Bahá’í World/Volume 29/Colloquium on Science, Religion, and Development
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In November 2000, the Bahá’í'
International Community 3 Institutefbr Studies in Global Prosperity Sponsored a gathering to explore how religious
values and scientific methods can be integrated in development work.
COLLOQUIUM ON
SCIENCE, RELIGION, a DEVELQPMENT
he past century has seen much of human society propelled by
unprecedented advances in communication, production, medicine, and other scientific and technical fields. Despite these scientific leaps, the stratification between the developed and developing nations is greater than ever. Human society seems to lack the collective direction and focus needed to deal with the fact that many of its nations are being left behind in the process of social evolution. Instead, the development of nations is seen primarily in terms of scientific and commercial advancement, governed by the idea that humanity’s problems are no more than a checklist of physical needs that can be filled by agencies of development experts.
But this limited perspective, which has been prominent in development efforts for much of the past fifty years, has eliminated the overarching structure that can relate problems to their sources. Increasingly, governments and NGOS are coming to an understanding that none of the physical elements of development—whether food, shelter, or money—is alone enough to make lasting changes in human lives without a basis in the spiritual aspects of human life.
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The spiritual basis of development and the need to include moral and ethical training in development efforts were issues explored by the Colloquium on Science, Religion, and Development held from 21 to 24 November 2000 in New Delhi, India. The Colloquium convened to discuss ways to address the social, physical, and technological advancement of mankind and the spiritual perspective that is needed if such advancement is to lead to lasting improvements in global society.
“Our goal was to bring together a diversity of organizations and practitioners in the field of development to explore how scientific methods and religious values can work together to bring about a new, integrated pattern of development,” said Matthew Weinberg, director of the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity (ISGP), one of the Colloquium’s organizers. The ISGP’s statement to the conference, entitled “Science, Religion, and Development: Some Initial Considerations,” explains the breakdown of development as it evolved in the twentieth century and identifies the areas where progress is needed.
The proceedings of the event, a mix of plenary sessions and workshops, took place in the India International Center and allowed for a wide range of discussion and consultation. The primary focus was on capacity building in five key areas identified by the ISGP’s document: economic activity, education, technology, governance, and justice.
F arida Vahedi, Colloquium coordinator and director of the Indian Bahá’í Office for the Advancement of Women, articulated
The lieutenantgovernor ofDelhi, Vljai Kapoor, addressing the
’_ inaugural session ’ 5 ., Ofthe Colloquium, on the grounds Ofthe Bahd ’[ House Of Worship in New Delhi.
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the Colloquium’s aim as giving “impetus to a discourse that explores the relationship between technical knowledge, spiritual value systems, and social advancement—something which until recently has been lacking worldwide.”
Dr. Benham Ta’i, the regional representative for South Asia of the Netherlands-based Institute for Housing and Urban Studies, spoke of a “missing link” in development that would “explain the shortcomings of the current model.” Said Dr. Ta’i, “Now there is a perception that spirituality is the link and the key idea for changing the attitudes for decision-making in the processes of development.”
In keeping with the spiritual focus, the conference commenced with a devotional session inside the prayer hall of the Bahá’í House of Worship in New Delhi. Bani Dugal-Gujral Of the Bahá’í International Community’s United Nations Office, Katherine Marshall of the World Bank, and Continental Counsellor Zena Sorabjee all gave addresses that evening, and a message from the president of India was read to the gathering. The opening session concluded with a performance entitled “Sarod for Harmony,” by master of the sarod Ustad Amj ad Ali Khan.1
“Although there has been considerable evolution in development thinking over the past several decades, serious questions remain concerning present approaches and assumptions,” said Ms. Dugal-Gujral in her opening address. “The great majority of the world’s peoples do not View themselves simply as material beings...but rather as social and moral beings concerned with spiritual awareness and purpose.”
Ms. Marshall, who oversees the World Bank’s recently launched collaboration with religious organizations, known as the World Faiths Development Dialogue, urged a new partnership between religious groups and development specialists. She noted the “special role” in both understanding and helping the poor that religious groups have long played, despite the fact that, as she said, “their insights and their work are too little known in many development circles.”
‘ The sarod is a many-stringed lute, native to northern India.
