On 9/8/05, firestorm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> gilberto, to the extent that all of us must figure ways to get along with
> others, we are all in fact sociologists.
ok.
> the us senate exists becuae of a consttution, voted upon ratified etc.
> whereby a us governemnt comes into existence.
ok.
> the Baha'i Faith comes into existence as the execution of the Estate of
> Baha'u'llah..Who left It, in toto, to Abd'ul Baha, Who left It, in toto to a
> corporation (therefore a quasi-person) not in posession of its maturity,
> which is often called the WOB. due to this issue of timing (and this is a
> personal, and highly phariseeistic view, but it's mine and i stick with it)
ok. those are your words. to me it doesn't seem natural to view
religion as something like a piece of property. and in any case, it
isn't the only way to look at the issue. On top of that, it is
actually sort of besides the point. I have read more about the
Remeyites than the groups which appeared before. And your analogy
points to an ambiguity in the whole situation since Shoghi Effendi
apparently died without a will, no?
> membership in a set is not a property of the member, but of the set. 0.6
> doesn;t > get into the set of integers, no matter how hard it proclaims it is
> ever so much
> like 6.0. the sqaure root of 25 can stand on its head while reading from
> finnegan's > wake, and never be qualified for membership in the set of
> irrational numbers.
I tend not to like this sort of math analogy because the real world is
very different from the world of mathematics. The set of irrational
numbers or the set of integers have exceedingly clear definitions.
Members of a religion simply do not.
> let us hypothesize: so some one says, ahh, if i put a black stone near my
> home, and circumabulate it on horseback, i will be like Muhammed (pbuH), and
> > therefore have surrendered to the Will of Allah. is this person Moslem?
Al-Hallaj actually did something similar. I wouldn't exclude him from
being Mulsim.
does
> having a deovted woman wash ur feet with her hair make one Christian? imho
> the > objective viewer will say...no. a Verse has been removed from context
> and been > made into the basis of a persona , but not an identity.
> but again, i have personal resistance to the sociologic perspective.
Your analogies are really bad because they don't even come close to
the real-life cases being considered. No one is saying John Smith is a
Bahai because they come from Baja, California or because they know a
guy named Bob (sounds like "Bab") and read his mail. The people people
talking about believe in the Bab, believe in Bahaullah, believe in
their writings, accept that Abdul-Baha was the successor, and accept
that Shoghi Effendi was his successor. Even during Shoghi Effendi's
lifetime, most Bahais assumed that the Guardianship was going to
continue. So expecting a second Guardian couldn't have been *that*
ridiculous.
If you don't want to believe it, fine. No one is making you. From my
perspective it doesn't matter all that much. It just seems weird to
act as if the people who disagree with you are somehow stupid or
silly.
Peace
Gilberto
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