Continue reading »]]> As with mostly strongly held beliefs or formative influences, religion is part of a believer’s identity.

Some people seem to find that peculiar or irrational or just plain incomprehensible. But how peculiar is it really, when one considers all of the things we humans attach our identity to: jobs, professions, gender, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnic origins, place of birth, place of residence, political persuasion or party affiliation, educational level or intellectual accomplishments, physical appearance, even the sports teams we follow or what foods we eat (or refuse to eat). We seldom, I think, sit down and contemplate how central these things really are to who we are or perceive ourselves to be.

I self-identify as a believer in God—specifically, a Bahá’í. Because I’m a Bahá’í, my identity and what I build it around is exactly the sort of thing I’m encouraged to contemplate. I also self-identify as a mother, wife, writer, and musician—specifically, as a singer, and a filker. Each of these things forms a greater or lesser part of my identity from moment to moment. Some are “containers” of more minutely defined bits of identity.

But what connects them all in one way or another is the first—my identity as a believer.

Why? Because it’s contributory to the other areas. I wrote in an earlier episode of Why Religion that religion, in the scriptures of the Baha’i Faith, is a target—a set of goals. Of those goals I wrote:

“It’s the bullseye at the center of the human being that we strive to hit. Could I have come to appreciate these qualities were I an atheist? Maybe, but I doubt that I would have seen it as part of my identity as a human being to work day in and day out to acquire them. I doubt I would be conscious of their effect on every facet of my life, or concern myself with how I should apply them to every situation I encounter.”

Hence, my faith or religion or spiritual orientation, if you will, is what gives me both the incentive and the tools with which to strive consciously to progress in all of the other areas—to be a better mother, wife, writer, musician. The conscious aspect, I think, is important. The scriptures of religion make a point about self-knowledge and self-awareness. Buddha remarks that:

“Nirvana comes to thee when thou understandest thoroughly and livest according to that understanding, that all things are of one Essence and that there is but one law.”

The Bahá’í writings frequently refer to the human heart as a mirror and note that the purer and more polished the mirror, the greater its reflective powers. They also state what should be obvious on a moment of—heh—reflection: a mirror reflects whatever the individual chooses to turn it toward. ‘Nuff said.

I freely admit to bias in this area. I derive a great deal of joy from my faith, but in part that’s because it satisfies and challenges on so many different levels. I can think of no negatives to having an identity that is grounded in a process of conscious transformation. For one thing that process is infinite. You never use it up, it doesn’t fade with age, you don’t lose it if the stock market crashes, or if you lose your job, or if your marriage crumbles, or if the Muse deserts you—the words won’t come and the music won’t play. In fact, you may be even more aware of the process in the throes of some difficulty.

Well, I can think of one negative of the above. It’s work. It’s a lot like being a student. What I am studying is being human.

One of my favorite passages of Bahá’í scripture, is one in which Bahá’u’lláh warns of basing identity on the wrong things—things that perish, things that may even be harmful. He concludes:

“For every one of you his paramount duty is to choose for himself that on which no other may infringe and none usurp from him. Such a thing—and to this the Almighty is My witness—is the love of God, could ye but perceive it. Build ye for yourselves such houses as the rain and floods can never destroy, which shall protect you from the changes and chances of this life.” — Gleanings CXXIII

It goes hand-in-hand with Bahá’u’lláh’s exhortation to “translate that which hath been written into reality and action….”

This is similar to Christ’s message to believers in the Sermon on the Mount, which is contained in the seventh chapter of Matthew.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”

This is not easy advice to follow. It’s perilously easy to become attached to the things and people around us such that they begin to define who we are. Many people are attached to their political parties or to particular politicians whose identities (at least publicly) seem to mirror their own in some way. Even in the realm of faith, it’s easy to identify with outward forms, rituals, and doctrines—and I think this is what secularists quite rightfully decry when they see it in the religious sphere. Those outward forms change, and if we attach our identities to them rather than to the process of transformation that the Revealers of religion have universally encouraged, then we may find ourselves in a constant battle to maintain those forms.

If we look at those outward forms and trappings of religion as if they were religion, itself, then it’s no wonder our secular friends may wonder what possible benefits we can derive from our faith.

Next time: Religion as a source of awe.

Continue reading »]]> “The animal creation is captive to matter, God has given freedom to man. The animal cannot escape the law of nature, whereas man may control it, for he, containing nature, can rise above it.”

`Abdu’l-Bahá

May 14, 2012. Evolution is one of the most successful of the modern sciences. Not only does it enjoy wide-ranging empirical evidence for its basic tenets and provide support for a multitude of disciplines, practices, and applications, but it is also extraordinarily rich in the scope and extent to which it offers broad and powerful ways of thinking about reality.

But lets talk about chance.

Chance comes into play in evolution as a mechanism that creates random gene variations that are accepted or rejected by natural selection.

The role of chance in evolution has engaged more than several thinkers as they contemplate evolution’s broader implications. Among them was Jacques Monod, the gifted French biologist and Nobel Prize winner who viewed the role of chance as centrally important to our understanding of the universe. His view was that:

Man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance.

In Chance and Necessity, his widely read philosophical magnum opus, he summarizes his views in the book’s last chapter. Humans are the product of the natural selection processes of evolution driven by chance – by accidental events:

We call these events accidental; we say that they are random occurrences. And since they constitute the only possible source of modification in the genetic text, itself the sole repository of the organism’s hereditary structures, it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere.

Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact

Stephen J. Gould, one of our greatest evolutionary scientists, thought in a similar vein. That we exist is accidental, he argued. It is the result of blind forces and contingency. If our world were to start all over from the beginning, we would get entirely different results because of the vagaries of chance:

Wind back the tape of life to the origin of the modern multicellular animals in the Cambrian explosion, let the tape play again from this identical starting point, and the replay will populate the earth … with a radically different set of creatures. The chance that this alternative set will contain anything remotely like a human being must be effectively nil, while the probability of any kind of creature endowed with self-consciousness must also be extremely small.

Michael Ruse, a philosophy professor and a prolific writer who has weighed in on all things relating to evolution, agrees with Gould. He warmed to his topic when Pope Benedict XVI said in his 2011 Easter homily that:

If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature. But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason.

Chastising the Pope (Huff Post, 5/11/2011), he described him as misguided because he wasn’t following the accepted views in evolution:

Human evolution had no more forethought than, say, the pattern that a pile of sand makes when emptied from a bucket. … Evolution depends on mutations that simply don’t have direction. … To put direction into evolution is to be a supporter of the non-scientific theory of Intelligent Design. … there is a flat-out contradiction between the claims of modern biological science and the theology of the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, this is fairly extraordinary set of claims, given that we exist and presumably have arrived here by a process that is at least related to the claims of modern biological sciences. (At least there was enough of a sense of direction to get us here!) But beside that, it is a theological statement to the effect that evolution doesn’t have a direction. AND it contains a major scientific faux pas - a mistaken statement to the effect that randomness (i.e., random mutations as a driving force) rules out direction as a result of natural selection processes. Yet, remarkably, Ruse’s view is representative of that of many major thinkers in evolutionary thought.

So, something funny is going on here, and we need to understand it.

As far as I can tell, Monod, Gould, and Ruse are making broad, sweeping generalizations about the nature of the world on the basis of understandings of the mechanisms of evolution that rely on popular and antiquated concepts of randomness rather than relying on modern understandings – what physicists call stochastic processes or the behavior of complex systems – that have developed since Darwin’s time. Either that, or they are following the prevailing winds of intellectual fashion.

But before we explore the science of the various roles played by chance and random processes – roles that physicists have explored in exhausting detail in such varied arenas as thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, complexity theory, information theory, and even stellar evolution – lets look at the social and historical backdrop of the interpretations of chance presented by Monod, Gould, and Ruse.

Evolution as the Modern Creation Story

Evolution, in many ways, is the modern creation story – a scientific updating of the ancient creation myths of Mesopotamia, Greece, and Israel and of the great religious and philosophical traditions that are such an important part of our heritage. So it should be no surprise that there have been numerous attempts – some more successful than others – to harness evolution to various philosophical or ideological perspectives.

Nor, given the extent to which modern scientists have viewed scientific understanding as obviating the need for theology, should we be surprised to see evolution bandied about as if it were a quasi-religion (as the British philosopher Mary Midgley has described in Evolution as a Religion, the Zygon article of the same title, and a number of other publications). The modern American creationism movement, the intelligent design movement, and the growing worldwide distrust of evolutionary science (a poll cited in Wikipedia shows that the number of American who reject evolution has increased from 55% to 60% from 1985 to 2005) are likely a reaction to this bandying about.

So, the role of evolution in modern society is not only that of a science, but also that of a system of thought which views itself as the modern enlightened replacement for the creation stories of Biblical belief. And given the great breadth of its powers of explanation – powers that unify an astonishingly large number of biological (and increasingly, social) phenomena – it is easy to see why people feel justified in seeing it as such. Evolution – like the book of Genesis – is a very powerful creation narrative.

The Pleasures of Omnicompetence

Midgely, in The Myths We Live By sees the sense of power and authority that many ascribe to evolution as due to the myth of scientific “omnicompetence.” This myth, an inheritance from the Enlightenment, views science “as able to answer every kind of question. And that naturally must include questions about value.”

She quotes Nehru from his address to the Indian National Institute of Science in 1960:

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people … The futures belongs to science and to those who make friends with science.

The Bhopal Disaster

She then notes:

The interesting thing here is not just Nehru’s confidence but what he meant by science … He meant a whole new ideology, a moral approach that would justify using those facts to change society in a quite particular way.

Is Nehru intending to rely on science alone, Midgely asks?

Aren’t you also going to need good laws. effective administrators, honest and intelligent politicians, good new customs to replace the old ones, perhaps even a sensitive understanding of the traditions that you mean to sweep away? … [Of course he knows this, but he] includes in ‘science’ the whole world view which he takes to lie behind it, namely, the decent, humane, liberal attitude out of which it has actually grown. … He expects that the scientific spirit will include in it wise and benevolent use of those discoveries.

But this is the myth of the “omnicompetence” of science, not the reality. The reality of science includes nuclear warfare, the Bhopal disaster, environmental pollution, global warming, profiteering, worldwide economic collapse and the “wholesale waste of resources on gadgetry” in addition to the good things that science can provide.

What does this mean for chance, randomness, and the interpretations of evolution we described above?

My answer is that it means that Monod, Gould, and Ruse are doing their very best to tell the world about their convictions about what is right and what is scientific – the two being synonymous in their minds. They not only believed that doing good science is important – both Monod’s work and the less embarrassing of his philosophical speculations are still of great interest – but they also believe in the Enlightenment worldview which science, in their view, encompasses and entails.

We now read Monod’s comments on the meaningless of life – and its emotional call to find meaning in science – as an almost comical exaggeration of the French existential philosophical viewpoint of the 50s, as most certainly it was. And Gould? Without a doubt, he was a warrior, fighting the good and holy fight against fundamentalism and intolerance of all kinds, the belief in progress among them. And Ruse? Maybe he is just fighting Catholicism.

The problem, of course, is that science doesn’t bestow on its followers righteousness and automatically correct views – it is agnostic, a double-edged sword in this regards.The Enlightenment view of science that Midgely describes accompanied science, rather than being caused by it. If science is to be as Nehru wanted it to be -  the pursuit of truth and the implementation of it in benevolent ways – then it needs something like the principles of the Baha’i Faith to accompany it. Otherwise, like Monod, Gould, and Ruse, it will simply bend to breezes and vagaries of the time.

Next Week

Next week, I will discuss random processes and complex system, making them intelligible and relating them to ideas of chance in evolution.

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This is the 14th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he wrote Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

Continue reading »]]> “Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we get.”

(Spanish proverb)

Abdu’l-Missagh Ghadirian

May 11, 2012. What is materialism?

Or to be a bit more specific, what is moral materialism?

Here is what the dictionary says: “moral materialism” is “a desire for wealth and material possessions with little interest in ethical or spiritual matters.”

We can elaborate. Materialism is a state of mind and a lifestyle chosen by those who believe that acquiring and owning material possessions is the most important ingredient in human happiness and well being.

Matter Over Spirit

People who hold to moral materialism often depend upon the possession of worldly belongings to build a sense of security and comfort. Matter takes precedence over mind and spirit, and life revolves around material satisfactions. Often, there are expectations that possessing more will result in a happier life.

But these expectations are not always met, and this leads to frustration and, often, a cycle of neediness. Consider the American dream and think how many have sought success, wealth, and fame through hard work and thrift. But now, with the development and progress of industrialization and the rise of modern forms of capitalism, this dream has eroded. It is increasingly replaced by a “get rich quick” philosophy.

Traditionally, since ancient times, people have procured goods according to their actual needs. But after the industrial revolution and, subsequently, the development of modern technology and the spread of consumerism promoted by marketing and advertisement, that has changed. Increasingly, people’s motivations are being manipulated to modify what they believe they need for day-to-day activities and to create cravings for things that they really don’t need.

Emptiness

The rise of the psychology of marketing and the shift in consciousness that it has created have brought tremendous benefits to commercial enterprise. But, it has not equally benefited the customers of those commercial enterprises who consume the goods and services they offer. Today, large numbers of people have every possession they want, but their needs are not satisfied.

People often complain of an emptiness which no material possessions can fill. In the midst of plenty, they are spiritually hungry, unhappy, and in despair – the modern symptoms of discontent. Consider – and it is just one small example – the anorexics, fashion models, actors, and ballet dancers who feel obliged to change their weight to comply with standards which take no account of their inner struggles or their health.

The purpose here is not to denounce money or wealth, or to glorify poverty, or to deny the pleasures of life. It is not money that causes this discontent and this sense of emptiness. Rather, the cause is the human mind and its over-dependence on worldly materials and possessions. It is the denial of deeper intrinsic values – of spiritual values. Research studies show that when poverty is overcome and incomes grow, happiness does not necessarily increase proportionately. Apparently, it is true that money can’t buy happiness.

Substance Abuse

As a result of the spread of materialistic lifestyles, a culture of self-indulgence and gratification flourishes around the world. According to United Nations reports [here], there are 210 million adults worldwide who suffer from substance abuse and addiction and 140 million more who suffer from addiction to alcohol (World Health Organization, 2001). Materialism: Moral and Social Consequences is a book I wrote discussing desire, over-attachment to material things, and the cycle of neediness in consumer cultures. I note that escaping inordinate desire is a daily challenge which requires moderation and self-discipline to avoid the “hedonistic treadmill”.

