Roads to Reality

Goya’s ‘Truth Has Died’

Just as there is a fundamental difference between divine Revelation itself and the understanding that believers have of it, so also there is a basic distinction between scientific fact and reasoning on the one hand and the conclusions or theories of scientists on the other. There is, and can be, no conflict between true religion and true science: true religion is revealed by God, while it is through true science that the mind of man “discovers the realities of things and becomes cognizant of their peculiarities and effects, and of the qualities and properties of beings” and “comprehendeth the abstract by the aid of the concrete”. However, whenever a statement is made through the lens of human understanding it is thereby limited, for human understanding is limited; and where there is limitation there is the possibility of error; and where there is error, conflicts can arise.

(A Compilation on Scholarship: Baha’i Reference Library)

This faculty of meditation frees man from the animal nature, discerns the reality of things, puts man in touch with God.

This faculty brings forth from the invisible plane the sciences and arts. Through the meditative faculty inventions are made possible, colossal undertakings are carried out; through it governments can run smoothly. Through this faculty man enters into the very kingdom of God.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Paris Talks, page 175)

A Turning Point in Human History

At a critical period in the prehistory of humanity, traces of three trends can be found in the archaeological record at a level not previously seen: artistic activity, burial and advances in tool making. As the basis of his examination of the link he sees between this flowering of creativity and a vulnerability to problems of the mind, Horrobin summarises this turning point in the following terms (The Madness of Adam & Eve, page 19):

While our knowledge of our ancestors remains very limited, the artefacts that they left behind demonstrate a clear discontinuity in mind, if not in body, which occurred at some point between about 50,000 and 200,000 years ago.

More recently Keith Oatley has unpacked a similar point in his exploration of the importance of fiction, Such Stuff as Dreams (page 28):

Steven Mithen has proposed that the ability to make metaphors is close to the essence of being human, and close to the essence of art. It’s the ability to discover that something can be both itself and something else. . . . It could be that our attainment of it was the crossing of a threshold from the archaic to the modern human mind. Evidence of the archaeological record indicates that this ability arose between (sic) relatively recently. . . .  A musical instrument – a flute – has been found from 43,000 years ago. The first known cave paintings were made 31,000 years ago. At around the same time, people started burying their dead.

Altamira Cave Painting

An increased variation in the tools created also dates from this period.

This is a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms and can only be seen as a dramatic development. The reasons are hard to explain and reducing them to the result of accelerated brain development from some combination of vitamin-rich fish and digestion-aiding fire fails to be completely convincing. That a bigger brain gives us an evolutionary advantage in the ability it confers on us to deal with the complexities of our social life misses part of the mystery for me.

My concern is not so much with this development’s physical causes, its suddenness or the evolutionary advantages it might be said to bestow, but with the fact that it seemed to implicate three diverse forms of human expertise and inquiry: art, religion and science/technology. The roots of all those three are here. Horrobin quoted Picasso (op. cit: page 16) as having viewed the cave paintings at Altamira, painted throughout a period between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago, and commented: ‘We have learned nothing.’

The Dangers of Dogmatic Science

We have become prone to see the realms within which art, religion and science move as quite distinct, even hostile. Is that position justified? Might it be possible that each is a path towards a better understanding of reality, towards a closer approximation of the truth? By divorcing them have we blocked off any hope of achieving a more complete perspective than the current fragmented and contradictory one?

There are increasing numbers of reputable thinkers who believe so. Rupert Sheldrake is a scientist who has risked his credibiliity and his career arguing publicly for science to accept its limitations and allow for the existence of baffling mysteries it cannot (yet?) explain.

He lists unhelpful dogmas that the church of science teaches (pages 7-8):

Here are the ten core beliefs that most scientists take for granted.

1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, ‘lumbering robots’, in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.

3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).

4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same for ever.

5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not ‘out there’, where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Oatley is both a psychologist and novelist who makes what might seem extraordinary claims for fiction as ‘not just a slice of life’ (From the Preface) but as ‘a guided dream, a model that we readers and viewers construct in collaboration with the writer, which can enable us to see others and ourselves more clearly. The dream can offer us glimpses beneath the surface of the everyday world.’

Both of these writers, Baumeister and Oatley, bring the methods of science to bear upon the positions they are arguing for.

Combining our Powers

In the posts of this blog we have already seen Eric Reitan argue that it is just as reasonable to believe in God as not to believe in Him. There is no evidence, scientific or otherwise so completely compelling as to force anyone to believe or not believe. We have seen Ken Wilber and Margaret Donaldson clearly demonstrate that scientism privileges the kind of evidence that supports scientism’s reductionist prejudices and discounts replicable experiences within the meditative traditions that suggest they might be unwise to do so. Baumeister and Tierney as we have recently discussed have trawled the scientific literature and found numerous examples of how religion benefits society and the individual. (I am not blind to the dark side of faith and have discussed it at some length – see my posts on Conviction in the list below.)