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“The idea should be to engage in a process that opens new windows of understanding, raises the bar of obj ectives, offers new insights and new Visions, on all sides,” Ms. Marshall said in an address to the opening session.
The Colloquium was organized by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of India and the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity, an agency of the Bahá’í International Community. Cosponsors included the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Development Research Center of Canada, Decentralized Training for Urban Development Proj ects, the Department of Secondary Education and Higher Education of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the World Health Organization, and the Textile Association (India).
Participating groups came mainly from India, with others from Bolivia, Colombia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. There was also participation by representatives of the World Bank, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In all, some one hundred NGOs, government officials, and international development specialists took part in the conference, focusing on issues such as the empowerment of women, environmental preservation, appropriate technology, education, human rights, and rural development.
Central to discussions about humanistic development, these issues are also present in the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith. The
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interest of the Bahá’ís in the Colloquium is intrinsic to their ideas about the nature of humanity and its natural, inevitable progress. Bahá’ís have long recognized the essential element of spirituality in efforts to assist the development of mankind. Baha’u’llah, in many of His writings, characterizes God as the “Divine Physician” for humanity’s sicknesses. He exhorts the Bahá’ís, “Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in,” but He also warns that humanity cannot alone find the solution to its ills:
We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable afflictions. We see it lying on its bed of sickness, sore-tried and disillusioned. .. [humanity] can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor [has it] any knowledge of the remedy.2
This new understanding of development work hinges largely on the complementary relationship between science and religion, a theme frequently stressed in the Bahá’í writings, which runs strongly counter to Views held by many experts that religion is a hindrance to progress and scientific advancement. Although historically an adversarial relationship has often emerged between organized religion and science, with each considering the other a flawed means of discovering truth, the agencies involved in the ISGP Colloquium recognized that a new paradigm of interaction is needed.
Participants in a workshop at the Colloquium exploring the relationship between values and economic activity.
2 Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings OfBahá’u’lláh (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1994), p. 213.
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As Mr. Weinberg said, “Science can explain how the world works—it can give us tools for material progress. But it can’t tell us how we should treat each other, nor can it tell us what our ultimate purpose should be.” In the Bahá’í View, science and religion can and should be mutually beneficial instead of mutually exclusive, he said.
Haleh Arbab Correa Of the Colombia—based Foundation for the Application and Teaching of the Sciences (FUNDAEC), said that development specialists must begin to see “science and religion as two complementary sources of knowledge.”
“The two systems are not as dissimilar as they are presented to be,” said Dr. Arbab Correa. “Objective observation, induction, the elaboration of hypotheses, and the testing of predictions are important components of scientific methods. But they are also present in religious pursuits, albeit in different configurations and at different levels of rigor.
“Similarly, faith does not belong exclusively to religion,” Dr. Arbab Correa continued. “Science, too, is built on elements of faith, particularly faith in the order of the world and the ability of the human mind to explain the workings of that order.”
MS Swaminathan, holder of the UNESCO chair in Eco-technology, said in his talk at the Colloquium, “The formidable power of science and technology can benefit humankind only if we know how to temper it with humanism and spirituality.”
The end of the conference saw a call for more research in many key areas, including ways to create a set of development indicators that assess the impact of values-based approaches and identify the “best practices” of religiously-inspired development.
“The emphasis of this event was to involve national and grassroots level organizations in this dialogue. And we were pleased that a number of key points and possible lines of action were identified by the participants here for future consideration,” said Mr. Weinberg. He called the conference “an experiment and a learning endeavor, since an integrated discourse on these three topics has really only recently begun to take shape in the world at large.”
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“The development community,” said Mr. Weinberg, “has come to understand that development is all about building capacity... and capacity building is all about knowledge. We have to recognize and value appropriate indigenous knowledge systems and blend them with the modern systems.”
The ISGP’s initial findings, along with an open letter to all of the participating development organizations, were published and distributed to the participants. The document identifies the Challenges and goals of the movement towards the spiritualization of development efforts and calls the new path of development “inevitable.” In the words of that statement,
It is simply no longer possible to maintain the belief that social and economic progress can flow from a strict materialistic conception of life. .. Civilization flies on two wings: reason and faith. The building of human capacity cannot occur by relying on one wing alone.
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