Success and happiness are not easily attained, especially in a highly competitive society, and people become discontented. As a result, some resort to the consumption of mood or mind-altering drugs and/or alcohol as a shortcut to both transient happiness and freedom from fear and anxiety. The result can be a lifestyle that impacts both the perception of the nature of true happiness and physical health. Contentment becomes a commodity that can be bought at the market, cultivated in a field, or kept in a cellar (for details, see Alcohol and Drug Abuse).

Materialism and Poverty

Materialism not only affects the wealthy and worldly, but also those who are poverty-stricken and exploited by the rich. Recently I visited two countries in Western Africa – Mali and Ghana – with very different cultures, language, religions and economic situations. Mali is beset by poverty and 50% of the population live on a daily income of $2 per day. People struggle. Ghana is better off and has more industry, more technological development, more wealth, and greater prosperity.

I was invited to speak on topics chosen by each country. To my surprise, I was often asked to speak about materialism in Mali – but not in Ghana. I asked why people in Mali were interested in discussing materialism and its consequences. I was told that although most people were poor, their lives were strongly affected by the materialism of – and exploitation by – other nations. In Ghana, there was more interest in learning about how to cope with life stress due to the competitiveness accompanying economic growth and progress.

So yes, poverty generates stress, but it is overshadowed by the exigencies of survival. And life is simpler and more family-oriented in impoverished countries like Mali. In progressive and industrialized countries, stress is perceived as the price one pays for growth.

A survey by the Chicago Tribune found that people who earned a salary of less than $30,000 per year said that they needed over $50,000 in order to fulfill their dreams. Those with an income of over $50,000 a year stated they would need to earn a yearly income of $250,000 to be satisfied. This and other research studies confirm that when goals for income are met, expectations of what is needed to achieve satisfaction move upward.

Contentment is a sense of inner satisfaction, and variations in contentment depend on expectations. Higher expectations of an unreasonable nature are likely to lead to increased dissatisfaction when expectations are not met. According to Kasser (2004), “the culture of consumption… not only degrades psychological health, but spreads seeds that may lead to its own destruction”.

What the Bahá’i Writings Say

The Bahá’i Writings encourage moderation and detachment from worldly excesses. They give a deeper understanding of the true purpose of life.

Bahá’u’lláh states:

“Busy not thyself with this world, for with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants.”

Bahá’u’lláh asks us to view the material world as transient and temporary, where we are to prepare for the spiritual world of eternity. He encourages balance and discourages greed and excessive attachment to the vanities of this world.

Or, as Socrates said:

“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”

Continue reading »]]> “The animal creation is captive to matter, God has given freedom to man. The animal cannot escape the law of nature, whereas man may control it, for he, containing nature, can rise above it.”

`Abdu’l-Bahá

May 7, 2012. We have been examining what science says about whether or not we are animals.

It is perhaps the most important questions – it certainly is the most polarizing – in the science and religion discussion. And it is the root cause of the debates about – and the intense opposition to – evolution.

Other questions – does God exists, do we have souls, is there life after death, what is the purpose of life – were once thought to be amenable to scientific explanation. But for these it is increasingly clear that science – at least in its current stage of development – has little to say of relevance.

The question of whether or not we are animals, however, seems to be a question where science does have an important and legitimate role in providing answers.

Are We Or Are We Not Animals: The Status Quo Answer

“Are humans animals?” Do a Google search on this question and the first thing that comes up – meaning roughly that it is the most linked answer and the one likely to be first accessed – is this one on the Wiki Answer’s site:

Yes, humans are animals. The human’s phylum is Chordata (vertebrate). The human’s class is mammalia. It’s order is primate (the same as apes). It’s family is Hominidae (apes that have no tail and can gather food with their hands.) The Human’s sub-family is Homininae. It’s tribe is Hominini. It’s genus is Homo and it’s specie is scientifically named Homo Sapiens.

There is no indication that there any serious questions about the issue – no discussion of the non-scientific arbitrariness of defining humans entirely by reductionist biological considerations, no mention of any modern neurological, paleontological, sociobiological, economical, sociological, behavioral, or philosophical studies of the uniqueness of human, no mention at all that the answer is contested. With the exception of the Wikipedia Site “Human“, all the other references at the top of the search are of the same ilk: “La ti dah, humans are animals!”

If you have any questions why modern religious Americans – especially those with enough sophistication to question potted answers – are suspicious of – and doubtful about – aspects of modern science that address human origins, this should answer them.

Think about it. Amazingly, a question about our nature – a question often posed at a high degree of sophistication, a question that addresses our purpose in life and the nature of our humanity – is answered in an embarrassing, unsophisticated low-brow way that not only ignores the relevant issues involved, but ignores the scientific subtleties.

And it is easy to see why a young high-school student – or anyone who unquestionably accepts supposed scientific authority – would assume that the answer was a genuine one, imprinted with scientific authority and its aura.

The Wikipedia site on Humans, it should be pointed out, is quite different. It provides a wealth of helpful access to materials on numerous different fields of human studies and exemplifies why encyclopedias like the Britannica are no longer around. And, it studiously avoids confrontational claims about humans as animals. It even usefully points out that the word “human”, which I’ve been carefully to use to avoid the older sexist term “man,” derives from the Latin hūmānus, the adjective form of homō or “man”.

But, then on a side bar. after being vanquished, our old bumbling, inarticulate friend makes its reappearance. We belong – the sidebar usefully informs us – to the kingdom of animalia. And then – to make things worse – it informs us that this is the “scientific” classification. Actually, it is not, it is the biological classification.

The Problem with the Current Answers

So the answer that science provides to our question is a twofold one. On one hand science proclaims that humans are animals for reasons biological (and historical). On the other hand, science contains multitudinous studies that show clearly that humans are quite different than animals. Thia twofold answer is garbled, self-contradicting, and confusing. Or it would be if both sides were presented to the public, which mainly they aren’t.

The part of science which claims that we are animals is particularly problematic. It not only contradicts our direct experience, but also the contradicts the great teachings of the world’s major religions and its major philosophies. It even contradicts the fundamental precepts of science itself in so far as science is based on the validity of rational and logical intellectual processes – something unique to humans.

This simplistic answer is really an answer to a biological question – and only an answer to a biological question. But it is more than often construed both by those asking it – and often by those answering it – on a much broader basis. In the broader sense, it is a question about who we are. And the biological answer doesn’t – and can’t – answer it.

The consequences of this mix-up of answers and questions are manifold – ranging from the wide-spread belief that science proves that the purpose of human life is the pursuit of liberty, happiness, and the satisfaction of our animal desires, to mechanistic human and healing sciences can ignore human reality or consider it as of no import, to the growing conviction that the evolutionary sciences are cynically manipulative attempts to impose an anti-religious agenda in the false guise of science. None of these are true.

So, we have to ask the questions: On what basis – and on whose authority – does science validate the claim to offer the definitive answer to our question?

And who decides that the scientific, philosophical, and religious grounds for contesting the 18th century answer can be ignored?

The Future Role of Science in Addressing the Question of Whether or Not We Are Humans

Here is my conclusion: The idea that man is an animal is an arbitrary 18th century viewpoint based on the simple-minded assumptions that (1) a thing is what it is constructed from, (2) that a thing is what it was originally, and (3), that only simple material things are real.

While those assumptions – derived in great part from the extraordinary success of 18th century Newtonian physics – were revolutionary, challenging, and fruitful in numerous ways in their time (and still are in many circumstances) – they fall far short in light of modern empirically-based, systems-based, interaction-based, information-oriented, complexity-oriented studies that distinguish between behavior of parts and behaviors of the whole.

If my conclusion is correct – and it appears to be – what is it that science can do?

Here is a proposal. What science can do – and can provide – is the following:

1. A clear set of criteria by which we can distinguish whether or not humans are unique.
2. A clear description of the experiments that can be done to provide the relevant data for deciding whether humans are unique.
3. A forum and sets of discussions that allows exchange of ideas about what the uniqueness criteria should be and whether or not the criteria have been met.
4. Informed discussion of whether a proposed criteria is scientific or not.
5. Studies of the usefulness of past, current, and future definitions of human uniqueness in science

Of course, there are a number of other things to be added to the list.

Exploring what science cannot do is equally important. Science cannot:

1. Impose its own categories. Science can show where there are clear distinctions – where human behavior departs significantly from animal behavior – but it cannot force doubters to conclude that humans are or are not to be classified as part of the animal kingdom.
2. Science cannot provide resolution – at least at its current stage of development – of very complex, high level phenomena like intelligence, human social organization, motivation, human purpose, etc. So it cannot answer high level metaphysical questions – the purpose of life, etc. – in anything like a meaningful way.
3. Science by itself cannot impose meaning. It cannot tell us a whether a particular arbitrary definition of some category or another is meaningful in an ultimate metaphysical sense, although it can tell us whether people think it is meaningful. Recognizing this would go a long way towards rescuing science from religious pretensions.

And these ideas are just for starters. Obviously those who care about science can try to stop it from spreading misinformation – as it is doing now – about the nature of humans.

Next Week

This time, I really am going to stop on the topic of whether or not we are animals. But obviously, I have to come back to it later given how important it is.

Next time, I will discuss a different aspect of evolution, science, and religion – randomness and the idea that it rules out God as a creator. For a quantum physicist such as myself, this is an area in biology where my experience in doing statistical physics gives me an advantage.

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This is the 13th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

Continue reading »]]>

Maya Bohnhoff

Some folks suppose that religion is, to all (or at least most) religionists, a social club, or a means of maintaining social status. Intelligent politicians and clergymen (yes, some will complain those are oxymorons) are especially suspected of not really believing, but only claiming to believe for the sake of political position. I’ve read numerous claims on atheist blogs that since President Obama is obviously an intelligent man, he must be a closet atheist. The same is said of such figures as Newton, Galileo, and probably even Francis Collins. A common refrain among new atheist writers is that most clergymen no longer believe in God (or at least in Christ’s divinity) and remain in harness for practical reasons.

There are at least three separate issues here:

1. social belonging—it is the social aspects of the religious community that are important to the individual rather than the spiritual teachings;
2. insincere belief—the believer is in the religious community for the sake of family and friends or is pretending belief to ensure the approval of necessary parties;
3. specialness—the believer likes being a member of what he regards as an elite group. He is saved, but that guy over there in that other church or faith, not so much.

Social belonging

Are some believers engaged in religion because of community? Sure. Belonging is the core item in Maslov’s hierarchy of human needs. Belonging is tightly knit to a human being’s sense of identity.

I’ve known people who were very up front about their motivations in that regard. They were Catholic because they liked the pomp and splendor of mass or attended an Evangelical church because they liked the social aspects or outreach ministry of that group.

Does that make it reasonable to assume that all or even most religious people are religious because they like being part of a particular group? I don’t think so, but that may be because I’m only social because my faith stresses the importance of strong communities and it’s hard to be part of a community without interacting with other people. With the exception of hanging out with small groups of very close friends, I don’t value socializing for its own sake. What I do value is getting together to do something that “feeds” me—that might be studying scripture and discussing how the principles found therein inform and affect life, or it might be playing music. You might get me into a social gathering with a promise of fesenjoon (a delightful Persian dish) and strong black tea, but I will flee as soon as humanly possible.

And that, frankly, is one of the main attractions religion holds for me—my faith not only recognizes the need for individual and societal transformation, it offers the spiritual guidelines and practical tools necessary to effect that transformation. My dialogues with other believers of a variety of faiths have convinced me that this is what motivates a lot of people. There are a great number of us religious types who value faith because it offers both challenge and potential for transformation. We don’t want a faith that is “fun”. (If I want fun, I can go to a movie, a theme park, read a book, or write one.) We don’t want a faith-based social club. (When I want to “party”, I’ll go to a science fiction convention and hang out in the filk room.) We want a belief system that will call us out—that will put the responsibility for our spiritual welfare back on us and make better human beings of us.

Certainly, my faith community offers a network of individuals who hold the same basic beliefs and who are working on the same set of virtues. But it is those virtues themselves that, to most of us, have the real appeal. We are where we are because we each hope to transform our own character in a way that will exert a positive effect on the people our lives touch and on humanity in general. Obviously, it makes sense to actively pursue such transformation in an environment where it is supported—just as it makes sense to go to the gym to effect physical transformation.

Do faith communities exert a positive effect on people in this way?

Recent surveys carried out by a number of groups—including the Pew Foundation and Faith Matters—show that people engaged with religious communities (even secular spouses of religious people) are significantly more inclined to give of both time and resources to charitable causes than their secular peers. The surprise in the studies was that this was true of secular causes as well as religious ones and “liberal” causes as well as “conservative” ones. People of faith give more to secular causes than secularists do.

Go figure.

People from faith communities are also significantly more likely to be involved in the larger community, to be active in civic affairs. They are more inclined to offer what Muhammad referred to in the Qur’an as “small kindnesses” to strangers and neighbors.

This stands to reason. Groups support and enable behaviors. What behaviors they support will, naturally, depend on what values the group holds in common and what principles serve as a foundation for their activities. It should be no surprise that the principles underlying revealed religion (such as the “Golden Rule”) result in individuals and groups that are active in promoting general human welfare, and in caring for the poor and disenfranchised.

The big surprise should be when they don’t.

Next time: More God of the Month Club—the Identity Gambit

Continue reading »]]> “The animal creation is captive to matter, God has given freedom to man. The animal cannot escape the law of nature, whereas man may control it, for he, containing nature, can rise above it.”

`Abdu’l-Bahá

Apr 30, 2012. Today’s blog again examines the question of whether or not we are animals. The topic, I’m thinking, is so important that we have to give it its full due.

Almost all other conflicts in science and religion are readily resolvable – either there never should have been a conflict in the first place, or they are due to prejudice, ignorance, and superstition in religious or anti-religious communities, or they are due to political conflict over power and cultural authority.

But the topic of whether or not we are animals goes to the heart of who we are and how we should act in this world and embodies the impasse between secularism and religiosity on many, many issues. Break the impasse, and many of the conflicts between science and religion – on evolution, on climate warming, on distrust of secularism – either go away or are reduced in intensity. This is how I’m thinking at the moment.

Is it Important Whether or Not We Differentiate Humans from Animals?

In one sense, it makes no difference about what we call ourselves. We are what we are regardless of labels. From this perspective, it doesn’t matter whether we are animals or not.

Another point of view is that names and labels are important. Regardless of whether we are animals or not, we are most definitely symbol-using and thinking-using beings, and words matter. They are important as encapsulating beliefs about who we are, and are central to our self-image and the goals we pursue.

This is the view I’m tending towards. There are various implications:

• If we think that we are animals, then we will look to satisfying our “animal” needs as the purpose of our life.
• Or, if we recognize that we are not animals, then we will focus on human pursuits – doing what is right and good, rational thinking, doing science, cultivating ourselves, helping our human brethren, and of course, saving the animals.