In the end, though, how much longer can a beleaguered humanity grope for solutions to its complex and global problems in the semi-darkness, refusing to use every possible source of light?

All too often it seems, as Sheldrake contends, the light of science is dimmed by reductionist and simplistic filters that need to be discarded. Robert Wright has strongly implied that religion in the hands of too many of us is narrowed to the pencil torch of some kind of fundamentalism. At the same time, too much of art at the so-called high end has surrendered to the fragmented perspectives of modernism and merely reflects our bewildered and chaotic perceptions of reality back to us in its broken mirror.

We can’t afford to let this continue for much longer, I would have said. We need to stop bickering and combine our powers if we are to solve our problems in time.

I plan to come back to the works of Sheldrake and Oatley in more detail at a later date but feel that what they write is of such importance and said so eloquently that I needed to highlight their work almost as soon as I had found it.

Related articles

• Review: Such Stuff As Dreams – Keith Oatley
• Rupert Sheldrake: the ‘heretic’ at odds with scientific dogma
• The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry, By Rupert Sheldrake
• Skilfully Willing (2/2) (A summary of Baumeister and Tierney’s points about the value of religion)
• Conviction 1, Conviction 2 & Conviction 3
• ‘Is God a Delusion?’ by Eric Reitan
• The Self & the Soul (5/5) (for Wilber and Donaldson)
• Expanding the Moral Imagination (A review of Robert Wright’s book ‘The Evolution of God’)

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The Currency of Suffering (2/2)

A chain like the one in the Siyah Chal

At the end of the previous post on this topic there is the following challenging quote from Bahá’u’lláh’s Hidden Words:

51. O SON OF MAN! My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. Hasten thereunto that thou mayest become an eternal light and an immortal spirit. This is My command unto thee, do thou observe it.

No one can argue convincingly that Bahá’u’lláh did not know what suffering was like. That alone would give His words tremendous credibility. He was incarcerated in the Siyah Chal, a traumatic ordeal. His experience there was special in an altogether different and more positive way as well:

In the middle of the 19th century, one of the most notorious dungeons in the Near East was Tehran’s “Black Pit.” Once the underground reservoir for a public bath, its only outlet was a single passage down three steep flights of stone steps. Prisoners huddled in their own bodily wastes, languishing in the pit’s inky gloom, subterranean cold and stench-ridden atmosphere.

In this grim setting, the rarest and most cherished of religious events was once again played out: a mortal man, outwardly human in other respects, was summoned by God to bring to humanity a new religious revelation.

The year was 1852, and the man was a Persian nobleman, known today as Bahá’u'lláh. During His imprisonment, as He sat with his feet in stocks and a 100-pound iron chain around his neck, Bahá’u'lláh received a vision of God’s will for humanity.

For Bahá’ís therefore His words have an authority over and above the credence everyone would undoubtedly agree His sufferings accorded Him. I recognise that many do not see His Words as originating with God so it is necessary to pursue this exploration of the meaning of suffering much further and in more prosaic terms.

The Siyah Chal was not the end of His sufferings. Exile and further imprisonment followed, and in the prison in Acre he lost His youngest son, Mirza Mihdi:

He was pacing the roof of the barracks in the twilight, one evening, wrapped in his customary devotions, when he fell through the unguarded skylight onto a wooden crate, standing on the floor beneath, which pierced his ribs, and caused, twenty-two hours later, his death, on . . . . June 23, 1870.

(God Passes By: page 188)

Mirza Mihdi

So, He clearly knew from close personal experience what he was talking about. Also, if we have accepted that the improbability of the universe entails the existence of a God capable of creating it, and now that we have begun to comprehend the vastness, wonder and complexity of the universe, with its quantum foam and simultaneous interactions over vast distances that light would need decades to traverse, the idea of the spiritual reality of which He speaks begins to seem a little less preposterous.

This is fortunate because, as we have already seen in the previous post on this subject, there is no way we can get out of the impasse without making a further extrapolation from the existence of a God to the existence of a reality beyond the one accessible to our senses.

Eric Reitan, in his exemplary treatment of the whole question of the existence of God, takes a long look at the questions we are scrutinising now. His discussion is thorough and complex and I can only include the bare bones of it here. His concern in the passages I quote is the problem of evil, but it is easy to see how his comments apply to the closely related issue of suffering. On pages 196-197 he writes:

For any and all of these evils, the question of why God would permit them requires us to suppose that there are vistas of reality that transcend our understanding – vistas that may not just put evil into perspective but also the fact that it can seem so overwhelming. . . . .

If, within His vast ocean of understanding, God discerns a justifying reason for allowing evil to exist, the probability that this reason would also fall within our puddle of understanding is very low.

So, we can neither know the mind of God nor grasp the full nature of the spiritual reality which surrounds us, though it surely exists in some form. He draws on the cosmological argument, a variation of which I have already referred to briefly in the earlier post and mention again above, to conclude that (page 197) ‘it is reasonable to believe in a transcendent and essentially mysterious reality.’

