What if we accepted each others Religion?

[loverofhumanity]

The problem, of course, is that those gods cannot all be true. at the same time. Their theologies are mutually exclusive.

So, it comes without saying that a Christian must believe that all other religions are delusions. On account of the metaphysical exclusivity that Christians claim. And then you have the different claims. Like some Hindus saying that humanity is divided in casts at birth, while Christians claiming humans are all equal at birth. Clearly contradicting claims.

So, that is like asking an astronomer to go visit and pay respect for a temple that promotes astrology. Only an insane astronomer could do that without laughing.

But atheists can afford that. I, for instance, pay the exact same amount of intellectual respect to all religious beliefs.

Ciao

- viole

Then by respecting all religions you are in truth more religious than them as you lack bigotry.

In saying this i believe all religions worship the same one God or Reality but by different names and in different ways.

However, I maintain that it is only peoples personal views that are mutually exclusive not the original teachings as revealed by the Educator, Prophet or Manifestations.

So Krishna taught the science of the love of God in the Bhagavad-Gita to do things with a pure heart not with ulterior motives or expectation of reward. Buddha taught meditation and mindfulness to have compassion for all to harm no living thing. Christ taught to love one another, Muhammad to love one’s country, Zoroaster taught - good thoughts, good words, good deeds, Baha’u’llah to love all humankind and all religions.

So there is complete harmony between the spiritual teachings of each Educator. What the people say is not always in harmony with what was originally taught. So we say that in essence all religions are one, equal and complementary but that the followers have strayed from the original teachings and now worship theological disputes as their new God. For had they all followed what was originally taught, we would already have a wonderful world with peace and prosperity.

 

[loverofhumanity]

We have that. It's summarized in the affirmations of humanism. Here's your answer, and it comes from outside of religion. This is a recipe for peace, tolerance, and improvement of the human condition. Your scriptures don't rise to this. Nobody's do. Can you find fault with this other than that it refers to no gods, which I consider an improvement over scripture, not a deficiency?:

Affirmations of Humanism​

A Statement of Principles​

Drafted by Paul Kurtz​

We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.
We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.
We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.
We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.
We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.
We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.
We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.
We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.
We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.
We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.
We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.
We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.
We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.
We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.
We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.
We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.
We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.
We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.
We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.



I don't find relevance there - certainly nothing that compares with what you just read in those 473 words.

You have no answers, just flowery exhortations, and most is theological referring to gods and piety. As I said, there are no answers there. If you think otherwise, you're gaslighting yourself. Religions have had millennia to bring the world together and don't, including yours. The beginning of a solution is to recognize that and look elsewhere.

Religions only fragment as they bud off new religions and denominations that find everybody else's religion incorrect, including yours, which essentially declares older teachings incomplete and needing updating. Of course, your messenger's updates are pretty old and dusty themselves now. The affirmations above are relevant to today.

And this is in part how they fragment.

Your messenger is irrelevant to the needs of the present age, which are principally with advancing authoritarianism and environmental despoilation with climate change being the greatest of those threats.

You could add war to that. Presently, we have two religions at war and a dictator invading a democracy - the two factions disavowed with this:

"We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others."

Those are very beautiful principles many of which we have in common and I hope we get to work together and probably our members do.

As far as I’m concerned we are both working for the betterment of the world. The concept of the oneness of humanity which Baha’u’llah taught is inclusive of all humanity whether humanist, Baha’i or atheist. The common denominator is that we are one human family.

 

[Trailblazer]

I have no reason to.

I guess if you did not believe that God knows more than you do about morality you would have no reason to.

 

[Godobeyer]

what about the previous religions recognized by Islam, Christianity and Judaism? They are not true?

Edit: Or perhaps since "islam" means submission to God, you intend that those of those religions that submit to God do accept Islam.

Teaching of Christianity and Judaism not exactly same as Islam.

There was one message.
Which belief in one God, His messengers and books and Judgment day.

God sent many prophets to Jews, because His messages always corrupted by hand made.

We believe in torah and gospel are modified, by human hands and translations.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If you accept that God exists, and that there are messengers that communicate God's standards, why wouldn't you consider that God's standards to be moral?