Perhaps, if we think that we are animals, then we will recognize our kinship with the rest of the denizens of earth and do a better job of protecting the other animals, rather than eliminating or industrializing them. But of course, we can do that if we think of ourselves as humans.

Or maybe we can do all the good things listed above and still think of ourselves as animals, but as “human” animals.

But then there are complications. Some people take ideas from science so seriously that they imbue them with the same aura of divine truth that formerly were attributed to religious teachings. And, they get angry if you suggest that humans are different than animals. Or they spin vast webs of thought – communism, war, theories of racial supremacy – inspired by thoughts about our animal nature. If humans are animals but human animals, why not accord them the honor of their own name?

Why We Think We Are Animals – The Arguments and the Counter Arguments

On this most contentious of topics, it is hard to consider all the nuances – and the the ins and outs of the various arguments – connected to the topic of whether or not we are animals. But lets give it a a brief try.

The view that humans are animals is based on (at least) four assumptions.

1. The Biological Assumption

The assumption is that if humans are biologically the same as animals – as they most clearly are – then they are animals. Considerations other than biology don’t enter into it.

The obvious counterargument is that we are not simply just biological entities. We cannot simply be reduced to our biological substratum. Behind this assumption is a reductionist argument which holds that we are is nothing more than the sum total of our parts – an argument which is belied by nearly universal experience. As a result, arguments based on the idea of emergence – the view that most phenomena cannot be explained by simply considering the nature of the parts of a system – are increasingly used to describe complicated and complex systems. Scientists such E. O. Wilson, Michael Gazzaniga, and Ian Tattersal characterize human nature as distinct and different than our biological substratum, in keeping with emergence.

2. The Non-Uniqueness Assumption

This assumption is that if human capabilities – mental qualities and the like – are found in nascent form in non-human animals – as they most clearly are – then we can’t differentiate between human and non-humans.

This is how Darwin viewed things, as we have discussed. Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778), the Swedish botanist who coined the term Homo sapiens and whose successful decree that man is an animal is where the controversy started, had a similar point of view. Famously, he wrote:

Theology decree that man has a soul and that the animals are mere ‘automata mechanica,’ but I believe they would be better advised that animals have a soul and that the difference is of nobility.

But there are very serious problems with these views, in that they deny the obvious. Clearly the fruit of man’s activities are altogether of a different order than the fruit of animal activities (think cities, cultures, science, even desertification). Also, these views propose a criteria for differentiating man and animal – mental qualities and the like – but claim that the amount or extent of those qualities is immaterial. It is like claiming that Death Valley and the Amazon rain-forest do not differ because they both possess plant life.

3. Political Assumptions

Behind the scenes, not recognized by many historical actors in the drama and still largely hidden, are underlying political and cultural assumptions.

The view that man is an animal is inherent in social contract theory, the political philosophy that underlies modern European-inspired forms of government and social organization. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes – who put social contract theory on the map – argued that humans are like mechanical entities (i.e., closely equivalent to out-of-control animals) in their natural state and that life without a powerful ruler was, therefore, “nasty, brutish, and short”. Subsequent arguments – for example, those of Locke – refined and restated Hobbes’ ideas, but retained their grounding in assumptions about human nature that conflicted with traditional religious points of view (for example, the so-called Divine Right of Kings).

The American Constitution embodies the social contract perspective, stating that all humans “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This is a distinctly different view about the ends of our endeavors than that presented by religion and illustrates the extent to which political philosophy had, in effect, set in place working definitions of human nature that defined us as like animals.

4. Cultural Assumptions

Also, there European cultural assumption that bear strongly on how Linneaus and Darwin – both privileged with traditional educations – came to see things. Their views about human nature owe a strong debt to European philosophy, European history, and especially to Christian theology.

I’ll leave the details to a later time, but a strong and central component of European thought was – and is – its preoccupation with theories of origins and creation. This likely is mainly due to the dominance of Christianity for a millienia and a half – especially the influence of the biblical creation myth as outlined in the ancient Jewish book of Genesis, but it was also due to the memories – half buried – of ancient Roman civilization and the remnants of that civilization in the Catholic church and its political counterparts.

Central to this European point of view is a perspective that strongly holds that what things are is determined by their origins: in principio veritas (in the beginnings is the truth).

A fascinating description of this, albeit as it appears in scholastic Latin grammar, is found in Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric – a new study of the use of Latin in medieval Europe. The book review in the London Review of Books puts it this way:

Medieval habits of thought can bewilder moderns, a case in point being the passion for etymology as a way to organise knowledge. Isidore of Seville entitled his vast seventh-century encyclopedia Etymologies, or Origins; its influence was incalculable. … Not so distant is the belief underlying genuine historical linguistics, a creation of the 19th century. Like its sibling disciplines of the same era (history of religions, comparative mythology, folklore studies), it posits that, to learn the deepest meaning of such phenomena, one must trace them back to their most ancient historical roots. In principio veritas.

What this means for ideas about the nature of man is that the perspectives of evolutionary thought – having elbowed aside the view that man was created by God – still kept to the theological perspective of in principio veritas. This way of thinking, second nature to a European, held that man, having originated in the animal kingdom, must necessarily be an animal.

But of course this viewpoint is in main a holdover of ancient vintage from Christian theology and European cultural history, not a fact of science.

5. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Summary

In light of the above, it is very interesting to review `Abdu’l-Bahá’s summary of how things stand as given in Some Answered Questions (1906) and entitled THE DIFFERENCE EXISTING BETWEEN MAN AND ANIMAL. He outlines the two sides of the debate

Know that people belong to two categories — that is to say, they constitute two parties.

One party denies that humans are unique:

One party deny the spirit and say that man also is a species of animal; for they say: Do we not see that animals and men share the same powers and senses? … “It is not,” they say, “that [man] has a special power and spirit which the other animals lack: animals possess sensitive bodies, but man in some powers has more sensation, although, in what concerns the outer senses, such as hearing, sight, taste, smell, touch and even in some interior powers like memory, the animal is more richly endowed than man.” “The animal, too,” they say, “has intelligence and perception.” All that they concede is that man’s intelligence is greater.

The other party argues for human uniqueness:

But the theologians say: No, this is not so. Though man has powers and outer senses in common with the animal, yet an extraordinary power exists in him of which the animal is bereft. The sciences, arts, inventions, trades and discoveries of realities are the results of this spiritual power. This is a power which encompasses all things, comprehends their realities, discovers all the hidden mysteries of beings, and through this knowledge controls them. It even perceives things which do not exist outwardly — that is to say, intellectual realities which are not sensible, and which have no outward existence because they are invisible; so it comprehends the mind, the spirit, the qualities, the characters, the love and sorrow of man, which are intellectual realities. …

The animal is the captive of the senses and bound by them; all that is beyond the senses, the things that they do not control, the animal can never understand, although in the outer senses it is greater than man. Hence it is proved and verified that in man there is a power of discovery by which he is distinguished from the animals, and this is the spirit of man.

The differences can be observed empirically. Much as animals can be distinguished from plants, so can humans be distinguished from animals:

Since in the animal there are signs which are not in the plant, you say this power of sensation is a property of the animal spirit; you also see in man signs, powers and perfections which do not exist in the animal; therefore, you infer that there is a power in him which the animal is without.”

Next Week

Given how long this is becoming, I had better stop. Next week, I’ll wrap up our discussion of whether or not humans are animals.

…………………………

This is the 12th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

Continue reading »]]> “The animal creation is captive to matter, God has given freedom to man. The animal cannot escape the law of nature, whereas man may control it, for he, containing nature, can rise above it.”

`Abdu’l-Bahá

Apr 23, 2012. Humans and animals clearly differ.

Is the difference merely one of degree, as Darwin believed? Or are humans and animals distinctly different?

Above the Laws of Nature

The Baha’i Faith embrace the latter view, as do the world’s major religions. It does so in a very interesting and illuminating way:

Humans, the Bahá’i Faith teaches, possess reason and intellect and can control the laws of nature, whereas animals are confined by nature.

Below we considering the human ability to master nature – and some of its implications. We have – according to the Bahá’i perspective – “supernatural” abilities!

First, let’s consider what nature is.

The Nature of Nature

There are several meanings to the noun nature. One meaning, according to Wikipedia, is the physical universe:

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. “Nature” refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.

Another two, Wikipedia tells us, are philosophical:

Nature is a concept with two major sets of inter-related meanings, referring on the one hand to the things which are natural, or subject to the normal working of “laws of nature”, or on the other hand to the essential properties and causes of those things to be what they naturally are, or in other words the laws of nature themselves.

A related word, important to discussions about nature, is the term naturalism (for interesting discussions about naturalism, see articles on the topic by Steven Schafersman and Keith Augustine).

Metaphysical naturalism – as opposed to the ordinary naturalism of the physical sciences – holds that everything is a natural phenomena:

… the view that nature is all there is and all basic truths are truths of nature” (Robert Audi, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1984, p. 372)

… the view that everything is natural, i.e. that everything there is belongs to the world of nature, and so can be studied by the methods appropriate for studying that world. (Alan Lacey, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995, p. 604)

This view is overturned if – as the Bahá’i Writings indicate – the human intellect has powers that control and transcend nature.

A Bahá’i Definition of Nature

Laura Dreyfus-Barney

A Baha’i definition of nature is given in Some Answered Questions, a remarkable book compiled by Laura Dreyfus-Barney (1879-1974), the prominent French-American philanthropist, sculptor, and recipient of chevalier and officier rank of the French Légion d’Honneur. It records Dreyfus-Barney’s talks over several years with `Abdu’l-Bahá – the son of the Bahá’u'lláh, the prophet-founder of the Baha’i Faith.

In the first chapter – entitled Nature is Governed by One Universal Law -`Abdu’l-Bahá defines nature:

Nature is that condition, that reality, which in appearance consists in life and death, or, in other words, in the composition and decomposition of all things. This Nature is subjected to an absolute organization, to determined laws, to a complete order and a finished design, from which it will never depart …

`Abdu’l-Bahá’s definition of nature is the nature of modern science – of modern physics, chemistry, astrophysics, biology. and evolutionary theory. But nature lacks intelligence:

… when you look at Nature itself, you see that it has no intelligence, no will. For instance, the nature of fire is to burn; it burns without will or intelligence. The nature of water is fluidity; it flows without will or intelligence. … Thus it is clear that the natural movements of all things are compelled; there are no voluntary movements except those of animals and, above all, those of man.

We possess intelligence, thus we have a capability that nature lacks:

Man possesses conscious intelligence and reflection; nature does not. … Man can seek out the mysteries latent in nature, whereas nature is not conscious of her own hidden phenomena. … Man is endowed with ideal virtues – for example, intellection, volition, faith, confession and acknowledgment of God – while nature is devoid of all these.

The ideal faculties of man, including the capacity for scientific acquisition, are beyond nature’s ken. These are powers whereby man is differentiated and distinguished from all other forms of life.

The upshot of all of this is that there is a clear distinction between our world and the world of nature. We have the power of intelligence and science, and nature doesn’t. We have the ability to learn in ways that, although prefigured in the animal world, far transcend it.

Edward O. Wilson – no lover of religion – shares this point of view, although he expresses it in a different way. In The Social Conquest of Earth (2012, p. 192) he notes that human nature

“is obvious through its manifestation in everyday life. Its intuitive expression is the substance of the creative arts and the underpinning of the social sciences [although the] very existence of human nature was denied during the last century by most social scientists.”

But, human nature is not

“the genes underlying it. They prescribe the developmental rules of the brain, sensory system, and behavior that produce human nature. Nor can the universals of culture discovered by anthropologists be defined collectively as human nature.”

Rather

“[h]uman nature is the inherited regularities of mental development common to our species. They are the “epigenetic rules,” which evolved by the interaction of genetic and cultural evolution that occurred over a long period of prehistory.”

Wilson’s epigenetic rules, although hardwired in, are the basis for learning, not innate behaviors. In other words, humans are hardwired to learn. And what we can learn allows us unprecedented control over nature.

Nature and the Supernatural

If we have powers that transcend nature – if our intellect gives us the ability to control nature – doesn’t that mean we have abilities that are supernatural? Supernatural – of course – means “above nature” from the Latin “supra” meaning “above”.

`Abdu’l-Bahá tells us that this indeed is the case:

All the powers and attributes of man are human and hereditary in origin — outcomes of nature’s processes — except the intellect, which is supernatural.

Through intellectual and intelligent inquiry science is the discoverer of all things. It unites present and past, reveals the history of bygone nations and events, and confers upon man today the essence of all human knowledge and attainment throughout the ages. By intellectual processes and logical deductions of reason this superpower in man can penetrate the mysteries of the future and anticipate its happenings.

And how should we use these supernatural powers? Speaking at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, DC in the segregated American South on the 23rd of April in 1912, `Abdu’l-Bahá gave the following answer:

How shall we utilize these gifts and expend these bounties? By directing our efforts toward the unification of the human race. We must use these powers in establishing the oneness of the world of humanity, appreciate these virtues by accomplishing the unity of whites and blacks, devote this divine intelligence to the perfecting of amity and accord among all branches of the human family so that under the protection and providence of God the East and West may hold each other’s hands and become as lovers. Then will mankind be as one nation, one race and kind — as waves of one ocean.

Next Week

Next week, we will revisit the topic of what it means to be human, addressing issues raised by materialistic interpretations of evolution and science that insist – without any scientific authority – that there are no higher goals than to be an intelligent animal.

…………………………

This is the 11th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

Continue reading »]]> This philosophy suggests that religion is a security blanket. Religious people have Linus van Pelt’s disease and are unable to give up their blankies and join the adults. The reason religious folks cling to their beliefs, this viewpoint asserts, is merely for the comfort and meaning it brings to their lives.

That’s the basic belief as I’ve heard it expressed by such respected thinkers as Richard Dawkins and Caroline Porco. A permutation of this is the related idea that religious people don’t handle uncertainty well and that this is why we cling to the absolute.

I can certainly vouch for the fact that my belief in God has helped me through some very difficult situations. My mother’s first encounter with cancer when I was seven or eight, my father’s death when I was fifteen, my mother’s when I was in my twenties, a divorce, a brain tumor and the subsequent surgery, dealing with occasional depression. I have found great support in considering the example of Baha’u'llah’s son Abdu’l-Baha (the centenary of whose visit to the US and Europe is being celebrated this year).

But I have to ask, why would that be a negative?

Other people find comfort in their therapist’s office, in medications, in support groups and communities of activity, or in other individuals. But a belief in God is rarely equated with those coping mechanisms. Rather it is mentioned in the same breath with drugs, alcohol and other escapist activities.