It is perhaps important to mention that Reitan is not seeking to provide conclusive proof that would persuade everyone that God exists. That would be impossible for reasons I have explored elsewhere. He is simply demonstrating that it is as reasonable to believe in God as not, a truth that Darwinian reductionists find hard to swallow. (See Olinga Tahzib’s Ch4 broadcast for a clear explanation of the Baha’i viewpoint.)

Once you accept the possibility of a transcendent realm, aspects of that mysterious reality can be seen to have, potentially at least, a massively compensating function that provides a radically different context against which to measure both evil and suffering, a context which would make it possible to accept that the pain entailed in making moral choices, for example, and the agony incurred in unforeseen calamities are not inordinate and maybe even serve some higher purpose. Reitan himself points towards this very clearly (page 189):

Not long ago, the distracted negligence of a home daycare provider combined with plain bad luck to take the life of my friend’s 18-month-old son, a gentle boy fiercely loved by his parents. In the face of this tragedy, my friend and his wife have been sustained by a religious faith which promises that everything good and beautiful about their child has been embraced by the deepest reality in the universe.

Something else has helped me come to terms with even uninvited suffering, and helped me also get a more immediate sense of how the idea of a spiritual reality, over and above the purely physical world our senses are restricted to, can be of great help. This was the message that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote to bereaved parents who had contacted him in their despair, his keen awareness of the pain of their grief perhaps enhanced by the strong light cast by his own feelings from when his brother, Mirza Mihdi, died in the prison citadel of Acre. He uses a very homely and concrete image to embody the intuition Reitan describes, imagery which makes the possibility of a spiritual realm more vivid and brings it that much closer:

The death of that beloved youth and his separation from you have caused the utmost sorrow and grief; for he winged his flight in the flower of his age and the bloom of his youth to the heavenly nest. But he hath been freed from this sorrow-stricken shelter and hath turned his face toward the everlasting nest of the Kingdom, and, being delivered from a dark and narrow world, hath hastened to the sanctified realm of light; therein lieth the consolation of our hearts.

The inscrutable divine wisdom underlieth such heart-rending occurrences. It is as if a kind gardener transferreth a fresh and tender shrub from a confined place to a wide open area. This transfer is not the cause of the withering, the lessening or the destruction of that shrub; nay, on the contrary, it maketh it to grow and thrive, acquire freshness and delicacy, become green and bear fruit. This hidden secret is well known to the gardener, but those souls who are unaware of this bounty suppose that the gardener, in his anger and wrath, hath uprooted the shrub. Yet to those who are aware, this concealed fact is manifest, and this predestined decree is considered a bounty. Do not feel grieved or disconsolate, therefore, at the ascension of that bird of faithfulness; nay, under all circumstances pray for that youth, supplicating for him forgiveness and the elevation of his station.

(Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: 169)

Even though this loving and lovely metaphor of the gardener contributed to a resolution of my quandary, there was still an aspect that troubled me. All this has not only been ordained by God, but it also requires our acquiescence in some way. Bahá’u’lláh’s own expression of it in the Hidden Words is:

18. O SON OF SPIRIT! Ask not of Me that which We desire not for thee, then be content with what We have ordained for thy sake, for this is that which profiteth thee, if therewith thou dost content thyself.

I needed to make sense of this in terms of what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá described. Why might it be so important that I content myself with this state of reality?

An obvious partial answer is that, if we can accept the suffering, we will suffer less. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy regards suffering as what we add to the inevitable pain of existence, in part by our resistance to it and also by the language we use to ourselves to describe it. Which is not to say that we should not take practical steps to alleviate our own pain in other ways and to give solace to others, as well as, where possible, making sure that avoidable accidents do not add to the catalogue of human misery.

To go beyond that and probe more deeply into possible ways of learning to accept the apparently unacceptable is something each of us has to do in our own way, by prayer, reading, reflection and ‘right action,’ to use the Buddhist phrase. So, as a way of bringing these reflections to a close, I’d like to share in short hand form my own way of internalising this depiction of reality and of coming to terms with this injunction that we be content with whatever sorrow comes our way.

When we suffer it’s as though we have been robbed of the comforts we have locked away in our hearts to keep them safe, convinced that they were the gold that would buy us our protection from the slings and arrows of ill-fortune, and have been left in their stead with bundles of flimsy paper covered in strange writing.

We simply do not understand the true nature of this paper and rage against our loss, not appreciating that the rage, which is making our heart a furnace, will turn the paper into ashes all too soon, wiping out its incalculable value before we can realise its worth. If we could only come to see our pain and loss as providing us, as a gift, with the currency we will need when we travel, as we all must at some unknown point in the future, to settle in the undiscovered land from whose borders no traveller returns, it would become possible to accept it gratefully rather than resist it pointlessly. We would not then unwittingly destroy it, much to our disadvantage later. Without this currency, when we die we will be like refugees, ill-equipped at first to deal with the challenges of our new homeland. If we were to realise this, not just with our heads but with our hearts as well, we could then do as Bahá’u’lláh advises us and greet calamity with the same peace of mind as we welcome all good fortune. That would be true wisdom and real wealth.

