SCIENCE AND RELIGION
BY DR. J. E . ESSLEMONT
Note: The following passages have been taken from Chapter XII of “Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era.”
COMPLETE harmony with science is evident in the Bahá’í teachings regarding the way in which we must seek the truth. Man must cut himself free from all prejudice so that he may seek after truth unhindered.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says: “In order to find truth we must give up our prejudices, our own small trivial notions; an open receptive mind is essential. If our chalice is full of self, there is no room in it for the water of life. The fact that we imagine ourselves to be right and everybody else wrong is the greatest of all obstacles in the path towards unity, and unity is essential if we would reach Truth, for Truth is one. . .
“No one truth can contradict another truth. Light is good in whatsoever lamp it is burning! A rose is beautiful in whatsoever garden it may bloom! A star has the same radiance if it shines from the East or from the West! Be free from prejudice; so will you love the Sun of Truth from whatever point in the horizon it may arise. You will realize that if the Divine Light of Truth shone in Jesus Christ, it also shone in Moses and Buddha. This is what is meant by the search after truth.
“It also means that we must be willing to clear away all that we have previously learned, all that would clog our steps on the way to Truth; we must not shrink if necessary, from beginning our education all over again. We must not allow our love for any one religion or anyone personality so to blind our eyes that we become fettered by superstition. When we are freed from all these bonds, seeking with liberated minds, then we shall be able to arrive at our goal.’
The Bahá’í teaching is at one with science and philosophy in declaring the essential nature of God to be entirely beyond human comprehension. As emphatically as Huxley and Spencer teach that the nature of the Great First Cause is unknowable, does Baha'u'llah teach that “God comprehends all; he cannot be comprehended.” To knowledge of the Divine essence “the way is barred and the road is impassable,” for how can the finite comprehend the Infinite; how can a drop contain the ocean or a mote dancing in the sunbeam embrace the universe? Yet the whole universe is eloquent of God. In each drop of water are hidden oceans of meaning, and in each mote is concealed a whole universe of significances, reaching far beyond the ken of the most learned scientist. The chemist and physicist pursuing their researches into the nature of matter, have passed from masses to molecules, from molecules to atoms, from atoms to electrons and ether, but at every step the difficulties of the research increase till the most profound intellect can penetrate no further, and can but bow in silent awe before the unknown Infinite which remains ever shrouded in inscrutable mystery.
If the flower in the crannied wall, if even a single atom of matter, presents mysteries which the most profound intellect cannot solve, how is it possible for man to comprehend the universe? How dare he pretend to define or describe the Infinite cause of all things? All theological [Page 161]
speculations about the nature of God’s essence are thus swept aside as foolish and futile.
But if the essence is unknowable, the manifestations of its bounty are everywhere apparent. If the first cause cannot be conceived, its effects appeal to our every faculty. Just as knowledge of a painter’s pictures gives to the connoisseur a true knowledge of the artist, so knowledge of the universe in any of its aspects—knowledge of nature or of human nature, of things visible or of things invisible—is knowledge of God’s handiwork, and gives to the seeker for Divine Truth a real knowledge of His Glory.
All things manifest the bounty of God with greater or less clearness, as all material objects exposed to the sun reflect its light in greater or less degree. A heap of soot reflects a little, a stone reflects more, a piece of chalk more still, but in none of these reflections can we trace the form and color of the glorious orb. A perfect mirror, however, reflects the sun’s very form and color, so that looking into the mirror is like looking at the sun itself, so it is with the way in which things speak to us of God. The stone can tell us something of the Divine attributes, the flower can tell us more, the animal with its marvellous senses, instincts and power of movement, more still. In the lowest of our fellowmen we can trace wonderful faculties which tell of a wonderful Creator. In the poet, the saint, the genius, we find a higher revelation still, but the great prophets and founders of religions are the perfect mirrors by which the love and wisdom of God are reflected to the rest of mankind. Other men’s mirrors are dulled by the stains and the dust of selfishness and prejudice, but these are pure and without blemish—wholly devoted to the Will of God. Thus they become the great educators of mankind . . . .
Bahá’u’lláh teaches that the universe is without beginning in time. It is a perpetual emanation from the Great First Cause. The Creator always had His creation and always will have. Worlds and systems may come and go, but the universe remains. All things that undergo composition, in time undergo decomposition, but the component elements remain. The creation of a world, a daisy or a human body is not “making something out of nothing,” it is rather a bringing together of elements which before were scattered, a making visible of something which before was hidden . . . .
Bahá’u’lláh also confirms the biologist who finds for the body of man a history reaching back in the development of the species through millions of years. Starting from a very simple, apparently insignificant form, the human body is pictured as developing stage by stage, in the course of untold generations, becoming more and more complex, and better and better organized until the man of the present day is reached. Each individual human body develops through such a series of stages, from a tiny round speck of jelly-like matter to the fully developed man. If this is true of the individual, as nobody denies, why should we consider it derogatory to human dignity to admit a similar development for the species? This is a very different thing from claiming that man is descended from a monkey. The human embryo may at one time resemble a fish with gill-slits and a tail, but it is not a fish. It is a human embryo . . . .
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says: “It is clear that this terrestrial globe in its present form did not come into existence all at once, but gradually passed through different phases until it became[Page 162]
adorned with its present perfection. . . . Man in the beginning of his existence and in the womb of the earth, like the embryo in the womb of the mother, gradually grew and developed, and passed from one form to another, until he appeared with this beauty and perfection, this force and this power. It is certain that in the beginning he had not this loveliness and grace and elegance, and that he only by degrees attained this shape, this form, this beauty and this grace . . . . Man’s existence on this earth from the beginning until it reaches this stage, form and condition, necessarily lasts a long time . . . but from the beginning of man’s existence he is a distinct species. . . . Admitting that the traces of organs which have disappeared actually exist (in the human body), this is not a proof of the impermanence and the non-originality of the species. At the most it proves that the form and fashion and the organs of man have progressed. Man was always a distinct species, a man, not an animal.”
The Bahá’í teachings with regard to body and soul, and the life after death, are quite in harmony with the results of psychical research. They teach, as we have seen, that death is but a new birth—the escape from the prison of the body into a larger life, and that progress in the after-life is limitless . . . .
All the signs of the times indicate that we are at the dawn of a new era in the history of mankind. Hitherto the young eagle of humanity has clung to the old eyrie in the solid rock of selfishness and materialism. Its attempts to use its wings have been timid and tentative. It has had restless longings for something still unattained. More and more it has been chafing in the confinement of the old dogmas and orthodoxies. But now the era of confinement is at an end, and it can launch on the wings of faith and reason into the higher realms of spiritual love and truth. It will no longer be earth-bound as it was before its wings had grown, but will soar at will to the regions of wide outlook and glorious freedom. One thing is necessary, however, if its flight is to be sure and steady. Its wings must not only be strong, but they must act in perfect harmony and co-ordination. As ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says: “It cannot fly with one wing alone. If it tries to fly with the wing of religion alone it will land in the slough of superstition, and if it tries to fly with the wing of science alone it will end in the dreary bog of materialism."
Perfect harmony between science and religion is the sine qua non of the higher life for humanity. When that is achieved, and every child is trained not only in the study of the sciences and arts, but equally in love to all mankind and in radiant acquiescence to the Will of God as revealed in the progress of evolution and the teachings of the prophets, then and not until then, shall the Kingdom of God come and His Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven; then and not until then shall the Most Great Peace shed its blessings on the world.