Do some people use religion to escape? Certainly. I felt a strong compulsion to run off to a convent when I was a teen despite the fact that I was not Catholic. There is much to be envied in a monkish life for one like myself who is socially inept and loves to read, devour information, and spin it out again in a web of stories. But this is where my faith has been the most helpful: in keeping me from doing exactly that—escaping.

Bahá’u’llah, like Christ before Him, insists that Bahá’ís stay engaged with the world, understand its workings and avail themselves of its benefits—while not getting caught up in them.

I’m reminded, in that context, of a truism—provenance unknown—that says courage is not the absence of fear, but doing what needs to be done in spite of one’s fear. That is the way most of the religious people I know experience their faith. It is not something they hide in or behind, but something that enables them to go out into the world and live.

One thing most of us are faced with on a daily basis is uncertainty. The revealed scriptures have a great deal to say about living with uncertainty, which is why when I heard it suggested that religion kept people from handling uncertainty well, I did a spit take.  The statement that caused this messy reaction was: ‘To my mind, most religious/supernatural beliefs come from an intolerance for uncertainty. If there is no immediate physical/scientific explanation for something people wonder if there is a religious/supernatural explanation, rather than just saying “I don’t know.”’

Now, for one thing, this is a binary way of looking at the situation: it has to be either or. One cannot be a secularist and intolerant of uncertainty or religious and tolerant of it. For another, I have to question the premise. First, it seems to me that even when a secularist says “I don’t know”, he does so with the certainty that there is a scientific (i.e. secular) explanation for it (whatever ‘it’ is). He is equally certain that there is no God. Conversely, when a Bahá’í says, “I know there is a spiritual existence beyond this one,” the “I don’t know” that is the inevitable answer to the question “What will that existence be like?” is complete and abject.

In my experience, it’s the folks I’ve encountered who embrace an uncompromisingly materialist ideology who have a problem with saying “I don’t know.” There is a compulsion in human beings to explain everything in terms we can understand. We want explanations to be neat and tidy and visible. We want a single filter that will explain everything. Some of us have chosen science as that single filter.

But much of what scientists are discovering about the very fabric of our universe is NOT visible and may not ever be directly knowable. People of faith are well-acquainted with the notion that some very important things must be known indirectly through their evidences and by inference.

It’s that concept of albedo, again. At night, we can know the Sun still exists because we can see its light reflecting on the face of the moon. IF we understand a little about orbital mechanics, we can work out that the moon doesn’t give its own light, but is reflecting the invisible Sun (a nod to Sting). If we think that orbital mechanics is superstitious nonsense, we might well hold out for another explanation that does not include an invisible Sun.

Most of what goes on in a human brain both while we’re engaged in solitary thought or interacting with others has nothing to do with the material world. Our lives are lived in a landscape of intellect and emotions and ideas that are as far beyond the merely physical as religionists propose God is. The human intellect is reflective of something that we have yet to find in the “material world.” That is what a great many of us call God.

We are completely uncertain of what God is like except through His reflection in creation and in the human Emissaries that have arrived like clockwork for millennia to teach us how to deal with the uncertainty of life. Their advice is, I think, both compelling and pragmatic. They taught largely about how we were to treat each other, how to stay unperturbed in the face of uncertainty and even insecurity and danger, how to build communities, how to conduct business equitably, how to take care of the poor and unfortunate, how to avoid becoming attached to “stuff” . . . or certainty.

“He should succour the dispossessed, and never withhold his favour from the destitute. He should show kindness to animals, how much more unto his fellow-man, to him who is endowed with the power of utterance. He should not hesitate to offer up his life for his Beloved, nor allow the censure of the people to turn him away from the Truth. He should not wish for others that which he doth not wish for himself, nor promise that which he doth not fulfil. With all his heart should the seeker avoid fellowship with evil doers, and pray for the remission of their sins. He should forgive the sinful, and never despise his low estate, for none knoweth what his own end shall be.” — Bahá’u’lláh, Kitab-i-Iqan, para 214

I recently had hip surgery and have had to learn to walk again normally. When I was fresh out of the operating room I had a walker, graduated to a cane, and then left that behind to embark on a regimen of physical therapy, exercise and healthy habits that I will continue to use for the rest of my life. That seems, to me, a more fitting analogue for religion—it’s not a device one leaves behind as one heals, but a process that one undertakes to build strength and ensure good health. It requires discipline, is sometimes painful and difficult, but the rewards in terms of health (and therefore independence and freedom) are great.

Next timet: The God of the Month Club

Continue reading »]]> “The animal creation is captive to matter, God has given freedom to man. The animal cannot escape the law of nature, whereas man may control it, for he, containing nature, can rise above it.”

`Abdu’l-Bahá

Apr 16, 2012. Empirical evidence, informed science, common sense, and ancient wisdom all tell us we are not animals.

What then does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be more than an animal?

Below, we explore the answers given by `Abdu’l-Bahá (1844 – 1921), the extraordinarily articulate and infinitely patient son of Bahá’u'lláh (1817 – 1892), the prophet founder of the Bahá’í Faith.

What Does It Mean To Be Human: A Religious View

To be fully human, according to the teachings of the Baha’i Faith (and the teachings of all the world’s great religions), is both a challenge and a responsibility. It doesn’t come automatically. Each of us has to grow into it by a process in spiritual growth. Humanity is as much potential as it is biological reality.

Being human – this view holds – is not just fitting under a scientific label or a classification. It is a dynamic process requiring effort, struggle, and growth.

Richard Feynman doing science

To fully understand what being human means from a scientific perspective, you have to understand what it means to do science. Doing science is different than cataloging its categories, its hard-won facts, its mathematical formulations of the laws of nature. Doing science is searching for truth, understanding, and knowledge. Doing science is teaching and sharing what you have learned. It is what scientists do, it is a process, an active pursuit – not just dry books on a shelf.

Similarly, being human is more than just having a human mother and father. It is a process, an active pursuit, a desire to grow to the heights of what humans are capable of and the struggle to achieve that desire. Being human means more than just satisfying our instinctual needs.

The Animal Creation is Captive to Nature, But Humans Can Free Themselves

Humans – according to `Abdu’l-Bahá and the texts of most of the world’s religions – have the unique capability of being able to descend to the depths of corruption, injuriousness, and depravity or being able to rise to the heights of kindliness, care, service to humanity, and sanctity of purpose.

We can immerse ourselves in the animal aspect of our nature, but the consequence are dire. `Abdu’l-Bahá puts it this way:

Today all people are immersed in the world of nature. That is why thou dost see jealousy, greed, the struggle for survival, deception, hypocrisy, tyranny, oppression, disputes, strife, bloodshed, looting and pillaging, which all emanate from the world of nature.

… as long as man is captive to nature he is a ferocious animal, as the struggle for existence is one of the exigencies of the world of nature. This matter of the struggle for existence is the fountain-head of all calamities and is the supreme affliction.

Or, we can free ourselves – and others – from captivity to nature and attain to our fully human self:

… the world of nature is an animal world. Until man is born again from the world of nature, that is to say, becomes detached from the world of nature, he is essentially an animal, and it is the teachings of God which convert this animal into a human soul.

And:

I hope that in this nether world thou shalt attain unto heavenly light, thou wilt free the souls from the gloom of nature, which is the animal kingdom, and cause them to reach lofty stations in the human kingdom.

We become human when we ascend from the world of nature:

[Those] who have ascended from the world of nature to the world of man, who have followed the divine Teachings, have served the world of humanity, are resplendent, merciful, illumined and like unto a rose garden. Strive thine utmost to become godlike, characterized with His attributes, illumined and merciful, that thou mayest be freed from every bond …

From this perspective, life is not the pursuit of the satisfaction of instincts (although the Baha’i writings make it abundantly clear that we should enjoy the good things of this life provided that they don’t interfere with our spiritual growth) but is deeper and has profound significance.

Note: This should definitely not be taken to imply that animals are bad or evil. Rather, they are different than humans and not subject to this human duality. They neither have the responsibility to grow via the use of their intelligence nor are they capable – as humans are – of being evil.

The Love of Exaltation

`Abdu’l-Bahá, pushing home the difference between us and the animals, urges us to look at our innate love of exaltation:

Praise be to God! Man is always turned toward the heights, and his aspiration is lofty; he always desires to reach a greater world than the world in which he is, and to mount to a higher sphere than that in which he is. The love of exaltation is one of the characteristics of man.

He urges us to not retreat to the animal world – not to go backward – and expresses his astonishment at philosophers who encourage the opposite:

Icarus falling to earth

I am astonished that certain philosophers of America and Europe are content to gradually approach the animal world and so to go backward; for the tendency of existence must be toward exaltation. Nevertheless, if you said to one of them, “You are an animal,” he would be extremely hurt and angry.

Next Week

A central – and fascinating – aspect of the Baha’i teachings on the difference between humans and animals is the idea that humans are not bound by nature. Next week we explore this topic in more detail. It is – according to the Baha’i writings – our intelligence that makes it possible for us to be free:

The power of the Holy Spirit, enlightening man’s intelligence, has enabled him to discover means of bending many natural laws to his will. He flies through the air, floats on the sea, and even moves under the waters. All this proves how man’s intelligence has been enabled to free him from the limitations of nature, and to solve many of her mysteries. Man, to a certain extent, has broken the chains of matter. (`Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, pp. 37-38)

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This is the 10th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

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Maya Bohnhoff (and Clancy)

A recurring theme I hear in the commentary and conversation of some anti-theists is that religion is not about life on earth in the here and now, but focuses its entire attention on the afterlife. This, it is supposed, leads to the belief among the majority of believers that nothing we do here matters and social ills like poverty and injustice can be blissfully ignored.

I’ve been a Bahá’í my entire adult life. This means I have been immersed for many years in a scriptural philosophy and community culture that teaches . . . well, almost exactly the opposite of the above thumbnail sketch.

Bahá’ís are asked to to focus on what we learn and do here so that we have the tools and qualities to be the best human beings we can be … both here and in the next phase of our existence. It’s rather like a student who understands the balance and relationship between how well she does in school and how successful she will be as an adult human being once she leaves the learning environment. Sure, adult independence is the goal, but it isn’t the purpose. The purpose of getting that shiny education is the qualities and skills you acquire in the process. Without those qualities and skills, the goal is unreachable.

This comes down to the purpose of religion, which Bahá’u’lláh describes this way in one of His tablets:

The Purpose of the one true God, exalted be His glory, in revealing Himself unto men is to lay bare those gems that lie hidden within the mine of their true and inmost selves. — Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’llah, CXXXII

Pretty straightforward metaphor: the purpose of religion is the revelation in each of us of human virtues.

In this context, Bahá’u’lláh writes about our duty to each other and to this world in passage after passage of the works that form the foundation of His faith. He makes it clear that simply believing a theological formula is not the goal of the exercise, rather:

It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to translate that which hath been written into reality and action….  That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race. The Great Being saith:  Blessed and happy is he that ariseth to promote the best interests of the peoples and kindreds of the earth. — Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah. CXVII

Abdu'l-Bahá

His son Abdu’l-Bahá enlarges on this idea in a number of places, including in this talk given on 21 April 1912 at a Universalist Church in Washington, D.C.

All the Prophets of God, including Jesus Christ, appeared in the world for the education of humanity, to develop immature souls into maturity, to transform the ignorant of mankind into the knowing, thereby establishing love and unity through divine education and training. . . . Prophets have appeared in this world with the mission that human souls may become the expressions of the Merciful, that they may be educated and developed, attain to love and amity and establish peace and agreement.  — `Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation of Universal Peace, p 39-42

In these passages, Bahá’u’lláh and Abdu’l-Bahá promote the idea that the Bahá’í Faith is not unique in this focus on religion as the means of individual and societal transformation—the former being necessary (obviously) to the latter.

The evidence that Bahá’u’lláh and Abdu’l-Bahá are correct in these statements can be found in earlier holy texts. From Krishna to Moses to Zoroaster to Buddha to Christ to Muhammad, the revealers of religion have concerned Themselves primarily with how human beings comport themselves here.

In the Bhagavad Gita (a Hindu scripture) Krishna speaks of selfless service:

Selfish action imprisons the world. Act selflessly, without any thought of personal profit. . . . Every selfless act, Arjuna, is born from Brahman . . . Brahman is present in every act of service. All life turns on this law, O Arjuna. Those who violate it, indulging the senses for their own pleasure and ignoring the needs of others, have wasted their life. —Krishna, Bhagavad Gita. 3:9, 15,16 (Easwaran translation)

Krishna does not offer any future “heaven” to those who obey this law, but rather says of them that:

They find their joy, their rest, their light completely within themselves. United with the Lord, they attain nirvana (bliss) in Brahman. — Krishna, Bhagavad Gita 5:24

Bliss is not a goal, but the result or consequence of actions taken for reasons other than 
”personal profit”.

The Dhammapada opens with these twin verses from the Buddha:

“He insulted me, he beat me; he threw me down and robbed me.” Dwell on such thoughts, and your hatred will never cease. “He insulted me, he beat me; he threw me down and robbed me.” Put away such thoughts and hatred will never arise. For in this world, hate never yet has dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This law is ancient and will last forever. — Buddha, Dhammapada, 1:3-5

Buddha asks His followers to concern themselves with the Eightfold Path:

1. Right Understanding
2. Right Thought
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

Zoroaster also focuses on good thought, good words, and good deeds (which is what some refer to as the Zoroastrian “motto”). And, of course, most Westerners are at least marginally aware of Christ’s teachings about human behavior:

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”— Mark 12:28-30

Most Westerners are probably not so aware of a similar focus in Muhammad’s teachings on behavior in the here and now and His focus on “small kindnesses”:

Hast thou observed him who belieth religion? That is he who repelleth the orphan, and urgeth not the feeding of the needy. Ah, woe unto worshippers who are heedless of their prayer; who would be seen (at worship) yet refuse small kindnesses! — Qur’an, Surih 107:1-7 (Yusuf Ali translation)

These are, of course, just a few examples of a thread that runs through all of the revealed religions. Something that revolutionized (or evolutionized) my own thinking about religion was the discovery—through personal research—that what I had grown up with as the Golden Rule and thought unique to Christianity existed in religions both older and newer. In all cases, is this principle—that we should treat others as we would be treated—is given singular emphasis.

