tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10927300.post114835701559019630..comments2023-08-01T08:29:19.880-05:00Comments on Atlanta ROFTERS: The Bahai Faith And IranThe Sanity Inspectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04808433661634318393noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10927300.post-1149032289040183232006-05-30T18:38:00.000-05:002006-05-30T18:38:00.000-05:00Thanks for your efforts on behalf of Baha'is - it'...Thanks for your efforts on behalf of Baha'is - it's nice to be noticed and even better to be defended! There has been some problems in Egypt of late too.<BR/><BR/>As a matter of clarification you note the Baha'is Faith is syncretic, an off-shoot of Shi' Islam, and an Abrahamic Faith. I think most Baha'is wouldn't feel comfortable with the first, or the second, though the third does kind of mostly fit. The first means "attempting to reconsile disparate or opposed themes or schemes". The presumption is that it is a human effort to bring such things together. At the core of any Faith is, as you note, a Founder, as well as a Scripture. Baha'is do not beleive their Faith is based on an effort to reconsile various truths of religion - we believe that God is the source of all the Religions. They are *already* of one source however colored by a history of division and strife. The syncretic effort, if any, is to seek out such details and illumine the underlying unity but to do so naturally - not to impose a forced unreasonable harmony (if unconventional.) In physics the pursuit of a "Theory of everything" could be thought of as syncretic - but physicists do not suppose that reality itself is somehow unsynced with itself or in need of a means of reconsiliation. It simply *is* with an undifferentiated unity. As for being an off-shoot of Shi' Islam... would it be fair to define Christianity as an off-shoot of Judaism or that I am a defined adequetly as a son of my parents? Again, in essence, while framed by the mechanics of history, religions are essentially a fresh exposition, however much they have in common with the prior religion's Source. I am a son, but I am also a father. While intimately related one is not well defined by the other. By extension the same thing holds for being an Abrahamic Faith. We do indeed see Abraham as the head of a religion from which prophetic, religious, and historical/social issues extend to Judaism, Christianity and Islam and claim in our Scriptures a linkage direct to our own Founders. But of Abraham Hinduism, Buddhism and various aboriginal Faiths of the peoples of the continents say nothing or less and the Baha'i Faith affirms those religions and faith-traditions as well. So being Abrahamic is indeed a big tent - but we are more.SMKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13268147821220493560noreply@blogger.com