Bloopers
What drove me out of the Baha’i Faith? The best answer is probably “religion”. More to the point, I developed an annoyance with the whole idea of special revelation in my early 20s. I began to realize that if one must trust a middleman when it comes to truth, one is in a sorry place indeed. If some angel comes out of heaven and tells me “God says eat eggplant”, should I trust the angel simply because he has wings? How can I ever know that the angel is from God? And even if the angel were from God, is it necessarily virtuous to reflexively obey one’s creator?
Ultimately, we are left judging truth and virtue for ourselves. We cannot avoid it. A man may say he is following some particular prophet, but what he is actually doing is endorsing that prophet. What we usually call belief is better described as an act of appropriation.
Though my primary objection against Baha’ism is an objection against revealed religion, I do, nonetheless, have some specific objections to the Baha’i Faith, and I will try to enumerate them, ranked (somewhat arbitrarily) according to my level of disapproval:
- Dissociative Identity Disorder (due to the confusing variety of superlative pronouncements made by Baha’i scripture).
- The “Most Holy Book”
- The twin duties of belief and obedience.
- Shi’ah-style legalism.
- Institutional infallibility. This fault may be inherited from Shi’ah Islam.
- `Abdu’l-Baha’s know-it-all accounts of science and history. When coupled with his self-pronounced infallibility, this makes for a particularly nasty fault. It constitutes an aggressive violation of the domain of science.
- Proselytism and relocation (”pioneering”). One of the core, defining principles of Baha’ism is proselytism, so much so that one wonders what would become of Baha’ism were everyone to become Baha’i.
- Bureaucracy (the “World Order” and “Administrative Order”). Shoghi’s 20th Century notion of organized religion, possibly inspired by the Soviet model.
- Doomsday visions. Baha’ and Shoghi were particularly blameworthy of inciting fear among the believers.
- Patrilineal successorship. The Bab appointed his successor from among all his believers, but Baha’ set a precedent of choosing successors from among his male descendents.
- Baha’s self-pitying “wronged one” drivel.
- The spartan, fundamentalist marriage ceremony: “we will all, verily, abide by the Will of God”.
- Canned prayer. Official, scriptural prayers are considered to have spiritual powers that a person’s own words do not have. Therefore, Baha’is do not pray in their own words (at least when praying among others). This problem appears to be inherited from Islam.
- Excommunication, shunning, and denunciation of heretics. This is not so particularly unique to Baha’ism, except that it is a dominant theme in the Baha’i scriptures themselves.
