Postmaster said:
So I was thinking this could have been one reason what drove the philosophies of the Bab and Bahá'u'lláh to recognise all great religious figures as prophets. Because the only way to counter the Islamic claim of Mohammad as the final prophet of God, is to say that's what God wanted people to believe at that TIME and to further support this theory they had to include every faith in the world. However when one studies all religions of the world it is very easy to see how different they all are. How can one say God sent Buddha if Buddhists don't even believe in a God or in a soul.
If I may be permitted to offer a different perspective on this: the concept of "progressive revelation" implies that religous truth is relative--that the truths of any given revelation are suited to a particular time, place, culture and human social evolution. An analogy often given relates progressive revelation to the grades in school. In each grade, the students are taught based on the capacity of the students to learn, and not the capacity of the teacher to teach.
Now, that's fine, but what about such fundamental contradictions in these truths as one finds between Baha'i and Buddhism? Perhaps another anology will help us here as well.
Suppose I ask you to give me the sum of the interior angles of a triangle. You are likely to say that this sum is 180 degrees (or PI radians). That answer would be correct if we're discussing plane geometry. That answer would be wrong if we're discussing spherical geomery (i.e. geometry where we project points and lines onto a spherical surface), where the sum of the interior angles is always strictly greater than 180 degrees. (Imagine starting at the North Pole, going south for a certain distance, going east for that same distance, then turning back north until you reach the North Pole again. You've just scribed out a triangle whose interior angles add up to 270 degrees.)
Now, which of these is "true". Well, when land surveyors plot out the boundaries of a piece of property, it's best to use plane geometry. The equations of spherical geometry, while theoretically closer to our reality, are complex enough that the computational error is likely to far outweigh any error of distortion. For local plots of land, plane geometry is our best description of reality.
On the other hand, when we're flying a plane from Seattle to London, our navigator had better be using spherical geometry, or we aren't going to end up in London. For intercontinental flights, spherical geometry is our best description of reality.
In other words, geometric truth is relative to the goal we wish to achieve. The same can be said of religous truth, and I would submit that this is exactly what Baha'u'llah means with His concept of progressive revelation. The goal of any Revelation is moving humanity forward in our spiritual evolution--what Baha'is refer to as carrying forward an ever advancing civilization.
So, how do we come to Buddhism that doesn't teach of the existence of God? I will speculate, but my speculation is highly subjective. I'm not a Buddhist scholar, nor do I wish to pretend to be one. This is, however, what I think has happened (and I welcome any Buddhist who wishes to correct my understanding).
The Buddha appeared in a largely Hindu mileu--a mileu that had acquired some largely anthropomorphic views God. All of the Buddha's discourse I've read on the subject of God appear, to me at least, to be addressing these anthropomorphised views of God. I think that the Buddha was trying to say that these anthropomorphised views of God do not reflect reality.
The Buddha is mostly silent on the question of whether or not God, as a being distinct from Hindic views, exists. His ontology focussed on the "becoming" aspect of our spiritual reality, and gave little attention to the "being" aspect of our spiritual reality. Within that ontology, whether or not a "Prime Mover" exists is a non-issue. A fuller aprehension of the nature of God simply wasn't what humanity needed at that time.
To summarize, progressive revelation pertains to humanity's needs and capacity at any given time. Because our capacity has always been, and will always be, limited, every Revelation has given, and will give, us a limited picture of reality. Because each of these pictures are approximate descriptions of reality, just like plane and spherical geometry represent approximate descriptions of reality, there is a chance that they will contradict each other.
These contradictions are unavoidable, but also are precisely why the doctrines of one Revelation cannot be used to validate or invalidate any subsequent Revelation. The validity of any given Revelation depends upon the Person and Nature of the Revealator. Or, at least, this is one way to understand what the concept of "progressive revelation" means.