That, of course, is far easier said than done and will take most of us more than a lifetime to accomplish. That should not be a reason to give up, it seems to me. We will, after all, have the whole of eternity to finish off what we have begun locked in time down here, and the better the start we get, the less we’ll have to do later on. Another example of the compensating effect of taking the broader view offered by a spiritual perspective.

Perhaps there is no better way to close this pair of posts than by concluding with the most beautiful piece of music that I know of relating to this theme. (For more about Handel’s Messiah click the link.)

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Human Dignity

From Hogarth's 'The Rake's Progress'

What is Freedom?

This is a topic on which Bahá’u’lláh challenges many of our (mostly Western) assumptions. One such challenge is particularly difficult and particularly important.

Say: True liberty consisteth in man’s submission unto My commandments, little as ye know it. . . . The liberty that profiteth you is to be found nowhere except in complete servitude unto God, the Eternal Truth. Whoso hath tasted of its sweetness will refuse to barter it for all the dominion of earth and heaven.

(Bahá’u'lláh: Synopsis & Codification of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas: 123-5)

From His perspective dignity depends upon curtailing our freedom in certain respects. Liberty, in the sense of licence, debases people and they lose their dignity: they need restraints to protect them from their own ignorance. From a spiritual point of view, the best restraints are God’s commandments and obedience to them is true liberty. Licence traps us in the coils of appetite: obedience to God frees us from debasing desires.

Of course, as Eric Reitan makes plain, we must take care that the God that we follow is ‘worthy of worship.’ Other posts on this blog have explored the relationship between our ideas of God and our ideas of good and the implications that relationship has for our conduct. I won’t rehearse them all again here.

Here is one of the paradoxes of spiritual growth. We are prone to licence and cannot transcend this tendency and achieve true freedom except through the power of Divine Assistance which will involve self-restraint.

For far too many of us in the West, for whom dignity has become more or less synonymous with virtually unbridled self-determination, this is an awkward pill to swallow. Depriving ourselves of its medicinal potency will however only make a bad situation worse.

I accept that a significant number of people would not agree that the pill of Divine Assistance, the afterlife and/or a specific religious faith needs  be swallowed at all. We are perfectly capable, many would argue, of improving ourselves and our society without it.

Robert Wright‘s position on this is interesting. He writes:

Some people will take heart from the idea that to seek a personal salvation linked to social salvation is to align yourself with a cosmic purpose manifest in history, and some won’t (either because they don’t agree that the purpose is manifest or because they don’t care). But however you describe the linkage, whatever the nature of the incentive structure, the linkage will have to be made in a fair percentage of human beings around the world for it to work.

(The Evolution of God: page 441)

What should we use this kind of freedom for?

It is not only for our own benefit that we need to exercise restraint and cultivate virtues. We need to do this to improve society as a whole and build a better civilisation.

All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization. The Almighty beareth Me witness: To act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man. Those virtues that befit his dignity are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness towards all the peoples and kindreds of the earth. Say: O friends! Drink your fill from this crystal stream that floweth through the heavenly grace of Him Who is the Lord of Names.

(Proclamation of Bahá’u'lláh)

Unity underpins all the benefits that accrue including the dignity of all.

The Blessed Beauty said: “All are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch.” He likened the world of existence to one tree and all the souls to leaves, blossoms and fruits.  . . . Thus the friends of God . . . must purify their sight, and look upon mankind as the leaves, blossoms and fruits of the tree of creation, and must always be thinking of doing good to someone, of love, consideration, affection and assistance to somebody.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Bahá’í World Faith)

This degree of unity, respect for the dignity of all human beings and perfect justice are interlinked.

When perfect justice reigns in every country of the Eastern and Western World, then will the earth become a place of beauty. The dignity and equality of every servant of God will be acknowledged; the ideal of the solidarity of the human race, the true brotherhood of man, will be realized; and the glorious light of the Sun of Truth will illumine the souls of all men.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Paris Talks: 7th Principle)

Such a state of affairs will not arise of its own accord:

It is . . .  clear that the emergence of this natural sense of human dignity and honour is the result of education.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Secret of Divine Civilisation)

Virtue and the effort it entails need to be taught. A sense of dignity, other people’s and one’s own, is an essential part of what needs to be taught and will not develop without teaching.

Will this take long?

What implications have contemporary Bahá’í thinkers derived from these ideas?

There are many social evils antithetical to human dignity. Racism is one of the most pernicious. Achieving its eradication will not be simple, quick and effortless.