• This is the sum of duty:  do naught to others which if done to thee would cause thee pain. (Krishna, The Mahabharata)
• What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow men.  That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. (Hillel, The Talmud)
• Tzu-kung asked, ‘Is there a single word which can be a guide to conduct throughout one’s life?’  The Master said, ‘It is perhaps the word “shu” (reciprocity).  Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.’” (Kung-fu-tse, Analects)
• So in all things, whatever you would have men do to you, do also to them, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Christ, The Gospel of Matthew)
• No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. (Muhammad, Hadith)

Bahá’u’lláh puts it this way in one of His letters:

O son of man! If thine eyes be turned towards mercy, forsake the things that profit thee, and cleave unto that which will profit mankind. And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself. — Bahá’u'lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf

Where’s the emphasis? In the simple contextual knowledge that Bahá’u’lláh also wrote in one of His major compositions that “the best-beloved of all things in My sight is justice. . .”

Strong words.

Are there believers who are focused on what I referred to previously as the Express Train to Valhalla? Sure. I overheard one of them not an hour ago in a yogurt shop trying to convince the young woman who worked there that there was nothing we could or should do here because scripture said that God was going to “intervene” and fix everything at the end of the world. (Which, as near as I can tell, is a doctrine constructed from a number of Biblical passages that are not always talking about the same thing.)

How big a group are we talking about? If recent studies undertaken by the Pew Trust and the Faith Matters Surveys are any indication, the group is rather small. According to Robert Putnam and David Campbell, who conducted a two wave panel study entitled Faith Matters and wrote about it in detail in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (2010), about 11% of Christians surveyed hold these sorts of deeply fundamentalist views. Hence, it is far from a majority position even within Christianity.

Other believers—including Hindus, Buddhists, and Bahá’ís—don’t have a conception of heaven as a physical place where you go to be rewarded for doctrinal purity or proper affiliation. Nor does Muhammad portray this sort of afterlife party as the goal of our existence.

So he who gives (in charity) and fears (God), and (in all sincerity) testifies to the best, We will indeed make smooth for him the path to Bliss. But he who is a greedy miser and thinks himself self-sufficient, and gives the lie to the best, We will indeed make smooth for him the path to Misery; nor will his wealth profit him when he falls headlong (into the Pit). — Quran, Surih 92: 4-11

The Pit in the above verse refers to the grave, not a fiery hell (the provenance of belief in which is a fascinating study). The Pickthall version of the Qur’an uses the words “state of ease” in place of the Yusuf Ali translation’s “Bliss”, and “adversity” in place of “Misery”. It also renders Ali Yusuf’s “falls headlong” with its parenthetical “into the Pit” as “when he perisheth”. In either case, it is not a promise of pie in the sky by and by. The emphasis—as in all the scriptures I’ve searched—is on how we think, speak and act toward our fellow human beings in the here and now, and whether we allow the teachings of faith to transform us . . . or not.

The good news is, most believers get this. They are not putting off work in this world in favor of getting their dogma ducks in a row for the next. This is borne out by the studies I mentioned above which show, for example, that religious people—of whatever tradition—are far more involved in civic and philanthropic causes both through giving and volunteerism, than are their more secular confreres. And their activity is not restricted to religious charities and causes. They are more involved in secular causes than their secular neighbors. (See American Grace for a comprehensive look at the data).

These studies conclude that a high level of activity in a religious community in the here and now results in the opposite of the attitudes and behaviors I described in my opening paragraph. Why is the perception otherwise? I leave it to the reader to consider.

Next time: Religion as security blanket

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Maya Bohnhoff is a professional writer who lives and works in San Jose.

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The Universal House of Justice

Apr 9, 2012. Darwin thought – as many of his followers continue to think – that humans are animals.

This is not a scientific finding – indeed it flies against almost everything we see and can measure in the world around us. Neither is it consistent with the views of many leading researchers in such areas such anthropology and neuroscience. And it certainly isn’t consistent with the perspectives of the religions of the world and their view – honed across millennias of experience – that we are both animal and human.

Let’s consider some of the questions that arise when we consider the view that humans are animals.

A Word of Caution

A word of caution. Our topic is not as simple and straightforward as it may at first seem.

One issue, hidden like the bulk of an iceberg, is the matrix of fundamental political and social changes associated with the emergence of European-style nationalism and its associated forms of political organization, among them modern participatory democracy. Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), widely considered to have laid the foundation for these changes, viewed man as a mechanism – a machine – with animal-like impulses needing to be controlled.

Another issue the emergence of modern rights-based perspectives in politics and social thought that oppose hierarchical political systems associated with divine authority models based on older Christian views of the uniqueness of humanity. In effect, differing considerations of whether or not humans are animals were – and continue to be – pitted against each other as theological and metaphysical arguments for different political systems and conceptions of society, a process that continues unabated today.

Another issue is the changing nature of our relationship with the planet’s animal life and the growing emergence of a stewardship ethos towards animals and wild places.

With this caution in mind, let us proceed.

What Does it Mean Morally, Ethically, Individually, and Socially if Humans are Animals

If we are animals, it means – if it is to mean anything – that we are bound to the dictates of our animal nature. No higher law binds us and there is no escape. Otherwise, we are not animals.

Obviously, people like Darwin, other enlightened thinkers, and many decent and progressive modern thinkers, didn’t – and don’t – really think that they themselves and their social equals are ordinary animals. They were – and are – exploring new intellectual ideas, their implications, and their usefulness. What they didn’t understand – and often still don’t – is that others can take their ideas and use them to cause severe damage to the public interest, invoking their supposed scientific authority.

What is nature of the animal nature we are bound to?

First and foremost it means instinctual behavior – we are hardwired to act in certain ways. We eat, protect ourselves, procreate, fight for dominance, attack and decimate others, engage in protective group behavior, gang up and bully others, lovingly raise our children, demonize and kill those that who outside of our group, act altruistically, follow alpha males or alpha females dogmatically and obediently, and don’t think about the consequences of our action.

It also means that we can learn behaviors. We can learn from the experience of our parents, our groups, and from those who train us.

There are, of course, many unanswered questions about what our animal behavior actually is. Does it mean, like Freud taught, that unknowable instinctual sexual drives in our youth drive our adult behavior? Does it then follow we achieve freedom and the happiness of society by engagement in sexual expression that “turns us on?”

Does it mean, as Friedrich Nietzsche taught, that the will to power – “achievement, ambition, the striving to reach the highest possible position in life” is “the main driving force in man,” that religious morality is for slaves, and that exceptional people – the Nietschean uebermensch – must obey no moral code beyond that of their own inner nature?

Does it mean, as Karl Marx wrote, “that what individuals are depends on the material conditions of their production?”

Does it mean, as the biologist Edmund O. Wilson famously asked, that “Darwinian natural selection, genetic chance and environmental necessity, not God, made the species … and that no species, ours included, possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by its genetic history”? Elaborating further in On Animal Nature (1978), Wilson notes the implications of modern sociobiological views of the man’s animal nature:

If the brain evolved by natural selection, even the capacities to select particular esthetic judgments and religious beliefs must have arisen by the same mechanistic process. They are either direct adaptations to past environments in which the ancestral human populations evolved or at most constructions thrown up secondarily by deeper, less visible activities that were once adaptive in this stricter, biological sense.

The essence of the argument, then, is that the brain exists because it promotes the survival and multiplication of the genes that direct its assembly. The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques.

This grab bag of different views of our nature – and I haven’t even started to do them justice – is a heritage of Darwin’s view. And not a one of them has scientific justification. They are at best unproven scientific hypotheses, or more usually, pseudo-science.

Their moral, ethical, individual, social and intellectual implications are similarly a grab bag – and sometimes we choose among them in a haphazard and almost random fashion until they create disasters and chaos. We then move on to another until the next disaster.

Sometimes we are told that war – the will to power – is what makes us noble and great. So, we massacre tens of millions in its name. Other times, we are told that our particular racial group is superior and that others are inferior, so we enslave them and kill them in the tens of millions. Or, we say that sexual freedom and the pursuit of ecstasy is our intrinsic nature, and we create deadly drug cartels to supply our resulting drug habits that then proceed to impoverish Mexico and Central America. Or, we follow Marx’s bidding and create societies driven by communism – or capitalism – that disadvantage the many for the benefit of the few.

To be honest, its hard not to regard these ideas cynically.

The Baha’i View: Humanity Is Able to Free Itself from Nature’s Bonds

The Baha’i view, as we have mentioned before, is distinctly different. Humans, although they share certain attributes with animals, possess attributes that set them apart:

The reality of man is his thought, not his material body. The thought force and the animal force are partners. Although man is part of the animal creation, he possesses a power of thought superior to all other created beings.

The animal creation is captive to matter, God has given freedom to man. The animal cannot escape the law of nature, whereas man may control it, for he, containing nature, can rise above it.

Central to the Baha’i view of human nature is a distinction between the natural world – where the laws of nature dictate what happens – and our human reality – where we can escape their dictate. Next week, we will explore this perspective in more detail.

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This is the 9th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

Continue reading »]]> “The task of humanity…is to create a global civilization which embodies both the spiritual and material dimensions of existence.”

The Universal House of Justice

Apr 2, 2012. In our last blog, we saw that Darwin thought of humans as animals – with sophisticated capabilities to be sure – but still animals. In no small part because of Darwin’s prestige and influence – many continue to think so today.

Is such thinking scientifically sound? Or is it simply received opinion?

Christians invariably think differently than Darwin. They view humans as created in God’s image and distinctly different than animals.

Is this just belief, or is it scientifically sound?

The Baha’i writings emphasize that what makes humans unique is their intellectual endowment, not their physical makeup. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá urges us to understand human reality by considering our spiritual nature, not our animal nature:

… there are men whose eyes are only open to physical progress and to the evolution in the world of matter. These men prefer to study the resemblance between their own physical body and that of the ape, rather than to contemplate the glorious affiliation between their spirit and that of God. This is indeed strange, for it is only physically that man resembles the lower creation, with regard to his intellect he is totally unlike it.”

and

The reality of man is his thought, not his material body. The thought force and the animal force are partners. Although man is part of the animal creation, he possesses a power of thought superior to all other created beings.

Is this contradictory to science?

What Makes an Answer Scientific?

To determine whether an answer to a question is scientific or not, one might simply ask scientists what they think — often a very interesting thing to do. Clearly, it would be fun to survey the views and opinions of a large number of scientists in a wide variety of disciplines on this question. But is it the correct thing to do?

We know Darwin’s opinion — he thinks man is an animal. And we know his reasons for thinking so — all the capabilities he sees in humans are found in nascent form in animals. But, and this is an important point, it is clear that he has not done more than just form an opinion in the context of his understanding of evolution.

Most importantly, personal opinion is just opinion — no matter how eminent the thinker or scientist: it is totally different than a well-established scientific fact or theory. And we know that the opinion of scientists is frequently wrong. For example, it was the opinion of a great many scientists in Japan that the Fukushima nuclear power plant was safe from damage due to a tsunami. Their opinion was wrong.

So, the opinion of Darwin, or of a few eminent scientists, is not the answer we seek. We need scientific answers.

How Do We Find a Scientific Answer to Our Question?

Karl Popper

A question — or an answer — is a scientific question or answer if it can be answered or supported scientifically. Or, spelling it out more clearly, a question is a scientific question if it can be answered empirically — i.e., by gathering the facts and judging them by some clear criteria. A scientific answer is such an answer

It is also a scientific question if it can be answered by a justified appeal to well established scientific findings. It is a scientific answer by similar light.

Sir Karl Popper — the eminent philosopher of science — famously said that science had to be falsifiable. If answers to questions could not — in either practice or principle — be shown to be wrong, then the questions being asked could not be said to be scientific. Popper — to name a famous example — didn’t think that Freudian psychology was a science. You couldn’t prove it was wrong.

So we have three paths to explore:

1. What are facts and the clear criteria by which we can answer the question about whether we are human or not?
2. Are we able to appeal to well-established scientific findings?
3. Are our results falsifiable?

1. What are the Facts? And by what Criteria Does One Evaluate the Facts

Clearly, if we can are going to determine whether humans are animals or not, we have to establish a criteria by which to evaluate the facts of the matter. What should this criteria be?

It is easy to think of many, but let’s pick only several: biological, intellectual, social, cultural, and spiritual. Are we biologically, intellectually, socially, culturally and spiritually different than animals?

Biologically, the question is simple. Do humans have the same biological properties as animals? The answer, too, is simple. Even considering differences in hand dexterity, speech capabilities, upright posture, and brain functioning, man is an animal biologically.

What about intellectually? In a large variety of intellectual categories one can think of — intelligence, mastery of abstract principles, language, science, etc. — humans surpass animals by large margins. So, if you define the distinction between humans and values in terms of intellectual capabilities, clearly humans are different than animals — that is unless you set the judgement bar very low.

Suppose, for example, that you devise an intelligence test that both humans and animals can take and suppose that on average iguanas score 02, dogs 04, dolphins 06 and humans 100. Now, suppose that you further set a criteria for judging the difference between humans as the level 05. Then you might say: “Look! Both dolphins and humans are in the same category. Both score above 05.” Then you claim that dolphins and humans are the same according to your tests, and therefore they can’t be differentiated. Both are therefore animals.

But the bar has been set so artificially low that the criteria for measurement is not meaningful. It’s like saying that both Singapore and Antarctica have days where the temperature exceeds zero degrees centigrade so their climate is the same.

This is essentially what Darwin and his followers have done. They point out that all the traits that we think of as human — intelligence, rationality, culture, empathy, group behavior, and the like — have counterparts, albeit at different levels of complexity, in the animal world. Therefore they conclude that humans are not distinct from and different than animals.

But, again, this is like saying that Singapore has the same weather as Antarctica because both have days where the temperature exceeds freezing. In all these example cases, no scientifically valid criteria — one that distinguishes differences that are clearly shown in the data — has been applied. The conclusion that Darwin and his followers draw — it is very clear — is scientifically suspect.

Clearly, similar types of arguments apply to social and cultural issues. There are great differences in degree between humans and animals, even acknowledging the surprising and fascinating social cultures that we know animates life for animals like elephants and killer whales.

As to spiritual capabilities, the distinction cannot be drawn in the same way as for intelligence, society, and culture. But if we consider spirituality as intelligence-driven learning based on incorporating moral and ethical principles into both one’s considered and habitual responses, clearly intelligence, society, and culture provide indicators for spiritual capacity much in the same way as temperature, humidity, air pressure, and wind velocity provide indicators for the weather.

2. Can we appeal to appeal to well-established scientific findings?

Scientific findings appear to be a mixed bag, originally favoring the idea that humans are animals, but now tending towards the view that humans are unique. The paleo-anthropologist Ian Tattersall — a leading expert human on evolution and the fossil record — describes the situation thus in Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness, (1998, pp. 188-189) :

Homo sapiens is not simply an improved version of its ancestors — its a new concept, qualitatively distinct from them in highly significant if limited respects.

… what has neatly been called “human capacity” in not simply an extrapolation of the earlier trends in our lineage that the studies of paleo-anthropologists are designed to elucidate. It is more akin to an “emergent quantity” whereby for chance reasons a new combination of features produces totally unexpected results.