I suppose you'd have to, but that's doing it backwards in my opinion. You're essentially agreeing to accept whatever moral principle is attributed to or commanded by the deity, and define morality by whatever you find there. It's called divine command moral theory: "Divine command theory is the belief that things are right because God commands them to be. In other words, it means that things which are considered wrong or unethical are wrong because they are forbidden by God. It is an absolutist theory."

The problem there is obvious. If you are told to despise atheists because a good god find them abominable, then you do. Likewise with LGBTQ+. If you are told that they are an abomination to this good god, it's permission to persecute them or at a minimum demonize and marginalize them. If you are convinced by your preacher or pastor that God wants you to vote for Trump, you do so.

The humanist is going to judge these moral principles by his own standards according to his own conscience. According to humanist standards, there is no reason to disesteem atheists and LGBTQ+ unless this god actually exists, and then the reason would be that it's you or them - that this deity commands you to see such people as in defiance or rebellion against a good god and unfit for paradise.

I guess if you did not believe that God knows more than you do about morality you would have no reason to.

Whoever authored Abrahamic moral values, we can do better. We have done better, and there are cultural wars being fought in America today between these two antithetical traditions. Humanists battle for such people to experience tolerance, acceptance, and dignity while their religious counterparts work to do the opposite.

I just can't accept Abrahamic morality. I consider them and that immoral. Where there is overlap, fine. Humanists also oppose murder. We didn't get that value from a book or a divine command. It comes from within. And where there is disagreement, once again, the humanist's values don't come from a book or a pulpit.

From Penn Jillette, a man whose moral values come from within:

"The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don't want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don't want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you."

Humanists promoted democracy over biblical monarchy. Humanists promoted abolition where the Bible instructs one on the proper way to keep and treat slaves. Humanists have labored for women's suffrage where the Bible says women should be silent in church. Humanists champion human rights including the ones the Christians in America have stolen from their girls and women.

It's a centuries old struggle between these two traditions, and the contrasts couldn't be clearer. One promotes freedom, dignity, tolerance, and equal social and economic opportunity, and the other fights them with its bigotries and morals from a book.

And that is just one faction humanism has to contend with. There are also the nonreligious authoritarians like Putin, Un, Xi, Ergodan, and now potentially Trump.

And a third is the robber baron capitalists willing to despoil the earth and subject workers to subsistence wages and lack of benefits and workplace protections.

All of these people want to enslave others according to their theocratic ambitions, their personal power ambitions, or their personal wealth ambitions. Humanists fight against all of that.

 

[Godobeyer]

Yes I believe in Muhammad and the Quran also. But it states clearly in the Quran that other Prophets will appear after Muhammad. Muslims do not understand this because they do not study and reflect on the verses of the Quran but instead listen to sermons by leaders who are ignorant of the true meanings of the Quran. Leaders of religion have led their followers away from the truth.

Excuse me!!? Where your find the information, about prophets wll appears after Muhammad pbuh?

 

[viole]

Then by respecting all religions you are in truth more religious than them as you lack bigotry.

I did not say I respect all religions. I said I pay the exact same amount of intellectual respect to all religions. The latter does not entail the former.

Ciao

- viole

 

[viole]

Then by respecting all religions you are in truth more religious than them as you lack bigotry.

I did not say I respect all religions. I said I pay the exact same amount of intellectual respect to all religions. The latter does not entail the former.

And this is because I did not quantify how much that amount is.

Ciao

- viole

 

[viole]

Then by respecting all religions you are in truth more religious than them as you lack bigotry.

I did not say I respect all religions. I said I pay the exact same amount of intellectual respect to all religions. The latter does not entail the former.

And this is because I did not quantify how much that amount is.

So there is complete harmony between the spiritual teachings of each Educator. What the people say is not always in harmony with what was originally taught. So we say that in essence all religions are one, equal and complementary but that the followers have strayed from the original teachings and now worship theological disputes as their new God. For had they all followed what was originally taught, we would already have a wonderful world with peace and prosperity.

Can you please tell me what you mean with "strayed from the original teaching"? What original teachings? And how do you determine them, without getting back into true teachings, vs bad teachings?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Truthseeker]

Teaching of Christianity and Judaism not exactly same as Islam.

There was one message.
Which belief in one God, His messengers and books and Judgment day.

God sent many prophets to Jews, because His messages always corrupted by hand made.