For too much of history, the evil of racism has violated human dignity. Its influence has retarded the development of its victims, corrupted its perpetrators and blighted human progress. Overcoming its devastating effects will thus require conscious, deliberate and sustained effort. Indeed, nothing short of genuine love, extreme patience, true humility and prayerful reflection will succeed in effacing its pernicious stain from human affairs. 

(BIC Document #01-0321, 2002, Page 2: Bahá’í International Community)

This statement could be applied unchanged with equal appropriateness and force to every corrupt attitude inimical to human dignity. It implies that solutions must be capable of crossing generational boundaries as well as those of class, gender and creed.

Education, then, emerges as an indispensable tool – a tool of active moral learning. To accomplish the broad objectives of ensuring the “full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity” and promoting “understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial, ethnic or religious groups,” education must strive to develop an integrated set of human capabilities-intellectual, artistic, social, moral and spiritual.  There is no other way to raise up positive social actors who are builders of amity and agents of service and probity.

(Bahá’í International Community: Belief and Tolerance)

There are also powerful interactions to consider, not least between the individual and the society of which (s)he is a part.

As a consequence of the deep connection between individual and social well-being, programmes of education need to instill in every child a two-fold moral purpose. The first relates to the process of personal transformation – of intellectual, material and spiritual growth. The second concerns the complex challenge of transforming the structures and processes of society itself.

(Ibid.)

The link between these concepts and the idea of World Citizenship is very clear.

Meeting the challenge to the education system to promote responsible global citizenship, the Bahá’í concept of World Citizenship begins with an acceptance of the oneness of the human family and the inter-connectedness of the nations of “the earth, our home.” While it encourages a sane and legitimate patriotism, it also insists upon a wider loyalty, a love of humanity as a whole. It does not, however, imply abandonment of legitimate loyalties, the suppression of cultural diversity, the abolition of national autonomy, or the imposition of uniformity. Its hallmark is “unity in diversity.”

(U.K. Bahá’í Community: Community Cohesion: a Bahá’í Perspective)

True freedom is not the same as individualism

The Prosperity of Human Kind explores these issues deeply and is worth quoting at length though selectively. It begins on this issue by saying:

Justice is the one power that can translate the dawning consciousness of humanity’s oneness into a collective will through which the necessary structures of global community life can be confidently erected.

And develops this further:

At the group level, a concern for justice is the indispensable compass in collective decision making, because it is the only means by which unity of thought and action can be achieved. Far from encouraging the punitive spirit that has often masqueraded under its name in past ages, justice is the practical expression of awareness that, in the achievement of human progress, the interests of the individual and those of society are inextricably linked. (My emphasis)

And culminates in an insight of astonishing reach and of great relevance to the nurturing and protection of human dignity:

At the heart of the discussion of a strategy of social and economic development, therefore, lies the issue of human rights. The shaping of such a strategy calls for the promotion of human rights to be freed from the grip of the false dichotomies that have for so long held it hostage. Concern that each human being should enjoy the freedom of thought and action conducive to his or her personal growth does not justify devotion to the cult of individualism that so deeply corrupts many areas of contemporary life. Nor does concern to ensure the welfare of society as a whole require a deification of the state as the supposed source of humanity’s well-being.

Goya's 'El Tres de Mayo'

In short, the enthronement of either individualism or state supremacy inevitably devalues human rights and thereby human dignity.

Its summarizing sentence at the end of this particular passage is masterly:

Only in a consultative framework made possible by the consciousness of the organic unity of humankind can all aspects of the concern for human rights find legitimate and creative expression.

In other words, the consciousness of the organic unity of humankind makes true consultation possible: such consultation allows us properly and effectively to express a concern for human rights (and dignity).

Trusteeship

The section ends by discussing a central concept in Bahá’í spiritual administration – trusteeship – and extends its necessary application to the world as a whole.

Since the body of humankind is one and indivisible, each member of the race is born into the world as a trust of the whole. This trusteeship constitutes the moral foundation of most of the other rights – principally economic and social – which the instruments of the United Nations are attempting similarly to define. The security of the family and the home, the ownership of property, and the right to privacy are all implied in such a trusteeship. The obligations on the part of the community extend to the provision of employment, mental and physical health care, social security, fair wages, rest and recreation, and a host of other reasonable expectations on the part of the individual members of society.

Humanity dignity would be guaranteed in such a context. It is all but explicit that without it human dignity would not exist.

In Bahá’í discourse certain key concepts are connected and interdependent. These crucially include: unity, justice, submission to the Will of God, trusteeship, education, the individual, society, civilization, love, patience, consultation, human rights and human dignity.

It will be crucial to the well-being of future generations that as many of us as possible start or continue unpacking their implications without further delay and translating them as rapidly as possible into concerted and focused action.

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Expanding the Moral Imagination

Any religion whose prerequisites for individual salvation don’t conduce to the salvation of the whole world is a religion whose time has passed.

