fray and, sure enough, scripture records that he resisted being drug into these distinctions. In Sutra 63 of the Majjhima-Nikaya, a disciple, Malunkyaputta, asked the Buddha why he would not answer their theological questions. The Buddha replied:
It is as if, Malunkyaputta, a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions, his relatives and kinsfolk, were to procure for him a physician or surgeon; and the sick man were to say, “I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me belonged to the warrior caste, or to the brahmin caste, or to the agricultural caste, or to the menial caste.
Or again he were to say, “I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt the name of the man who wounded me, and to what clan he belongs.
Or again he were to say, “I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me was tall, or short, or of middle height … [Many other conditions are mentioned]
That man would die, Malunkyaputta, without ever having learnt this.
In exactly the same way, Malunkyaputta, anyone who should say, “I will not lead the religious life under the Blessed One until the Blessed One shall explain to me either that the world is eternal, or that the world is not eternal, that the world is finite, that the world is infinite, that the soul and the body are identical, that the soul is one thing and the body another, that the saint exists after death, that the saint does not exist after death, that the saint both exists and does not exist after death, that the saint neither exists nor does not exist after death — that person would die, Malunkyaputta, before the Tathagata [one who has come] had ever explained this to him.
As the Buddha explained, continuing: “The religious life,” he said, “does not depend on the dogma.” Dogma “profits not, nor has to do with the fundamentals of religion, nor tends to aversion, absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, the supernatural faculties, supreme wisdom, and Nirvana; therefore have I not explained it.”
According to the Buddha, then, the essence of religion — the most useful part — must be about practices that ease suffering and bring people closer to salvation, to nirvana. The Buddha saw the rest as non-essential, and often a cause of idle theological wrangling and disunity.
Is There a God in Buddhism?
Here's another related article by the same site, by the same article:
In the predominant Western practices of Buddhism, many followers insist that the Buddha’s teachings are non-theistic, and that Buddhists do not believe in a Creator. Let’s examine that premise.
Several scholars and historians believe that the Buddha, recognizing
Vedic Hindu society’s super abundance of gods, decided that any further discussion of God could only lead to dogmatic distraction. They conclude that the Buddha’s elegant solution simply involved talking about the reality of the human condition, the best way to live to avoid suffering, and how to move toward a spiritual state of nirvana.
Because of those teachings and the practical way the Buddha transmitted them to his followers, many still make the mistake of thinking that the Buddha did not believe in God. The Buddha, however, clearly proclaimed in Udana 8:3 of the Khuddaka Nikaya:
There is an Unborn, an Unoriginated, an Unmade, an Uncompounded; were there not, O mendicants, there would be no escape from the world of the born, the originated, the made, and the compounded.
This, clearly, is God stripped of all anthropomorphism. It is the Reality that makes salvation or nirvana possible, and it’s consonant with Tillich’s definition of God as “the Ground of all Being” and with
Baha’u’llah’s description of God as “an Unknowable Essence” in the
Baha’i writings:
So perfect and comprehensive is His [God’s] creation that no mind nor heart, however keen or pure, can ever grasp the nature of the most insignificant of His creatures; much less fathom the mystery of Him Who is the Day Star of Truth, Who is the invisible and unknowable Essence. The conceptions of the devoutest of mystics, the attainments of the most accomplished amongst men, the highest praise which human tongue or pen can render are all the product of man’s finite mind and are conditioned by its limitations.
Not only did the Buddha believe in God, he had special knowledge of God, proclaiming to his disciple Vasettha in Sutta 1:43 of the Tevijja:
For Brahman [God] I know, Vasettha, and the world of Brahman, and the path that leadeth unto it. Yea I know it even as one who has entered the Brahman world, and has been born within it.
The Buddha also made clear that he did not reveal everything he knew of God. A scriptural passage, SN 5:437, explains the Buddha’s selectivity in revealing knowledge to us, when the Buddha asks:
Now what think ye, brethren? Which are more, these few simsapa leaves that I hold in my hand, or those that are in the simsapa grove above?
Few in number, Lord, are those simsapa leaves that are in the hand of the Exalted One: far more in number are those in the simsapa grove above.
Just so brethren, those things that I know by my super-knowledge, but have not revealed, are greater by far in number than those things that I have revealed. And why brethren have I not revealed them?
Because, brethren, they do not conduce to profit, are not concerned with the holy life, they do not tend to repulsion, to cessation, to calm, to the super-knowledge, to the perfect wisdom, to Nibbana [Nirvana]. That is why I have not revealed them.
This is the Buddhist version of Christ’s statement in John 16:12: “I
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now;” and Baha’u’llah’s statement in his
Book of Certitude:
It is obvious and manifest that the true meaning of the utterances of the Birds of Eternity is revealed to none except those that manifest the Eternal Being, and the melodies of the Nightingale of Holiness can reach no ear save that of the denizens of the everlasting realm.
It is true that most forms of Buddhism speak little of a Creator. But creation stories actually fill very little of Western scripture, as well. What really fills that scripture are accounts of historical events and attempts to describe our attraction for the Being to Whom we are connected, our wonder at being in the world, and our discovery of what leads to personal and social advancement or abasement. This is also what fills Buddhist scripture. At heart, the Baha’i teachings say, Eastern and Western religion have the same goal and are occupied with the same tasks:
Consider the rose: whether it blossometh in the East or in the West, it is none the less a rose. For what mattereth in this respect is not the outward shape and form of the rose, but rather the smell and fragrance which it doth impart.
Purge thy sight, therefore, from all earthly limitations, that thou mayest behold them all as the bearers of one Name, the exponents of one Cause, the manifestations of one Self, and the revealers of one Truth, and that thou mayest apprehend the mystic “return” of the Words of God as unfolded by these utterances.
In the book “The Four Noble Truths”, the Dalai Lama makes the same basic point very well, too:
For a non-Buddhist, the idea of nirvana and a next life seems nonsensical. Similarly, to Buddhists, the idea of a Creator God sometimes sounds like nonsense. But these things don’t matter; we can drop them. The point is that through these different traditions, a very negative person can be transformed into a good person. That is the purpose of religion — and that is the actual result.
Unborn and Unoriginated: Buddhism and the Creator
