Transcript:Steven Phelps/Can Science and Religion Ever Agree
| Transcript of: Can Science and Religion Ever Agree? A Bahá'í Perspective (2020) by |
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[0:00] [Host 1] Our speaker today is Dr. Steven Phelps and his topic is Can Science and Religion Ever Agree? A Bahá'í Perspective.
[0:08] Dr. Steven Phelps received bachelor's degrees in physics and philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in physics from Princeton University specializing in cosmology. He served at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel for 13 years in its research department where he coordinated the indexing and coalition of the Bahá’í sacred writings and their translation from Persian and Arabic into English. During that period he concurrently held a research position in the physics department at the Technion University in Haifa and published original research on the masses of nearby galaxies. His recent published research includes a machine learning test for Covid-19. He currently resides in the Portland area with his wife and three daughters. And with that I'd like to hand it off to Dr. Phelps.
[0:57] [Dr. Phelps] Thank you so much. I guess we have a choice of seeing my face or seeing my screen. I didn't prepare slides, but I do have notes and quotations that I'll be using. I don't know if it would be distracting to see all of this text on the screen rather than me talking, I don't know if the hosts have a preference. But I can do it either way.
[1:22] [Host 2] I think it would be fine if you just go ahead and, you know, speak without your screen.
[1:27] [Dr. Phelps] So the question we'll be addressing today is whether science and religion can ever agree. You can probably guess what my answer is going to be, but maybe that would be a spoiler alert! So I will go forward first of all by answering the question in the simplest form but then trying to go behind that question and look at what fundamental changes in our world view will be required to really answer that question in the affirmative. Many of us may already be familiar with the fact that the principle of the unity of science and religion is regarded as one of the central teachings of the Bahá’í faith. I think is is fair to say that it's the first major religion to clearly formulate this principle and to put it so centrally among its teachings. Although it would also be fair to say that it's the only existing world religion that could have, because the Bahá’í faith being so historically new is also among the only post-scientific-revolution world religions on the planet today.
[3:04] The principle of the unity of science and religion as far as I've been able to see was not explicitly stated by Bahá’u’lláh. Although he mentions in positive terms the study of useful arts and sciences, and although he mentions the wondrous sciences that will emerge in the future, it was left to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and in particular during the journeys of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of Bahá’u’lláh, to the West in 1911 and 1912 to explicitly formulate this principle. And ‘Abdu’l-Bahá did this repeatedly in the course of dozens of of talks that he gave in Europe and in the United States in 1911 and 1912. And just to to present you with some of the raw material that I'm speaking from I'm pasting in the chat box a link to several dozen quotations from the Bahá’í writings that state and restate this basic teaching of the Bahá’í faith of the compatibility of science and religion. [1]
[4:28] The modern observer may immediately point out that this teaching of the Bahá’í Faith is by no means obvious, that there is a fairly manifest conflict between science and religion in the present day. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in his various talks tends to lay the source of the conflict not so much at the feet of the scientific method but at the feet of particular interpretations of religion. One place where ‘Abdu’l-Bahá does this is in a work called Paris Talks. These were given in Paris in 1911, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá puts it in the following terms. He says:
| “ | All religions of the present day have fallen into superstitious practices, out of harmony alike with the true principles of the teaching they represent and with the scientific discoveries of the time. Many religious leaders have grown to think that the importance of religion lies mainly in the adherence to a collection of certain dogmas and the practice of rites and ceremonies! Those whose souls they profess to cure are taught to believe likewise, and these cling tenaciously to the outward forms, confusing them with the inward truth. Now, these forms and rituals differ in the various churches and amongst the different sects, and even contradict one another; giving rise to discord, hatred, and disunion. The outcome of all this dissension is the belief of many cultured men that religion and science are contradictory terms, that religion needs no powers of reflection, and should in no wise be regulated by science, but must of necessity be opposed, the one to the other. The unfortunate effect of this is that science has drifted apart from religion, and religion has become a mere blind and more or less apathetic following of the precepts of certain religious teachers, who insist on their own favorite dogmas being accepted even when they are contrary to science. This is foolishness, for it is quite evident that science is the light, and, being so, religion truly so-called does not oppose knowledge. We are familiar with the phrases “Light and Darkness,” “Religion and Science.” But the religion which does not walk hand in hand with science is itself in the darkness of superstition and ignorance. Much of the discord and disunion of the world is created by these man-made oppositions and contradictions. If religion were in harmony with science and they walked together, much of the hatred and bitterness now bringing misery to the human race would be at an end. |
” |
[7:37] That's a fairly long quotation but I wanted to read it all because I think it so beautifully captures the position of the Bahá’í Faith on the principle of the unity of science and religion. But at the same time there is I think a fairly obvious tension in the world today between the majority of the followers of religions, and of course one is lumping together billions of people in saying this, but I think fair to say that the traditional interpretations of religion as followed by the majority of religious people on the planet at times put those beliefs in contradiction with conclusions of science. How do we go forward if we want to declare that science and religion are united? What will be required to bring them into harmony? I wanted to talk about this -- and there's a lot of content in this talk and I hope that it doesn't overwhelm, but I wanted to discuss a number of points. They say good talks should have no more than three points, but I'm going to have more like 10 points, 12 points.