(Robert Wright: The Evolution of God page 439)

I am getting towards the end of Robert Wright’s fascinating book  – I’ve been fitting the reading of it into the narrow gaps between other major commitments recently. I’ve just got to the point where he discusses how the expansion of the moral imagination (page 428)  can ‘bring us closer to moral truth.’

His line of argument will not appeal to everyone: it’s probably too materialistic for many religious people and too sympathetic to religion for many materialists. He states:

The moral imagination was ‘designed’ by natural selection . . . . . to help us cement fruitfully peaceful relations when they’re available.

He is aware that this sounds like a glorified pursuit of self-interest. He argues, though, that it leads beyond that.

The expansion of the moral imagination forces us to see the interior of more and more other people for what the interior of other people is – namely remarkably like our own interior.

(page 428-429)

He rescues this from cliché by pointing out that the idea of common humanity may be a self-evident point when we read or hear it, but it’s far from obvious if you look at the way we act. This is because we are under the illusion that we are special.

We all base our daily lives on this premise – that our welfare is more important than the welfare of pretty much anyone else, with the possible exception of close kin. . . . We see our own resentments as bona fide grievances and we see the grievances of others as mere resentments.

(page 429)

He links the progress of humanity with the application of the unifying insight in daily life.

. . . . the salvation of the global social system entails moral progress not just in the sense of human welfare; there has to be as a prerequisite for that growth, a closer encounter by individual human beings with moral truth.

(page 429)

He feels that it is inevitable that we will either move closer to moral truth or descend into chaos.He feels that

. . . history has driven us closer and closer to moral truth, and now our moving still closer to moral truth is the only path to salvation . . .

(page 429)

by which he means salvation of the social structure. He feels (page 430) that religions that have ‘failed to align individual salvation with social salvation have not, in the end, fared well.’

As I have quoted in an earlier post, Wright argues (page 435) that as social organisation grows God tends to draw ‘a larger expanse of humanity under his protection, or at least a larger expanse of humanity under his toleration.’

I find this tremendously encouraging after the evangelical atheists have, for what seems an age, been partially successful in their attempt to sound like the only scientific take on God. Wright’s view and Reitan’s complement each other beautifully. Eric Reitan contends in Is God a Delusion? that, while you cannot prove  the existence of God by rational argument, it is entirely reasonable to believe that there is a God: Wright appears to agree and he speaks from the point of view of evolution, the world-view that Dawkins has sought to colonise and exploit as providing an absolute refutation of God’s existence for all time.

As Wright’s words quoted at the start of this post explain, the challenge now is for all religions everywhere to recognise that the time for making special and divisive claims about their God is well and truly over. The core of the moral vision of all faiths, though often encrusted with contradictory and partisan traditions, is that all human beings are members of the same family – the human family. Any religion that does not express its recognition of this courageously and persistently is doomed and may doom everyone else along with it.

The Universal House of Justice wrote to the world’s religious leaders in 2002, exhorting them to do all in their power to combat religious fanaticism, and stating:

. . . that interfaith discourse, if it is to contribute meaningfully to healing the ills that afflict a desperate humanity, must now address honestly and without further evasion the implications of the over-arching truth that called the movement into being: that God is one and that, beyond all diversity of cultural expression and human interpretation, religion is likewise one.

And they close with the following appeal:

The crisis calls on religious leadership for a break with the past as decisive as those that opened the way for society to address equally corrosive prejudices of race, gender and nation. Whatever justification exists for exercising influence in matters of conscience lies in serving the well-being of humankind.

Wright and religion are definitely not a million miles apart. Bahá’ís believe that our moral imagination can and must expand to embrace the whole of humanity within its compass of compassion.

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Conviction: the Double-Edged Sword (2/3)

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

(W. B. Yeats: ‘The Second Coming‘)

Ruling passion

We obviously need to take care what we believe in. It tends to determine the person we will become. Sadly, most of us devote more conscious effort to choosing a car than creating a character. We simply accept what we have been given, rarely assessing its value, rarely considering whether or not it could be changed for the better, and if we do feel dissatisfaction with what we have become we tend to test it against inappropriate measures such as the wealth it has brought us, the worldly success we have achieved, the number rather than the quality of our friendships, the power we derive from it and so on. We seldom carefully reflect upon our beliefs and how they have shaped and are still shaping who we are.

Culture has struggled to get a handle on this problem for generations. In the 18th Century they talked of people having a ‘ruling passion.’ This was the organising principle around which all activities and aspirations were supposed to revolve. Alexander Pope wrote:

The ruling passion, be it what it will,

The ruling passion conquers reason still.

(Moral Essay iii: lines 153-154)

(Samuel Johnson, though, questioned the usefulness and validity of this concept in his usual robust fashion.) That

Samuel Johnson

they called it a ‘passion’ gives us a clue about what is going on here.

Erich Fromm’s book, ‘The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness‘ (1973: page 260) develops this idea very clearly.  He argues that, in human beings, character has replaced instinct as a driver of what we do. And character creates a special need in us.