In 1998, this was pushing the envelope and accordingly viewed disapprovingly (see for example, the New York Times review of the book). Large numbers of scientists then held — and many still do — to the traditional Darwinian perspective: humans are animals. Describing the conflicting views, the prominent neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga in Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique put it this way:

Thousands of scientists and philosophers over hundreds of years have either recognized this uniqueness of ours or have denied it and looked for the antecedents of everything human in other animals.

Gazzaniga’s own conclusions are similar to Tattersall’s:

I have decided something like a phase shift has occurred in becoming human. There simply is no one thing that will ever account for our spectacular abilities, aspirations and capacity to travel mentally in time to almost the infinite world beyond our present existence. Even though we have all of these connections with the biologic world from which we came, and we have in some instances similar mental structures, we are hugely different. While most of our genes and brain architecture are held in common with animals, there are always differences to be found.

So it is not totally clear what science is saying. Large number of scientists hold to the traditional Darwinian perspective that humans are animals. But new research — carried out by scientists like Tattersall and Gazzaniga — are pointing increasingly away from the Darwinian perspective (see for example modern studies of human uniqueness).

3. Are Our Results Falsifiable?

The third criteria we proposed was falsifiability. Answers to scientific questions need to be disprovable if they are to be valid.

In this case, we have seen that the Darwinian perspective is to dismiss criteria like differences in intellectual capacity as meaningless, citing the idea that animals have rudimentary capabilities similar in kind to those of humans to support the idea that humans are animals.

But this violates the falsifiability criterion. No level of difference between humans and animals can ever change the conclusions when considered this way. So, their answer can’t be falsified and by Popper’s falsifiability criteria, are not scientific.

Conclusion: Humans are Not Animals

So our conclusion is both straightforward and nuanced. In so far as biology is concerned, humans are animals. But insofar as other criteria — intelligence etc. — are considered, humans are different than animals. And this is not a surprising result.

So, humans are not animals, except biologically.

What is surprising — at least to me — is how weak and “unsciency” the view that humans are animals is. Arguments in support of that conclusion have to ignore differences in quality — and these differences are what makes scientific ideas testable and empirical — in favor of vague ideas of similarity and/or evolutionary origins. If there are any signs of intelligence — for example — in dogs, then it shows that humans are like dogs and therefore like animals. Its a weird way to think, and perhaps a no longer needed “spandrel” from the development of evolutionary thought.

Next Week

Next week, we consider the issue of the implications of our conclusions that — scientifically, as well as religiously — humans are not animals.

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This is the 8th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

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Maya Bohnhoff

I often come across the assumption that I view my religion as a vehicle—the express train to Valhalla. This scenario proposes that I am concerned chiefly with my personal salvation and am obedient to the laws of my faith for that reason alone.

To be fair, there are believers who are chiefly concerned with their personal salvation. It is of such deep concern because there are a number of sectarian groups that stress the idea that one must be right with God in order to go to heaven and so a great deal of importance is attached to knowing what one must do to be right with God—to be saved. Growing up, I encountered a number of suggested formulas for this: faith + grace = salvation; faith + works = salvation; faith + works + grace = salvation.

These have loomed so large historically that believers have been considered apostate or even heretical for adhering to a particular formula. Blood has been shed over the creation of these doctrinal statements.

I can understand the impulse to set up such formulas. It makes it easy to know with certainty that you’re right with God. It might even enable you to know if another believer is “right” simply by knowing if they believe a particular, doctrinally correct formula. You can know, theoretically, if you or a fellow believer is heaven bound by simply getting the answer to one simple question: “Are you saved?” Meaning, are you doctrinally correct?

This ostensibly takes the guesswork out of salvation because, as one Christian minister of my acquaintance told me, it’s impossible to know if you’ve done enough good works or loved others enough to be saved. Therefore, salvation surely must depend upon something quantifiable.

Now, I say I’ve encountered these formulas, but I find them remarkable for two reasons:

1. They are not held universally by believers even in the one faith we tend to associate with the question: “Are you saved?”
2. They are not taught as formulas (or vehicles) in the various scriptures.

Religion—whether we’re discussing Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, or the Bahá’í Faith—suggests that the believer’s spiritual state (their readiness for “heaven”) depends on their behavior, which is a reflection of their inner spiritual state and—dare I say it?—their inner virtues. Christ, for example, ties eternal life (that trip to “heaven”) to obedience.

“No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. …This is what I command you: Love one another.” (John 15: 13, 14, 17)

He repeats this combining of obedience and love several times for emphasis.

My pastor friend had a great deal of trouble with this verse because it put the emphasis on behavior (obedience) and on an intangible (the love in a believer’s heart).

“How obedient do I have to be? How much love is enough?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but why do I need to know? My concern is to do my level best to obey and love.”

For the record, other Prophets / Avatars have said something similar:

“Not by the Vedas (Scriptures), or an austere life, or gifts to the poor, or ritual offerings can I be seen as thou hast seen Me.  Only by love can men see Me, and know Me, and come unto Me.  He who works for Me, who loves Me, whose end Supreme I am, free from attachment to all things, and with love for all creation, he in truth comes unto Me.” — Bhagavad Gita 11:53, 54

So, far from being a vehicle that seals your certainty of going to heaven (however you define that), religion to most of the religionists I know isn’t a vehicle we’re in, but a road we’re on. Faith is as much a process as it is a quality one has or an emotion one feels. At the risk of being misunderstood, I’m going to borrow a word from the Qur’an to describe this process: jihad.

Yes, I know it’s been co-opted to describe terrorist activities, but I’m using it in the original sense of the word. In the context of faith, jihad means to “strive in the way of God”. In other words, to put yourself on the road and strive day by day until you reach the end. A believer can’t be certain that “heaven” (which most believers I know understand as as spiritual state, and not a physical place) lies the end of his particular road, or if he’ll take a detour somewhere along the way. And there’s no way to count instances of obedience or even love that add up to “I’m saved”, or to point to a particular doctrine that spells “salvation”.

So . . . if the certainty of heaven isn’t the big prize for all religionists, why obey any commandment?

The Bahá’í sacred texts explain it this way:

“Worship thou God in such wise that if thy worship lead thee to the fire, no alteration in thine adoration would be produced, and so likewise if thy recompense should be paradise. Thus and thus alone should be the worship which befitteth the one True God. Shouldst thou worship Him because of fear, this would be unseemly in the sanctified Court of His presence, and could not be regarded as an act by thee dedicated to the Oneness of His Being. Or if thy gaze should be on paradise, and thou shouldst worship Him while cherishing such a hope, thou wouldst make God’s creation a partner with Him. . . That which is worthy of His Essence is to worship Him for His sake, without fear of fire, or hope of paradise. Although when true worship is offered, the worshipper is delivered from the fire, and entereth the paradise of God’s good-pleasure, yet such should not be the motive of his act.” — The Bab

While there are believers in every faith path that confuse the goal with the results of striving for the goal, it’s certain that all believers don’t do that. To a great many of us, religion is not a means to a self-exalting end, but a process by which we can become more fully realized human beings.

Next time: Pie in the sky by and by…how religion encourages us to think about the there and then instead of the here and now.

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Maya Bohnhoff is a professional writer who lives in San Jose, CA.

Continue reading »]]> “The task of humanity…is to create a global civilization which embodies both the spiritual and material dimensions of existence.”

The Universal House of Justice

Mar 19, 2012. Are humans a kind of animal?

Darwin, and before him Linnaeus, thought so. The world’s major religions, however, think not.

Therein lies a problem and a source of considerable conflict, including rancorous continuing debates about the teaching of evolution, over modern sexual mores, over abortion, and over what it is to be a human being. These debates that are a major source of division and contention in modern America and around the world.

The view that we are animals was endorsed by Darwin and has been embraced by many interpreters of evolution and by disciplines like sociobiology. Where did Darwin get this view? And is it defensible scientifically?

Human Uniqueness in Pre-Enlightenment European Thought

Before and even during the Enlightenment – which began 1650 – 1700 and continued until about 1800 – most Europeans viewed humans as distinct and different than animals. The Christian view predominated, and it looked to Judaic Scripture – the book of Genesis (Gen 1:26-27) – as its authority:

²⁶And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

²⁷So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Christianity taught then – as it teaches now – that humans have a soul and this distinguishes us from the rest of creation. This view is expressed cohesively in the Common Declaration on Environmental Ethics (2002) signed by Pope John Paul II and Bartholomew I, the leading Patriarch of Eastern Orthodoxy.

At the centre of the whole of creation, He placed us, human beings, with our inalienable human dignity. Although we share many features with the rest of the living beings, Almighty God went further with us and gave us an immortal soul, the source of self-awareness and freedom, endowments that make us in His image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26-31; 2:7).”

Philosophers looked to Descartes and other like-minded thinkers who taught that there was a vast difference between animals and humans. According to Descartes, animals lack minds and language, setting them apart from humans. Here are some of his comments (from Animals are Machines in Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence):

Now by these … means one can also know the difference between men and beasts. For it is rather remarkable that there are no men so dull and so stupid (excluding not even the insane), that they are incapable of arranging various words together and of composing from them a discourse by means of which they might make their thoughts understood, and that, on the other hand, there is no other animal at all, however perfect and pedigreed it may be, that does the like. … And this attests not merely to the fact that beasts have less reason than men but that they have none at all.

It is also a very remarkable fact that although many animals show more skill than we do in some of their actions, yet the same animals show none at all in many others; so what they do better does not prove that they have any intelligence, for if it did then they would have more intelligence than any of us and would excel us in everything. It proves rather that they have no intelligence at all, and that it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs.

Both religion and philosophy agreed: humans were unique.

Human Uniqueness in Pre-Darwinian European Thought

But views that humans were unique were increasingly challenged by the time that Darwin was thinking about evolution. Linnaeus (1707-1778), as we saw in blog 5, had already classified us as primates – along with orangutans and chimpanzees – and put us into the animal kingdom, claiming biological similarities. And the enlightenment had changed everything – religion was no longer in the driver’s seat:

… until the 1650s Western civilization “was based on a largely shared core of faith, tradition and authority”. Up until this date most intellectual debates revolved around “confessional” – that is Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist), or Anglican issues”, and the main aim of these debates was to establish which bloc of faith ought to have the “monopoly of truth and a God-given title to authority”. After this date everything thus previously rooted in tradition was questioned and often replaced by new concepts in the light of philosophical reason.

After the second half of the 17th century and during the 18th century a “general process of rationalization and secularization set in which rapidly overthrew theology’s age-old hegemony in the world of study”, and that confessional disputes was reduced to a secondary status in favor of the escalating contest between faith and incredulity”. [Age of Enlightenment, Wikipedia, quoting Jonathan Israel, accessed Mar 18, 2012]

The authority of religion – and the belief in the soul – had been attacked and deeply undermined. Secular belief – often pursued with the same fanatical devotion that once had characterized religious belief – shoved aside religion. The view that man was superior came to be considered as outmoded thinking from the past – and was proclaimed as false by “scientific” thought.

Philosophically, Descartes’ view of man as being superior to the animals was challenged by English political, mechanistic, and empirical philosophy – i.e., by the beginnings of modern materialism, atheism – as well as by other enlightenment trends.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is often considered a key instigator. Robert P. Kraynak – a political historian who studies liberalism and conservatism – describes Hobbes’ contributions here. Hobbes, according to Kraynack, held that:

… man is a complex machine moved by mechanical responses to images of external objects. This view is developed in Leviathan, Part I, which gives the materialist account of man as a creature of appetites and aversions: seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and desiring power after power. … [His] model shows that human beings are selfish, competitive, and anti-social, and that they are rational only insofar as reason serves the selfish passions.

These views, despite concerns about Hobbes’ support for royal absolutism, were highly influential:

… he convinced many people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to change their views of the proper ends of government—from promoting the higher goods of virtue and salvation to protecting the limited goods of life, personal liberty, and property—inaugurating the natural rights principles of modern liberalism that became the basis of an enlightened middle-class materialism or “bourgeois” view of morality.

The net effect of Hobbes influence – and the influence of many other thinkers – was that Darwin came of age in an era where progressive thought saw the uniqueness of man as a theological holdover from the past inconsistent with the new truths of political liberalism and scientifically informed philosophy. It would be hard for Darwin not to be swayed by such thinking, especially since his view of evolution was one of gradual change, rather than of radical transitions.

So, Darwin, it is clear, thought in a cultural climate where belief in man’s superiority above the animals was still assumed, but it was a superiority of degree, not of kind. And this view was supported by his view that evolution was a simple mechanistic process of slow change. And he accepted this view as correct and scientifically sound.

But was it scientifically sound?

Next Week

Next week, we explore the scientific soundness of Darwin’s views. Given the huge spectrum of differences – some very substantial – between humans and the animals, is it still correct to say that humans are just animals?

…………………………

This is the 7th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

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Bahram Nadimi

For Baha’is, the period between March 2nd and March 20th  is a time of restraint and fasting. The preceding period between February 26th and March 1st is called Ayyam-i-ha or the Days Between. Literally, the days that fall between the last two months of the Bahá’í calendar. They are a time for hospitality, charity, gift giving and celebration prior to the Fast.

Regarding fasting Bahá’u’lláh (the Prophet Founder of the Baha’i Faith) stated:

“All praise be unto God, Who hath revealed the law of obligatory prayer as a reminder to His servants, and enjoined on them the Fast that those possessed of means may become apprised of the woes and sufferings of the destitute.[4]”

Given this, I thought it might be appropriate to talk about the plight of the poor. Here are some statistics [3]:

• Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 day.
• The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 heavily indebted poor countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest individuals combined.
• Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
• Less than 1% of what the world spends every year on weapons was all that was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
• 1 billion children live in poverty (that’s half the children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).

Abdu’l-Bahá and the poor

About 100 years ago, April 19th 1912, Abdu’l-Bahá (son of Bahá’u’lláh) visited the Bowery Mission for the poor in New York. In a talk the previous day Abdu’l-Bahá said:  “I am in love with the poor”.  He was looking forward to this visit. Some four hundred Americans, all poor and destitute, were present in the Bowery when he arrived.

