The Baha'i Studies Listserv David,
There is no way to explain this. To a believer in literal inerrancy, nothing can change their mind, they will always rationalize any amount of contrary evidence. Thus, you can not have a rational discussion with a Christian or Islamic fundamentalist. God forbid we Baha'is go down the same road. It is apparent to any person that peace is not established. Sure, we can, like Big Brother in 1984, say war is peace and peace is war. We can, as many Bahai's do, declare that all such Baha'i prophecies are literally fulfilled, regardless of reality, by rationalization. But "oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive" (ourselves). This is how a peaceful, loving religion (Christianity) was twisted to eventually institute the Inquisition. Since the Bible was literally true, in every detail, anyone making statements otherwise was an enemy of Jesus and God and it was justifiable, even mandatory to suppress them by any means necessary. I don't think we Baha'is will go down that route (if I did I would not be a Baha'i). But neither did the early followers of Jesus and Mohammad expect their messages to be twisted to support terrorism and the like. But don't be over confident. If we embrace literal inerrancy, it is easy to envision an interpretation of "him too shall ye burn" to encompass an "enemy of the faith" trying to "burn down Baha'i principles" and it might be justified to burn such a heretic at the stake. Ron __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[email protected] Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:[email protected] Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [email protected] Or subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:[email protected] Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News (on-campus only) - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