Man needs an object of total devotion to be the focal point of all his strivings. In being devoted to a goal beyond his isolated ego, he transcends himself and leaves the prison of absolute egocentricity. He can be devoted to the most diverse goals and idols but the need for devotion is itself a primary, essential need demanding fulfilment.

This has created a god-shaped hole in the middle of our being. We cannot help but fill it with something. Our sense of identity is at stake. In 2001 the Bahá’í World Centre published a review of the Twentieth Century which contained these words (page 59-60):

The yearning for belief is inextinguishable, an inherent part of what makes one human. When it is blocked or betrayed, the rational soul is driven to seek some new compass point, however inadequate or unworthy, around which it can organize experience and dare again to assume the risks that are an inescapable aspect of life.

Is conviction, like atomic power, a double-edged sword? Can we truly say that no great enterprise was ever accomplished and no huge and large scale evil ever completed without it? If this is so, and I think it is because both great good and massive evil require great energy and great persistence, what determines whether it will be destructive or constructive?

Idealising something (or someone) seriously flawed corrupts us: I  think the opposite is also true and that worshiping something both better and greater than ourselves improves us. I would like to entertain the possibility that it is the object of our devotion as we understand it rather than simply the intensity of the conviction that makes the greatest difference, though if the object of devotion is less than good then the intensity of our devotion will strongly influence how destructive espousing that belief will make us.

Is there any object of devotion that does not induce in its followers intolerance and hatred towards others especially those who have a different god?

Tolerant Devotion

The issue of what determines the strength and nature of our convictions is not a straightforward one. When I was studying psychology for the first time in the 1970s I came across the work of Thomas Pettigrew, which is still referred to even now. It illustrates nicely the exact nature of the difficulty.

To put one set of his findings very simply, whether you were a miner  in segregated West Virginia or apartheid South Africa, the culture around you differed depending on whether you were above ground or below it. Below ground discrimination was potentially dangerous so the culture there frowned on it: above ground the culture was discriminatory. What was particularly interesting to me was that 20% of people discriminated all the time regardless of the culture and 20% refused to do so at all: 60% of people shifted from desegregation below ground to segregation above it (the percentages are approximate: the pattern is accurate).

The implications are fascinating.

First, as Richard Holloway stresses, most of us are ‘infirm of purpose’ and lack the courage of our convictions or even any convictions at all. We follow the herd, a potentially dangerous tendency.

Secondly, the proneness to develop strong convictions does not lead us to develop only the best ones. In the example of the mining communities, segregation and desegegration are antitheses and cannot both be right and desirable, but clearly both attract approximately equal numbers of adherents with equivalent degrees of courage in their convictions, in stark contrast to the moral cowardice or lack of conviction of the rest of us. It is questionable whether it is the ‘best’ that  ‘lack all conviction.’

Thirdly, while most of us are drifting with the tide rather than choosing a firm rock to cling to, the strong-minded do choose but on grounds that have little if anything reliably to do with their strong-mindedness. Authoritarianism  has been wheeled out as a favourite explanation for why people end up fascist or fanatical. It would though be hard to make it work as an explanation of the moral courage and firm conviction of a Martin Luther King or a Ghandi. The vision of these two men was not one of replacing their oppressors in power and becoming oppressors in their turn but of transcending oppression altogether.

So where on earth or in heaven does that leave us? Are these two men so exceptional that their example does not count? Or is a humane and constructive kind of strong conviction possible for most if not all of us?

A Possible Way Forward

When it comes to determining what might provide a positive vision of sufficient power to heal the divisions of the world of humanity, a consideration of religion is inevitable. Although I was brought up a Christian, became an atheist for nearly two decades and was strongly attracted to Buddhism for a period of years, the religion I know best is the Bahá’í Faith.

Much of what I will be describing in the next post about the vision I have derived from its teachings, is also to be found in other faiths. For instance, anyone who wants to know about the healing heart of the Christian message and the positively empowering concept of God it enshrines, there is no better place to go than Eric Reitan’s book, and I would also see God in much the same way as he does. His view also opens the way towards discerning the same spirit in other faiths.

One of his premises is that our concept of God, who is in essence entirely unknowable, needs to show Him as deserving of worship: any concept of God that does not fulfil that criterion should be regarded with suspicion.  Our idealism, our ideology, will then, in my view, build an identity on the crumbling and treacherous sand of some kind of idolatry.

I will though confine my discussion now to what the faith I know best, with its inclusive vision of the divine, has taught me about a way out of this divided and intolerant state by which we are bedevilled. Even those who do not believe in the divine can relate to much of what I will be saying by reframing the ‘divine’ as their highest most inclusive sense of the ultimate good around which to organise our lives.

I am not claiming that others have not grappled with these issues: nor am I saying that what they have discovered as possible antidotes to fanatical intolerance is to be ignored or discounted. Zimbardo and McCullough, for example, have much of great value to say from which we can all learn a great deal.