He addressed them, with praise and gave them the glad-tidings of the message of Bahá’u'lláh:

“Tonight I am very happy, for I have come here to meet my friends. I consider you my relatives, my companions; and I am your comrade… You must be thankful to God that you are poor, for Jesus Christ has said, ‘Blessed are the poor.” He never said, “Blessed are the rich.’… therefore, you must be thankful to God that although in this world you are indigent, yet the treasures of God are within your reach; and although in the material realm you are poor, yet in the Kingdom of God you are precious…
    “He (Jesus) passed His time in the desert, traveling among the poor, and lived upon the herbs of the field. He had no place to lay His head, no home… yet He chose this rather than riches. …. Therefore, you are the disciples of Jesus Christ; you are His comrades, for He outwardly was poor, not rich… You will find many of the wealthy exposed to dangers and troubled by difficulties, and in their last moments upon the bed of death there remains the regret that they must be separated from that to which their hearts are so attached. .. All they possess they must leave behind and pass away solitary, alone…
    “Praise be to God! Our hope is in the mercy of God, and there is no doubt that the divine compassion is bestowed upon the poor. Jesus Christ said so; Bahá’u'lláh said so. While Bahá’u'lláh was in Baghdad, still in possession of great wealth, He left all He had and went alone from the city, living two years among the poor. They were His comrades. He ate with them, slept with them and gloried in being one of them. He chose for one of His names the title of The Poor One … He admonished all that we must be the servants of the poor, helpers of the poor, remember the sorrows of the poor, associate with them; for thereby we may inherit the Kingdom of heaven… Therefore, the poor are nearer the threshold of God and His throne. . .
    “So, my comrades, you are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. Your lives are similar to His life; your attitude is like unto His; you resemble Him more than the rich do. Therefore, we will thank God that we have been so blessed with real riches. And in conclusion, I ask you to accept ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as your servant” [1].

At the end of this meeting, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stood at the Bowery entrance to the Mission hall, shaking hands with four or five hundred men and placing within each palm a piece of silver.

Ayyam-i-Ha: Time for charity

Nine years ago, during this wonderful festival before the Bahá’í fast, my friend Ian and I were visiting Baltimore. We got to talk to a homeless person who was in the streets next to the aquarium asking for money, not a hand-out but money so that he could shower and get clean. He said that he had an interview at the aquarium the next day for a job. He said he did not drink or take drugs and wanted to get a job and be a productive member of society; while this attitude may be rare, we believed his story. We gave him the money that he needed and wished him well. I wish I could travel back in time to see if he got that job. Here is a picture the two of us.

The Baha’i World Congress in New York

In 1992, the Bahá’ís of the world observed the hundredth anniversary of the passing of Baha’u’llah by holding a World Congress in New York city that drew Bahá’ís from countries around the globe.

During one night of the Congress, my cousin and I were walking in the streets of New York City when we were abruptly stopped by a homeless gentleman who startled us by grabbing my hand. He had seen our registration badges for the congress and recognized us as being from the Bahá’í gathering. He told us that he had passed by the Javits Center (where the congress was held) a few days earlier, and felt a spirit of love that moved him. He had asked for a pamphlet from a bystander, liked what he had read, and wanted to become a Bahá’í.

He could hardly wait to become Bahá’í, he said, and added that he had never before felt such an overwhelming spirit of fellowship. He was beaming with joy and was very excited about the Bahá’í Faith. My cousin and I took him to a restaurant where the man told us the story of how he had become homeless.

His house burned down, he said, and told us that a dog would be treated better than the way he was treated when going to the homeless shelters. We gave him the address of the Bahá’í Center in New York City and some money so he could contact the Bahá’ís there. During the whole evening, I could not help but be reminded of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s talk at the Bowery in lower Manhattan. My wish since then has been to meet this man again one day and let him know that the energy released from his embrace of the Bahá’í teachings on the oneness of humanity—especially during the World Congress—will no doubt have positive ripple effects for the blessed city of New York and beyond.

He is, as Abdu’l-Bahá said roughly one-hundred years ago, precious.

I’d like to close with a passage from Baha’u’llah:

“Be not troubled in poverty nor confident in riches, for poverty is followed by riches, and riches are followed by poverty. Yet to be poor in all save God is a wondrous gift, belittle not the value thereof, for in the end it will make thee rich in God, and thus thou shalt know the meaning of the utterance, “In truth ye are the poor,” and the holy words, “God is the all-possessing,” shall even as the true morn break forth gloriously resplendent upon the horizon of the lover’s heart, and abide secure on the throne of wealth.[2]”

============== References==================

Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 32)
Baha’u'llah, The Persian Hidden Words
http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
Compilations, The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting

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Maya Bohnhoff

Last time, I gave an overview of a number of secular views of religion that I’ve encountered in my travels. I’d like to poke at these ideas a bit in the hope of maybe increasing understanding among both religious and secularist readers. Those of you who are religious, I’m hoping, might have an aha moment about why your secularist colleagues and friends suppose that giving up your faith is as simple as taking off a pair of unfashionable gloves.

Those of you who are not religious, I’m hoping will have a similar epiphany (pun intended) related to why your religious acquaintances and friends don’t just swap that purse they’ve spun out of moonbeams for one of good, serviceable vinyl.

That there are people who use religion to accessorize their lives, and who choose their place of worship—and possibly their faith, itself—the way they’d choose a color for their car or a handbag to match their shoes—is undeniable. I’ve been surprised, myself, at having someone explain to me that they go to such and such church or center for spiritual enlightenment because it suited them. That might change in a week or a month or a year, but it suited this phase of their life, so that was where they went.

Truth to tell, I had a close friend who switched religions the way I switched colors of eye makeup and who had been a Daoist, a Wiccan, and a follower of Eckankar among other things. His clothing—and sometimes his name—changed right along with his faith. I’ve known other people who have adopted a particular religious affiliation because it they thought it was cool or trendy or because their friends were involved in it.

But I am surprised by these revelations precisely because they are unusual.

I have another dear friend who, as a teen, was a militant atheist, but who went to the Baptist church because they had a good baseball team. He eventually became a Baha’i—which is why we met—and has been a Bahá’í for over 30 years. My own family denomination-hopped for years among Protestant churches before I, and then my mother, became Bahá’ís.

Why?

Ultimately, in all of the above cases the connecting element is identity. The identity of some believers is plastic. It shifts constantly and they shift religious affiliations to accommodate these shifts in identity—religion becomes a sort of vision-quest. Others, like my mother, for example, have a very strong sense of religious identity and “church-hop” in a quest to find a mirror for that identity among other believers. In my mother’s case, she wasn’t looking for a group that interpreted every jot and tittle of scripture as she did, but rather one that viewed it in principle as she did. The first quest depends upon how one sees one’s self. The second on one sees one’s faith.

My mother’s devotion to God was not only strong, it was central to her personality, her worldview, her very sense of self. The same is true of me and of a great many other believers I know. And it is true whether they are Bahá’í, as I am, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Wiccan or whatever.

To me, as a Bahá’í, my faith is a mirror in which I can see myself—the ideal me and the real me—and by which I can adjust the real to conform more with the ideal. And the ideal has nothing to do with accesorizing and everything to do with what lies at the core of my being—the qualities I strive to possess. Qualities such as selflessness, patience, courage, radiant acquiescence, rationality, hunger for knowledge and the ability to pursue such goals as returning hatred with love, and putting the interests of others ahead of my own.

Religion, in the scriptures of the Baha’i Faith, isn’t an accessory, it’s a target. It’s the bulls-eye at the center of the human being that we strive to hit.

Could I have come to appreciate these qualities were I an atheist? Maybe, but I doubt that I would have seen it as part of my identity as a human being to work day in and day out to acquire them. I doubt I would be conscious of their effect on every facet of my life, or concern myself with how I should apply them to every situation I encounter.

So, when a secularist asks me why I can’t just swap out my beliefs, the answer is that I would be swapping out what makes me ME. My faith lies at the heart of who and what I perceive myself to be. It supplies the ideal I am striving toward (exemplified by Baha’u'llah’s son, Abdu’l-Bahá), and the tools necessary to that journey.

This bears, too, on why religious folks are offended when well-meaning non-believers respond to the knowledge that they are religious with mockery and insult.

So, dear atheist friends, It isn’t as if you’ve just told your religious acquaintance that her purse is ugly and her shoes unfashionable. It’s as if you’ve told her that her inner being is ugly and unfashionable. Forgive her for taking offense and try to imagine yourself in her place. Imagine that someone has just told you they regard that part of you that is most intrinsically, essentially you as being worthless, stupid, and even evil and maybe contemplate the idea that the Golden Rule is something we all can aspire to, whether we are religious or not.

Next time: Religion as an express train to Valhalla.

Continue reading »]]> “The task of humanity…is to create a global civilization which embodies both the spiritual and material dimensions of existence.”

The Universal House of Justice

Mar 12, 2012. What do the evolutionary sciences say about the relationship between humans and animals? Are humans just mentally proficient animals, or do we belong in a human kingdom separate and distinct from the animal kingdom?

For many people, including those who see religion and science as in conflict, this is a crucial question. They argue that if the evolutionary sciences tell us that we are animals and religion tell us that we are not, then it implies one of two things:

• Religion is wrong – and we were created by the blind forces of nature
• Evolution is wrong – and we were created by God

And this is how many people see things. Underlying much of modern atheism, humanism and secularism is the view that science – in this case, evolution – has shown humans to just be animals whose origins are explained by natural processes.Therefore, the argument goes, we are not created by God. Religion has got it wrong and therefore itself is wrong.

The opposing view – underlying the growing antagonism against evolution, environmentalism, and climate science – is that evolution is not a science, but simply just a human doctrine – some call it materialism, others naturalism – that seeks to undermine religion.

Two things, I suggest, bear noticing:

1. The distrust of evolution doesn’t carry over into a distrust of the sciences in general – physics, chemistry, biology and the like – but mainly to “big picture” claims of science that are seen as competing with religion, and those sciences that affect public policy.
2. These views don’t make a distinction between what science actually says and what is claimed in the name of science, two things that can be quite different. For others – including many scientists and religious thinkers – the views stated above are naively simplistic, uninformed, and deeply rooted in 19th century scientism.

Do the Darwinian evolutionary sciences indeed support the view that we are animals? Lets take a look.

What Did Darwin Say About the Relationship of Humans to Animals?

Darwin published his ground-breaking On The Origin of the Species in 1859, but didn’t then address the issue of human evolution. It wasn’t until 1871 and the publication of The Descent of Man that he did so. The entry on Charles Darwin in Wikipedia summarizes the views he then presented:

Darwin set out evidence from numerous sources that humans are animals, showing continuity of physical and mental attributes, and presented sexual selection to explain impractical animal features such as the peacock’s plumage as well as human evolution of culture, differences between sexes, and physical and cultural racial characteristics, while emphasizing that humans are all one species.

Basically, Darwin believed that humans were animals with better minds. Here is how he put it in The Descent of Man:

There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. An anthropomorphous ape [could not] follow out a train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on God, or admire a grand natural scene. Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.

He summarizes his arguments for this view as follows:

We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc. of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.

Then, surprisingly after acknowledging the immense difference between the mind of man and the animals, he dismisses the difference in minds as incidental and due to the use of language:

If it could be proved that certain high mental powers, such as the formation of general concepts, self-consciousness, &c. were absolutely peculiar to man, which seems extremely doubtful, it is not improbable that these qualities are merely the incidental results of other highly-advanced intellectual faculties; and these again mainly the result of the continued use of a perfect language.

Darwin, it seems, was a Darwinist! He believed that humans are animals with enlarged mental capacities resulting from the use of language.

What Do the Modern Evolutionary Sciences Say About the Relationship of Humans to Animals?

What does modern science say?

Darwin – as authoritative as he is often seen to be – was merely a scientist, not a divine prophet. For his ideas to have scientific validity, they have to be tested empirically. Accordingly, we look at how well they have fared.

The Smithsonian Institution, the magisterial American repository of scientific knowledge, summarizes modern scientific findings about human evolution as follows:

Human evolution is the lengthy process of change by which people originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years.

So, yes, according to modern science, we originated from apelike ancestors.

Our Family Tree

Are we animals? Here is what the Smithsonian says:

Humans are primates. Physical and genetic similarities show that the modern human species, Homo sapiens, has a very close relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. Humans and the great apes (large apes) of Africa — chimpanzees (including bonobos, or so-called “pygmy chimpanzees”) and gorillas — share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent.

So science is telling us that anatomically we are animals and that we are descended from animals. Ursala Goodenough, writing in a blog at NPR, puts it this way:

[A]ll modern beings share ancestry, via countless convergences, with an original cellular creature (as expanded here). … The [most recent common ancestor] of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos is indicated by the dashed circle in Our Family Tree [see illustration above.]

Science also tells us that from the viewpoint of our genes, we are very similar to the primates. Recently, a research group deciphered the genetic code of Kamilah, a 165 kg gorilla living at the San Diego zoo, to explore the differences and similarities with respect to human genetic code. The authors concluded that:

… the data suggest that gorillas split from their common ancestor with humans and chimps about 10 million years ago, and that chimps and humans split from each other about 4 million years after that.

So science is also telling us that genetically we are very similar to chimpanzees and the other great apes. Genetic comparisons with chimpanzees show that:

… the genetic difference between humans and chimps is less than 2%,or 20 times larger than the [genetic] variation among modern humans.

How Does Darwin Fare

So, how well has Darwin – and his view that humans are mentally advanced animals – fared? It is now 140 years after he published his ideas.

Darwin’s ideas about the anatomical relationship between humans and the great apes has fared very well indeed. Genetic studies not available in his day have strongly supported the view that humans are related to the apes and there is an embarrassment of solid empirical studies that support his view. We have to conclude anatomically that Darwin was correct.

But the view that the difference between humans and animals is “one of degree and not of kind” has not been quantitatively substantiated. Qualitatively, it strikes most people – and probably most scientists as well – as just plain wrong.

Humans, according to the best science we have, are descended from animals.

But are we different than – or the same as – animals? That has not been decided.

It looks like it is a matter of belief and definition. If you hold as a first principle, as Darwin did, that our intellect – and its capabilities – is not something that distinguishes us from the animals, then and only then is it legitimate to say that difference is “one of degree and not of kind”. But this is a belief, not something that comes from science.

Next Week

So we have to continue our study. Where did this belief of Darwin’s that we are animals come from? Next week, we will further explore the Darwinist view – as opposed to the evolutionary science view – that there is no distinction between animals and humans.

…………………………

This is the 6th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

Continue reading »]]> I, and many folks I know who would describe themselves as religious (aka, a person of faith, or spiritual) are puzzled by the reactions to religion by some of our secularist and atheist acquaintances. It’s not that we don’t grok people’s disgust with the things that have been done in the name of religion. We not only get that,  we share their disgust. Indeed, to a person of faith, the fact that Christ’s or Muhammad’s or Buddha’s name as been invoked to wreak mayhem on other human beings is not just disgusting, it’s agonizing, because it degrades, distorts and ultimately destroys something that we hold sacred.