We believe in torah and gospel are modified, by human hands and translations.

why do the teachings have to be exactly the same if the practitioners are spiritually trying follow God's will? How could they have modified them on a wide scale between the time they were written until the Qur'an came along? The verses that Muslims believe say the verses have been changed according to the Baha'i Faith is interpreted differently. The meaning of what had been revealed before has been perverted. The Messengers did not reveal identical things before Islam as to what in the Qur'an in the first place. It doesn't matter that they don't because truth is multifaceted. Material laws change according to the needs of the time. The Muslims are stuck and can never forward again because of this attitude. It is static, which can't serve mankind today. We don't live in medieval times anymore when needs were different concerning social and material aspects, though the spiritual verities stay the same.

 

[Truthseeker]

I suppose you'd have to, but that's doing it backwards in my opinion. You're essentially agreeing to accept whatever moral principle is attributed to or commanded by the deity, and define morality by whatever you find there. It's called divine command moral theory: "Divine command theory is the belief that things are right because God commands them to be. In other words, it means that things which are considered wrong or unethical are wrong because they are forbidden by God. It is an absolutist theory."

Speaking for myself, I didn't go about it that way. There is certain testing when I evaluate a Messenger to see if what they say is right on behalf of God. If there is still small residue of things that I don't understand and frankly if I was an unbeliever wouldn't accept, then on the strength of believing most of it and also other evidence I won't get into right now, I accept that teaching. Of course an ordinary human being can say things I mostly agree with too. But there are some things about Baha'u'llah beyond that that incline me to believe He is not an ordinary human being.

The problem there is obvious. If you are told to despise atheists because a good god find them abominable, then you do. Likewise with LGBTQ+. If you are told that they are an abomination to this good god, it's permission to persecute them or at a minimum demonize and marginalize them. If you are convinced by your preacher or pastor that God wants you to vote for Trump, you do so.

You are speaking to the wrong crowd. Some people despise atheists, but we are not told to do that. We are not taught that LGBTQ+ are an abomination to God. In this forum Baha'is repeatedly are told we do the latter, but it's impossible to shake a bias you have about that no matter how much we show we are not that. We have no pastors. You are lumping us with Christians. You should realize that we are not Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. You lump us all together. All religion is to be condemned because some people have perverted it.

The humanist is going to judge these moral principles by his own standards according to his own conscience. According to humanist standards, there is no reason to disesteem atheists and LGBTQ+ unless this god actually exists, and then the reason would be that it's you or them - that this deity commands you to see such people as in defiance or rebellion against a good god and unfit for paradise.

That's good that in these issues we see eye to eye.

Whoever authored Abrahamic moral values, we can do better. We have done better, and there are cultural wars being fought in America today between these two antithetical traditions. Humanists battle for such people to experience tolerance, acceptance, and dignity while their religious counterparts work to do the opposite.

You are lumping 4 religions together as if they are identical. I do believe in the previous three Messengers in this line, but the followers don't see things as Baha'is do, nor with each other.

"The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don't want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don't want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you."

I have no doubt that you don't want to rape, that you don't want to murder. That is a straw man addressed to @Trailblazer.

All of these people want to enslave others according to their theocratic ambitions, their personal power ambitions, or their personal wealth ambitions. Humanists fight against all of that.

Good for you.

 

[Frank Goad]

Christian universalism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

look at this. Modern proponents:

A proponent of the idea of universal salvation is also the Polish Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś , who in an interview on September 26, 2024, claimed that "[...] all people, regardless of which religion they profess, OR WHETHER THEY PROFESS NONE AT ALL, are saved through the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus".[71]

What do you think

loverofhumanity ? ​

 

[danieldemol]

We are not taught that LGBTQ+ are an abomination to God.

This sounds like saying at least Baha'i are not as bad as the L.D.S.

I'd assert that in my view that's a low bar to clear,

Shoghi Effendi describes homosexuality as a "shameful sexual aberration", as "against nature", as a "handicap", as an "affliction" to be treated by doctors if necessary, as "highly condemned", as "abhorrent to the Creator of all mankind".

Source: Bahá'í Library Online

Here is the definition of abomination;
'a thing that causes disgust or loathing.'

Source: define abomination - Google Search

Here is the definition of abhorrent;
'inspiring disgust and loathing; repugnant.'

Source: define abhorrent - Google Search

Note the similarity of meaning between the two words in my view.