Why I quit the Baha’i Faith.

A decade ago, I was a member of a religion known as the Baha’i Faith. This religion teaches that God is called by various names but is still the same all over the world, that all religions teach the same basic message, and that humanity is one and is destined to unite under the banner of the Baha’i Faith in a new age of peace and unity.

For one who is eager, as I was, to see goodness in most things that claim to be good, this was a Godsend! I embraced the faith in 1995 and became an active teacher of it, even attempting to convert others to it. I had been a Christian in my teens, but had become disgusted with Christianity and left that faith in my early 20s because I saw the errors, contradictions, and failures of it. The Baha’i Faith explained that away by claiming that while Jesus was indeed a Messenger (or Manifestation) of God, His faith had become corrupted over time and thus most Christians were not truly following him, but the doctrines of men. In joining the Baha’i community, I was seeing what the early Christians in the Roman Empire were like, except that unlike them the Baha’is would not split into competing sects and engage in wars against each other. If only everyone in the world became Baha’i, I was told, we would be at peace and prosperity forever.

 

 

What a wonderful vision! But human nature will NEVER allow for it! The reason is that the leadership of the Baha’i Faith, from its founder, Baha’u’llah, to the Universal House of Justice today, claims to be infallible because it is guided by God. Yet we know that Baha’u’llah, his son Abdu’l-Baha, Abdu’l-Baha’s grandson Shoghi Effendi (the Guardian of the Faith), and the members of the Universal House of Justice were/are all HUMAN BEINGS. What evidence do we have that ANY of them are infallible? NONE! And if you cannot question the will of a leadership, what do you in fact have? Tyranny! And what does tyranny always lead to, according to history? Corruption and injustice! And that, in turn results in the system breaking down over time. It was my coming to understand this that finally led me to leave the Faith in 2004. Indeed, the very idea that any human being, human run institution, or human product is infallible is sheer nonsense. It is the most dangerous idea in the world!

 

 

http://circleh.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/religious-fundamentalism-is-blasphemy/
 
I have every reason to beleive that, unless the Baha’i Faith goes down to extinction in the next few centuries, it will become as corrupt and dangerous as any other religion has ever been. It is not dangerous now only because there are so few of them. But the fact is that this Faith is directly descended from the Shiite branch of Islam, which is known to be extremely violent and intolerant by nature. The Baha’i Faith, which was founded in the 19th Century, looks exactly like what one would expect if one took the most liberal Western political and social concepts of that Century and grafted them onto Shiite Islam. By implication, that also involves accepting everything about Islam and its Prophet Muhammad as true and good as well. If you do not, you cannot be Baha’i. That is the Baha’i Faith’s greatest weakness!

I am an non-theist now, worshipping no God and following no faith. And I do not foresee myself being anything else. The Baha’i Faith was the last chance I was willing to give for a God centered religion to rule my life….and now I know that none ever will.