[9:08] I'm going to talk about principles that are located within the Bahá’í writings, what we might call deeper principles, that can facilitate the reconciliation of science and religion by shifting our views, maybe in a fairly fundamental way, about what religion really is and what some of the basic ideas that undergird our belief in religion really are. And these principles will, we will find, challenge our given notions about certain basic ideas. For instance the idea that matter and spirit are two different kinds of things. So let me talk about each of these in turn. And the first of these basic undergirding principles is an idea expressed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá -- it's really more of a redefinition of religion and a redefinition of nature. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in one of the talks that he gave in 1906/1907 in Haifa, speaking about the nature of religion, offers us a revolutionary redefinition of what religion is, which on the face of it may appear to be in tension with our given understanding of religion as a top-down phenomenon: Something which is spoken by God to the Prophet on the mountaintop and the Prophet then brings it down to the people. We are all I think familiar with this common intuition about religion. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá offers us a complementary definition of religion in Some Answered Questions that goes as follows -- and this is in chapter 40 of Some Answered Questions -- he says that the Manifestations of God:
| “ | are aware of the truths underlying the mysteries of all created things, and thus They found a religion that is based upon, and consonant with, the prevailing condition of humanity. For religion consists in the necessary relationships deriving from the realities of things. |
” |
[12:01] And then later in that same talk he says:
| “ | Religion, then, consists in the necessary relationships deriving from the reality of things. The universal Manifestations of God, being aware of the mysteries of creation, are fully informed of these necessary relationships and establish them as the religion of God. |
” |
[12:22] I find this to be a fairly revolutionary redefinition, partly because to define religion in these terms is more of a bottom-up definition. It sounds more like science. And indeed, writing in 1919 to a famous Swiss scientist, Dr. Auguste Forel, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá discusses nature, and he offers a definition of nature which goes as follows:
| “ | By nature is meant those inherent properties and necessary relations derived from the realities of things. And these realities of things, though in the utmost diversity, are yet intimately connected one with the other. For these diverse realities an all-unifying agency is needed that shall link them all one to the other. |
” |
[13:36] If one looks underneath to the Persian text of these two statements one finds that the slight differences in the wording in the English fall away and you find that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá uses identical Persian phrases to define on the one hand religion and on the other hand nature. They're both defined in terms of "necessary relationships that proceed from the realities of things". So this is one principle, what we might call a "deeper principle" within the Bahá’í writings, that helps to realign our understanding of nature and of what we might call the "supernatural". The domain of earth and of heaven. To realign them so that they're no longer opposed to each other but are in fact different aspects of the same thing.
[14:46] The second "deeper principle" in the Bahá’í writings is the idea of the correspondence between the higher and the lower. A principle which is expressed again in a letter of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the following terms. He says that:
| “ | there are two books: one is the book of creation and the other is the written book. The written book consisteth of the heavenly books which are revealed to the Prophets of God and have issued forth from the lips of His Manifestations. The book of creation is the preserved Tablet and the outspread Roll of existence. The book of creation is in accord with the written book. |
” |
[15:16] And this principle of correspondence between material and spiritual, the idea that there's a mirror relationship, that the structures and forms that one finds in one domain are repeated in the other domain -- one might call it a principle of symmetry -- is found throughout the Bahá’í writings. Another example of this in a tablet called the "Tablet of the Universe" ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says:
| “ | physical things are signs and imprints of spiritual things; every lower thing is an image and counterpart of a higher thing. |
” |
[15:59] And in presenting this principle ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is echoing a truly ancient idea that goes back some say to a shadowy figure named Hermes who lived in Egypt even before the time of the pyramids. Bahá’u’lláh briefly mentions Hermes in one of his tablets, and Hermes is said to be the originator of this principle that whatever is above is like whatever is below and vice versa. So there's this principle of repetition and symmetry that also helps to unite what we previously thought of as two separate and disjointed domains.
