On 9/9/05, firestorm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> gilberto,
> i don;t think they are stupid or silly.
> ur point seems to be, if i am getting it, is that religion is somehow
> different from other social sets.
No, the point is that many social sets (including religion) are very
different from mathematical sets. Class, race, ethnicity, nationality,
even gender. For each of those there are ambiguous cases. There is not
a single uncontraversial hard and fast rule that can be applied in the
same way as "integer" or "irrational number".
> i have difficulty seeing how.
> matters of "beleif" ...sure... verry grey area.
> if freind x tells me they have many ideas similar to those of Baha'is, i can
> agree. if someone tells me that person abc is a nice guy and ever so Baha'i
> like...i personally tend to cringe, becuase niceness is not something that
> comes from being a Baha'i as some automatic gift.
I very much agree, but I'm not sure how that relates to the
discussion. I don't think those are the kind of cases we are talking
about. We are talking about people who actually believe that Bahaullah
is a Manifestation (and accept Abdul-Baha.. and Shoghi Effendi) and
say of themselves that they are Bahais.
> a spiritual life with internal consistency tends to prodice harmonious
> outward behaviour. that is by no means new or exclusive to the Faith.
Yes.
> the point of my legalistic interpreation about the Faith being Property of
> Baha'u'llah, and
> subject to logic in thoset erms is that it obviates the entire
> pseudo-construct of shoghi
> effendi leaving no will. he had no estate. he was trustee of an estate, and
> had in fact, clearly > and evidently, appointed with due authority a board to
> take over the duties of guardian
> trustee of that Estate until it could be delivered.
I don't necessarily want to get into the ins and outs because I don't
think they matter all that much in terms of what I'm saying. I
honestly don't have a strong opinion on what the most correct
interpretation of the Bahai faith is. But as an outsider I wouldn't
pick a side.
> yeah, i am quite familair with trhe idea that people thought the clause in
> the Aqdas about
> the line of the Centre running out wouldn;t happen at all, or not for a long
> time.
Okay.. so the Orthodox side isn't unreasonable.
> so let us do another hypothetical. a billionaire dies, and leaves his wealth
> to a foundation.
> the terms of the flundation are spelled out in the will. they call for a
> board of directors. in the meantime, an executor of the will is named in the
> will, and duly authorised to do his job. no one would argue that his death
> has anything to do with the legitimacy of the will he was executing,
> particularly if he had filed an affidavit wit hteh court that his company,
> law form, or wnhatever, would be overseeing the execution of the will any
> tine he was unavailable.
> now, if someone tells me they thin this is silly, so be it. i am not saying
> the same of them.
> i am saying firmly that they lack the right to tell me i am wrong.
Again, I don't necessarily want to get into the ins and outs, but
Shoghi Effendi didn't directly establish the Universal House of
Justice. And if in your analogy "Board of Directors" = "Hands of the
Cause" then Mason Remey was one of them. If you have a contraversial
situation and the majority goes one way, and a minority (even a
solitary one) goes another... I think that even if the minority
opinion is incorrect, I think it is overkill to say their opinion is
so profoundly invalid that the people who disagree are actually not
Bahai.
> since i am not in harmony with the sociologic appraoch, i will hesitate to
> accept someone's self-identification as a Baha'i.
And at that point we should agree to disagree, and drop the discussion. Okay?
Peace
Gilberto
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