I do believe though that religion and spirituality have recently been so demonised in certain quarters that we are in danger of neglecting the powerful antidotes to evil that they also can provide. It is to these that I wish to draw our attention in the next post.

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‘Is God a Delusion?’ by Eric Reitan

This is not a review of Reitan’s book, ‘Is God a Delusion?.’ He has thought far more deeply than I have about the case against the attacks against God mounted by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and the rest of the evangelical atheists.

However, I have just finished my first reading of it and, in all honesty, I did not feel I could simply put it back on my shelf without any comment at all on this blog that is meant to alert people to what is out there of a soul-nurturing nature.

What I want to say is that, of all the books I have so far read about this issue, and I’ve read quite a few, this is far and away the best. His case is subtle and penetrating. Though he writes as a Christian, he is completely accepting of other beliefs provided they match his concept of the divine as loving not revengeful. He is fair to those aspects of the atheist case that deserve respect and careful consideration: he feels they make something of a case against superstition and fanaticism, but not against God.

Anyone who comes from an agnostic or atheist perspective should read it to get a more balanced picture of what the core of religious belief is about. Also anyone, whether they are religiously inclined or not, who is interested in becoming more able to counteract the ill-informed arguments of the atheist extremists should read this book as soon as possible. We should all be doing our bit to dilute the acid of extremism wherever we find it.

I have copied below an interesting summary of the main issues he covers that was on the Blackwell’s site at the time of publication. For a review of Dawkins book by a Bahá’í see Steven Phelps.

Has Religion Become the Laughing Stock of the Elite?

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Boston, MA—November 21, 2008—Dr. Eric Reitan’s new book, IS GOD A DELUSION? A Reply to Religion’s Cultured Despisers, (Wiley-Blackwell; $24.95; December 2008) is a counter-argument to the growing fervor of scholarship challenging not only the existence of God, but the validity of religion as a worthwhile pursuit. Reitan is well-skilled at dodging barbs from fellow theological and philosophical colleagues, and in this book dissects, collects and analyzes the current research from atheist authors Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and others, who assert that the notion of God is not only delusional and passé, but even dangerous.

Cynicism may spawn bestsellers, but an effort to understand the sources of these debates can lead to real change. The tendency to treat religious texts as inerrant authorities has always fueled division and a climate of religious conservatism and extremism. The subsequent abuse of power associated with it has led to war and ongoing strife in many parts of the world. The atheists argue that this is the most damaging aspect of faith, and why it might be better if faith were done away with altogether. This mentality portrays believers as the blind leading the blind. Reitan explores the idea that instead of focusing on the faults of the religious extremists and fundamentalists (and thus giving them even more power), we need to reaffirm and gravitate towards the transformative and unifying power of spirituality, and the foundation upon which it was built.

Humanity can benefit in the short- and long-term from taking the high road, rather than persecuting others’ beliefs. However, engaging in healthy debate with others who hold opposite beliefs can lead to a greater understanding of the complexity and yearnings of the human soul. It is on this level Reitan believes we can get to the core of the “essence” of spirituality, with a message of hope. To underestimate religion’s inclusive power is to “miss the point” of religion, and as he points out, there are more similarities among world religions than there are differences, just as there are among siblings in a family. In this spirit, we can hopefully gain common ground. Some topics explored in this volume:
“The God Hypothesis” and the Concept of God— How is the concept of God defined in the context of religions based on the belief in one, true God? Can science convincingly refute God’s existence? A case is made for the benefit of the hope and idealism that theistic religion can inspire.

Religious Consciousness— A review of the powerful personal and spiritual experiences witnessed throughout history illustrates how inconclusive the more strictly empirical perceptions of “reality” can be. The profound sense that there is something fundamentally good beyond the world we can see has long been a source of positive meaning and moral courage, and this sense is not refuted as easily as many contemporary atheists believe.

Chapters Divine Tyranny and the Goodness of God and Evil and the Meaning of Life—The effects of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina have been used as an example that God has, in effect, abandoned humanity and allowed “bad things to happen to good people.” The origins of this view of God are examined and measured against the potential value of faith.

Drawing on influential thinkers such as revolutionary 19th-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, Reitan makes an earnest effort to balance scholarly philosophical findings with an engaging, accessible style. Philosophically-minded readers and members of the public interested in this timely and intriguing debate will find Reitan’s voice on this controversial subject to be compelling and authoritative.

About the Author

Dr. Eric Reitan currently holds a position as Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University. He has published over thirty journal articles on topics of philosophy, religion, public policy, and self-defense, and contributed chapters to several philosophical books. In 2004 he was the recipient of Oklahoma State University’s Junior Faculty Award for Scholarly Excellence. He is an active member of the American Philosophical Association and Southwest Philosophical Society. See more related to the topics explored in the book at: www.thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot.com.

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