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If Baptists consider themselves inheritors of Manichaenism, then they are further away from Christianity than I (or indeed most Baptists themselves) thought.
Manichaenism was derived from Zoroastrian religions and believed in two equal and opposite deities -- the God of Good and the God of Evil. This is a nice and simple answer to the question "why is there evil in the world"

However, Manichaens did not beleive as Paulicians did that the world was created by YHWH who was just a demiurge, not the true, absolute God.

The problem with your argument is that it's a false flag, a red herring. Manichaeanism doesn't even enter into the equation, and the charge largely stems from accusations made by medieval Catholic clergymen who made it for two reasons:

1) They were completely ignorant of what Manichaeanism even was and,

2) They didn't care anywise - they were just looking for some bogus "scare" tag to stick on the "out-group", even if they had to lie to do so.

Let's think about this a little bit. Manichaeanism was a completely self-contained theological system. In fact, aside from the Valentinianism of the West, Manichaeanism was about the most sophisticated, internally-consistent, and intricate gnostic system in existence in the late classical world.

This being the case, if later so-called "Manichaean" groups were really descendants of Mani's speculation, you would expect to find some indication of the actual specific theological ideas and "distinctives" which gave rise to the "outflowing" doctrines such as the dualism, etc. You can't just modularise something like Manichaeanism, picking and choosing certain doctrines from it, while leaving others. You take it or leave it as it is.

Now, there's no actual evidence that the Albigenses, Cathari, etc. even held to any of the "outflowing" doctrines to begin with. All we have in support of the idea that they were "dualists", etc. is the word of their enemies in the Catholic Church. You'll pardon me if I don't find those criticisms credible in the least. Indeed, we do have access to primary source documents for the Cathari, at least, which completely refute the notion that they were dualists, etc. and instead show that they were biblically orthodox. There is certainly no evidence that these groups held to any of the core, distinctive doctrines of Mani, the doctrines upon which the outflowings rested. This is likely because the Catholic clergymen making the charges didn't even know what these core distinctives would be, because they didn't actually know anything about Manichaeanism to know what they were talking about. The charge is all just bigoted smoke-blowing on their part, with no actual substance.

As with many other charges, the Catholic contention that these groups were "Manichaeans" rests upon a strange and unattractive combination of religious bigotry and gross ignorance.

The problem with your argument is that it's a false flag, a red herring. Manichaeanism doesn't even enter into the equation

I'm just repeating what the article said, that "The first overflow from this source were the Manichaeans, the next the Paulicians, the next the Cathari, who in the tenth and eleventh centuries were very strong in Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Dalmatia. Of the Cathari, the Bogomils, Patoreni, Albigenses, etc. . . were only individual developments (C. Schmidt, Schaff-Hersog, I. 47). That is to say, these parties were all of the same family, "

This was not a Catholic clergyman's source, that's C. Schmidt, Schaff-hersog saying it.

As with many other charges, the Catholic contention that these groups were "Manichaeans" rests upon a strange and unattractive combination of religious bigotry and gross ignorance.

Hey, blame the author of the article who stated that there was a clear line from Manichaeans to Cathari.... the facts state that the Cathari were gnostics. There's no other proof otherwise that states they were not. There's no point saying "oh, but the contrary proof was destroyed". If it was destroyed, it was destroyed, the only proof remaining states that they were Gnostics. Anything else is like saying Area 41 exists and you can't deny it because all statements denying it were twisted....