Muslim woman with Qur'an

Why Religion 7: The Identity Thing

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, …

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Evolution, Science, and Religion 14: Chance, Randomness and Directionlessness

“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 …

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Materialism and Discontent

“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 …

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Evolution, Science, and Religion 13: Are Humans Animals? The Final Word

“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 …

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high-mass

Why Religion 6: God of the Month Club

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 …

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Why Religion 7: The Identity ThingEvolution, Science, and Religion 14: Chance, Randomness and DirectionlessnessMaterialism and DiscontentEvolution, Science, and Religion 13: Are Humans Animals? The Final WordWhy Religion 6: God of the Month Club

Apr 09

Evolution, Science, and Religion 9: What Does It Mean if Humans Are Animals?

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“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 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.

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Apr 02

Evolution, Science, and Religion 8: No, Humans are Not Animals

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“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?

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Mar 21

Why Religion 3: An Express Train to Valhalla

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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.

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Mar 19

Evolution, Science, and Religion 7: Why Darwin Thought We Are Animals

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“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?

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Mar 16

On Being In Love with the Poor

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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). Read the rest of this entry »
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Mar 14

Why Religion 2: Religion as Accessory

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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.

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Mar 11

Evolution, Science, and Religion 6: Darwin and the View that Humans Are Animals

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“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.

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Mar 07

Why Religion?

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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.

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Mar 04

Evolution, Science, and Religion 5: Humans and Other Animals

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“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.

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Feb 29

The God Debates #3: Fine-tuning God

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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.

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