The Morality of Atheism

[Copernicus]

I tend to think that the Baha'i Faith may have been an attempt to be something similar to the Protestant reformation. At least, looking back at the years when I studied that religion, it now seems to me that's exactly what it was trying to do, make the Muslim religion into something milder, kinder and with less hatred and prejudice towards those outside their faith. Too bad, it never worked out the way their so called prophets had hoped.

I've met a few very liberal Muslims, so just like Christians, anyone can find a nicer interpretation of the religion of their youth or become a convert to a nicer form of a particular religion.

I don't see the Reformation, however, as trying to make Roman Catholicism "milder, kinder, and with less hatred and prejudice towards those outside their faith." Martin Luther was a particularly vehement antisemite. Islam schismed like Christianity, but the Sunni/Shia schism was between religious factions. Christianity had its major schisms (e.g. Orthodox vs Roman Catholic), but the Holy Roman Empire underwent a major crisis between secular and ecclesiastical authority. The religious wars that followed, particularly the vicious and bloody  Thirty Years War, served as a wedge that allowed northern European monarchies to break off from the Pope's authority with the Protestant movement lacking any central authority to compete with kings. So secular government evolved out of that violent rivalry between religion and civil authority, not from any attempt to soften Christianity. Religion and civil authority remained joined at the hip in Muslim countries. Secular Muslim countries exist today, but their secularism seems much weaker than that of Christian nations. Perhaps Turkey under Ataturk evolved the strongest secular democracy in the Muslim world, but that era seems to have much weaker under Erdogan.