What we don’t “get” is why this antipathy extends to ALL religion and religious ideals everywhere and why people who frame the “debate” about the role of religion in terms of rationality and irrationality are, themselves unable to rationally distinguish between religion and what people choose to do with it.

This distinction is not lost on them when it applies to science. To observe, as Common Ground blogger Steve Friberg has done, that science has been implicated in some of humankind’s ugliest atrocities will draw the immediate response that science cannot be blamed for these things because it is neutral. It espouses no values and offers no dogma. It is, one of my atheist confreres noted, like a scalpel. Whether it is an instrument of salvation or destruction depends entirely upon what you do with it.

For some reason, though, it’s impossible for a great many secularists to apply the same very rational argument to religion. I’ve made the argument here before that the same case can be made—indeed, must be made—for religion. But religion and science are not alike in one important respect: science, ideally, is neutral (which begs the question of how it can be used to derive a moral foundation for the planet).

Religion is not neutral. It has a set of principles that—regardless of whether we’re discussing Hinduism or Buddhism, Christianity or Judaism, Islam or the Baha’i Faith—have been recorded for posterity in written form.

While social teachings change and flex from age to age, the essential principles at the core of the world’s religions have remained strikingly consistent. At the heart of it all is something for which we’ve coined the phrase “Golden Rule” in an effort to suggest something of its value, if in somewhat materialisitc terms. This is the basic concept of treating others as we would like to be treated. Krishna refers to this as “the sum of duty”, rabbinical scholar Hillel as “the entire law” (“all the rest is commentary”, he adds), Christ summed it up as the one law upon which all others depend, Baha’u'llah as the epitome of justice (which is, He also says, “the best-beloved off all things” in God’s sight).

Religion, then, is not neutral, but prescriptive. It calls for a standard of faith, yes, but—more importantly, in the eyes of the Founders of religion (Krishna, Christ, and Baha’u'llah, for example)—it calls for a standard of behavior toward our fellow human beings that we, all too often, disregard.

We are, as a species, awfully good at finding things that trump our religious principles—reasons why they don’t apply to this or that person or group—their skin color or point of origin, their social status, gender or political views. It’s no wonder, then, that our secularist fellows have a shallow and often narrow idea of what place religion holds in the life of the religious. Some of their assumptions about it—and about us—seem naive, at best. At worst, they compound the misunderstanding by allowing their very righteous outrage over what has been done in the name of religion to trump their own reason and sense of justice.

Here are a handful of the assumptions I’ve run across on atheist websites, on inter-religious forums and in new atheist polemics:

• Religion is an accessory, like a purse or a pair of gloves. It’s handy, but easily switched, according to one’s fashion sense, or simply put down and picked up again at will.
• Religion is a vehicle. It’s a fashion statement, but one that we actually expect to get us somewhere—namely to that big old pie in the sky, Heaven, where tuxedoed dolphins bring us breakfast and … no, wait, that’s a Was Not Was song. Anyway, the idea is that religion is something we use to get us where we hope to go.
• Religion is not about life on earth in the here and now; it’s about the afterlife. Hence, nothing we do here matters and social ills such as poverty and injustice can be blissfully ignored.
• Religion is a security blanket. Religious people are the Linuses of the world, unable to give up our blanky and join the adults. We are, therefore, impervious to reason and must be reasoned with like children and offered sweets in return for giving blanky up. The reason we cling to religion is merely for the comfort and meaning it brings to our lives.
• Religion is a social club, or a means of maintaing necessary social status. Intelligent politicians and clergymen (yes, some will complain those are oxymorons) are especially suspected of not really believing. I’ve read claims on atheist blogs that since President Obama is obviously an intelligent man, he must be a closet atheist. The same is said of such figures as Newton, Galileo, and probably Francis Collins, as well.
• Religion is a source of awe. Some secular thinkers have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to convince us religious “types” that science is more awe-inspiring than God or religion. Why aren’t we capable of appreciating the awesomeness of the Universe, they wonder?
• Religion encourages shallow thinking. It keeps us from having to think too deeply about life, the universe and everything. (I know, I know—don’t laugh.) This is sort of the ignorance is bliss take on faith and it gets a lot of “airplay”. Religious people, this view supposes, are hiding from reality behind dogma and have checked their brains at the door.
• Religion is penance. We we believe we are sinful and therefore incapable of making rational decisions for ourselves. Therefore we accept the authority of a church or guru or clergy of some sort to make all our decisions for us, thereby saving us from having to make any ourselves.

The problem with all of these is that they easily become entrenched positions. Certainty that this is what religious people feel and how they think can deafen the non-believer to what we really feel and think, thereby effectively shutting off communication and understanding and perpetuating the “war”.

Over and against these notions of what religion means to religious people, are what religion really means to the people that espouse it in its varied forms. For example, to a great many of us (from a diverse array of faiths) religion is the grounding point for our sense of personal and communal identity, it prompts us to attain greater self-knowledge than we might otherwise aspire to. Religion, in that context, sheds light on our inner landscape and the world around us. It is a lens through which we view ourselves and our world—a means of achieving perspective. It is, in essence, our reality check.

But more on that later.

In future blogs I’d like to take a look at and discuss each of the ideas raised above and conclude with some thoughts about the role religion really does play in the lives of many believers.

Continue reading »]]> “The task of humanity…is to create a global civilization which embodies both the spiritual and material dimensions of existence.”

The Universal House of Justice

Mar 4, 2012. Are we animals?

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) – the father of modern biological classification (taxonomy) – thought so. He classified humans as primates – along with orangutans and chimpanzees – and put us into the animal kingdom. Modern biological classification schemes keep to the Linneaen scheme. They too say we are part of the hominid family – the great apes – and belong to the animal kingdom.

The Baha’i Faith thinks not. Humans, even though we share most of the biological functionings of animals, are different.

Common sense in the main agrees with the Baha’i Faith and the other world religions. We build airplanes, carry out scientific investigations, and surf the internet. Animals do not. The Linnaean classification scheme, clearly, is a biological one that doesn’t address broader issues of our mind and its uses.

Linneaus

The Darwinian perspective complicates things. If (a) humanity is descended from the animals as Darwinism concludes, then it seems logical that (b) humans too are animals, and that (c) what and who we are can be understood by understanding our evolutionary past and our animal origins. We will put off discussing it for now.

Does it Matter if We are Animals?

Is it important if we are animals or not?

Intuitively we know that there is a difference. I never mistake Charlie our dog for a human being. For one thing, he doesn’t do the dishes!

The Multiple Meanings of ‘Animal’

An animal named Charlie

The problem is that animal is a word with many connotations. It can mean “brutish, cruel, and bestial” or “instinctive, unthinking, and reactive,” especially when applied to humans. Or it can be a descriptor of all living things that are motile (moving independently and spontaneously). Mary Midgley, my favorite English philosopher, puts it this way in The Myths We Live By:

If anthropologists from a strange planet came here to study our intellectual habits and customs … they would find us using a single word – animal – to describe an immense range of creatures, including ourselves, from blue whales to tiny microorganisms that are quite hard to distinguish from plants.

On the other hand, they would note also that the commonest use of this word ‘animal’ is that in which we use it to contrast all these other organisms with our own single species, speaking of animals as distinct from humans.

A common usage is a moral one, she notes. “You have behaved like animals!” says the judge. This might mean something like “you have crashed through the barriers of culture, barriers which alone protect us from from a sea of hideous motivations.” In this case:

Another animal (name unknown)

… ‘animal’ stand for the inhuman, the anti-human. It represents the forces that we fear in our own nature, forces that we are unwilling to regard as a true part of it.

Another usage can have positive connotations, as widely recognized by the animal rights movement:

To think of ourselves seriously as animals is to regard the other animals as our kin; it inevitably leads us in some degree to welcome them, to identify with them, to see their cause as our own.

The Spiritual Perspective

`Abdu

The spiritual perspective places an emphasis on what is exclusively human – our mind, our intellect, and our spiritual nature. The spiritual focus is on the nourishment and care of that intellect and the development of its ethical, moral, and intellectual powers. It holds that our human reality is distinct and different than the reality of animals, even though we share in that reality.

The Baha’i perspective is in close accord with most other religions and is well illustrated in talks that `Abdu’l-Baha gave across Europe and North America. Speaking to the thunderous applause of the body of teachers and students at Stanford University in 1912, he put it this way:

Man is the noblest of the creatures. In his physical organism he possesses the virtues of the mineral kingdom. Likewise, he embodies the augmentative virtue, or power of growth, which characterizes the kingdom of the vegetable. Furthermore, in his degree of physical existence he is qualified with functions and powers peculiar to the animal, beyond which lies the range of his distinctive human mental and spiritual endowment.

Animals can be savage, but it is not a wrong. Human savagery is different:

If the animals are savage and ferocious, it is simply a means for their subsistence and preservation. They are deprived of that degree of intellect which can reason and discriminate between right and wrong, justice and injustice; they are justified in their actions and not responsible. When man is ferocious and cruel toward his fellowman, it is not for subsistence or safety. His motive is selfish advantage and willful wrong.

Humans, equipped with a gift that animals lack, can escape the limitations of nature:

In nature there is the law of the survival of the fittest. … The purpose and object of schools, colleges and universities is to educate man and thereby rescue and redeem him from the exigencies and defects of nature … It is evident, then, that the intended and especial function of man is to rescue and redeem himself from the inherent defects of nature and become qualified with the ideal virtues of Divinity.

At Stanford, `Abdu'l-Baha warned of the carnage to come in World War I

Then, shall man live at the level of the animal kingdom given the powers he possesses?

God has endowed him with a power whereby he can even overcome the laws and phenomena of nature, wrest the sword from nature’s hand and use it against nature itself. Shall he, then, remain its captive, even failing to qualify under the natural law which commands the survival of the fittest?

… shall he continue to live upon the level of the animal kingdom without distinction between them and himself in natural impulses and ferocious instincts? There is no lower degree nor greater debasement for man than this natural condition of animalism.

Yes, it Does Matter

So, according to religion, it does matter whether or not we consider ourselves animals. It means recognizing our own station and working our whole life to rise to it. And it means working with all of humanity to do it as well. And yes, it does not exclude recognizing our close kinship with the animals and working to their benefit.

We should recognize that there is divine spark within ourselves, one that makes us different than our brethren animals. We should recognize our freedom from nature’s blind dictates, and we should recognize that we have powers – and responsibilities – that animals don’t have.

And it is misguided or wrong – religions agree – to not do so.

Next Week

Next week,we continue our look at Darwinian theories of human descent. What can we learn from knowing what science says about our origins?

…………………………

This is the 5th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.

Continue reading »]]> Part 3 of a discussion and critique of John R. Shook’s The God Debates

Ian Kluge

Let us look at one more example of Shook’s straw-man methodology. He says, “The basic ‘fine-tuning’ argument for god has this form:

1. If god exists, then it is highly probable that this universe would permit life;
2. The universe is organized to permit life;
3. In the naturalistic “multiverse” theory it is not highly probable that the universe would permit life;
4. It is more reasonable to accept the theory that makes it more probable that this universe exists;

Conclusion: God exists.(8)

First of all, what reputable theist — philosopher or theologian — has ever argued for this hodge-podge? Can Shook document anyone but a philosophical naïf presenting this argument?

Once again, we are back to the main problem in The God Debates — Shook is  making up straw-man parodies of theist arguments in order to refute them. This example shows how far he is willing to go. All sorts of different arguments are mixed up: the existence of God, the existence of life, a gratuitous premise about multiverses as well as a debatable premise on what is or is not reasonable to believe. These are so sloppily put together that they do not form any kind of argument at all, and it is disingenuous to lead readers to think that intelligent theists argue like this or that this is the best theism can do.

The fine-tuning argument for God’s existence — which is a probabilistic proof — might go as follows:

1. Our universe is extremely fine-tuned in regards to a large number of fundamental physical constants without which none of the cosmic structure and life we know would be possible;
2. These constants all lie within an exceedingly narrow range;
3. Even a change in one or a small number of constants makes the current universe impossible;
4. The odds of such an inter-related web of fine-tuning or the conditions for such fine-tuning arising by chance are so low as to be almost zero.

Conclusion: The more unlikely a natural cause for this fine-tuning, the more likely it is that a non-natural or super-natural cause, i.e. God, exists.

This probabilistic proof is, of course, not an absolute proof, but it has the advantage of being linked to the current research. Moreover, it makes the decision to believe in God a rational, evidence-based decision and works with calculable probabilities.

It might be objected that if the universe has enough time — infinity supposedly — then this rare combination of fine-tuned factors will inevitably arise. This is arguing like my neighbor that his wife’s chances of producing a boy improved with each pregnancy. (They wound up with six girls.) Odds close to zero remain close to zero no matter how many times the universe or universes re-configure. We could, of course, discuss variations on this scenario, but that would take us too far from exposing Shook’s straw-man parodies.

Let us sample one more problematic argument from The God Debates.

According to Shook, “Recent cognitive psychology and brain experiments have been able to duplicate many of the characteristics of religious mystical experiences.”(9) To his credit, he admits that these experiments cannot eliminate the possibility of God. But then he proceeds to argue that because science can induce a brain experience of “an X that doesn’t probably exist anyway”(10) then “You have never really had an interaction with an X.”(11)

X, for those who haven’t guessed by now, is God.

He thinks this argument is “logically effective against gods”(12) — but this is a sad mistake. Why should not a lab-induced experience of X be just as valid as a natural one? The fact that X is given as a brain-experience is no surprise — how else do the scientists expect a vision to appear to a human brain? And how does the lab experience prove that X is not real?

One is reminded of an incident in Shaw’s St Joan, in which the Inquisitor asks Joan if St Catherine appears in her head and Joan replies, that of course she does — where else could St Catherine appear? Appearing there was no proof that Joan never saw St. Catherine or that St Catherine was unreal. The same applies to X. The only way that Shook can even make his semi-syllogism appear plausible is to make it circular, i.e. to introduce the “an X that probably doesn’t exist anyway”(13) in the first premise and then use that to conclude “You never really had an interaction with X.”(14)

To conclude: The God Debates is a disappointing book — disappointing because it promises so much and delivers so little of real substance to the aware reader. The civil tone is a welcome and major step forward in “the God debates” but it is not enough to make up for the serious mistrust aroused by the numerous fallacious arguments such as we have sampled.

Shook seems intent on strengthening the case for secular humanism by straw-man parodies of theistic arguments — which is surely a losing strategy and does nothing to advance our understanding of this important subject.

============= References ==================

8 The God Debates, p. 142.

9 The God Debates, p. 103.

10 The God Debates, p. 104.

11 The God Debates, p. 105.

12 The God Debates, p. 105.

13 The God Debates, p. 104.

14 The God Debates, p. 105.