[16:45] The third "deeper principle" I want to add to the mix is found in Bahá’u’lláh's Tablet of Wisdom where Bahá’u’lláh is discussing on the one hand nature and on the other hand God's will, which traditional theology describes in competing terms: Nature being that nexus of necessary relationships that flows upon the earth, unless and until God's will intervenes upon those those necessary relationships and wills something else to happen. That may be our intuition about this difference between these two, we might say, great forces in the world. The everyday operation of things is seen to be opposed to the special operation of things under the particular will of the deity, the particular will of a God existing outside of that nexus of relationships, Who at times wills things to happen that might not be in accordance with that normal flow of things. This intuition, which is I think one of the bedrock religious intuitions that leads to tension and conflict between between science and religion, is addressed by Bahá’u’lláh in his Tablet of Wisdom. And Bahá’u’lláh very simply deals with this tension by defining it away! He essentially puts an equals sign between nature and God's will, in the following words:
| “ | Nature is God’s Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world. It is a dispensation of Providence ordained by the Ordainer, the All-Wise. Were anyone to affirm that it is the Will of God as manifested in the world of being, no one should question this assertion. It is endowed with a power whose reality men of learning fail to grasp. Indeed a man of insight can perceive naught therein save the effulgent splendor of Our Name, the Creator. |
” |
[19:07] ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, writing years later a commentary on this Tablet of Wisdom, sums up this key teaching in the following sentence:
| “ | all the conditions and perfections that the philosophers attribute to nature are the same as have been attributed to the Primal Will in the Holy Scriptures. |
” |
[19:30] So both ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Bahá’u’lláh take these two apparently opposing concepts, with hundreds of years of thought behind building them up as two separate domains, and they say look, there there's been a misunderstanding all along that these are two different things when in fact they're really the same thing. Nature is defined as the operation of God's will in the world. And following upon the consequences of that redefinition comes a fairly monumental redefinition of our conception of what religion is, something to do with the "essential relationships proceeding from the realities of things".
[20:16] The fourth undergirding principle is the idea that matter and spirit are not just mirror images of each other, but that whether one considers something as material or spiritual is a relative matter. There's a principle of relativity involved as to whether, in one's observation of the world, one labels something as a material or as a spiritual phenomenon. And this is put in the following terms in a talk given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:
| “ | the deniers ask in their disbelief: “Where is that world? [that spiritual world] For whatsoever hath no actual material existence is sheer imagination.” But the truth is that the world of existence is a single world, although its stations are manifold in accordance with the manifold realities of things. For instance, the world of mineral, plant, and animal existence is the same world. Despite this, the animal world in relation to the world of the vegetable is a spiritual reality and another world and abode. |
” |
[21:35] In just a few sentences ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has turned upside down what we might have thought as a very comfortable dualistic picture of the world. A world which is divided into matter and material things and processes and laws, and on the other side spirit and spiritual things and processes. And ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is offering to us here I think a different way of looking at the relationship between material and spiritual, not as two separate kinds of "substances" in the sense of metaphysical dualism, but rather as two different ways of looking at the world. And as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, if you're looking at the world from the perspective of the vegetable, then the animal kingdom -- which in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's description of things is the next rung up in the hierarchy of existence, in the chain of being -- is the "spirit". One could of course then take that principle and apply it all the way up and down the chain of being and say that to the mineral the vegetable is the spirit, to the animal the human is the spirit, and to the mortal human there is a still higher degree which we identify as the spirit of faith, the realm of those who are spiritually reborn, but which is not really in a different world. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says in the same quotation there is only one world of existence. So how we label it depends upon the perspective that we see it through.
[23:16] The fifth undergirding principle that bears directly on the principle of the unity of science and religion is also an idea in the Bahá’í writings of the nature of what we call "divine revelation" -- comprising those words that are accorded a special kind of veneration that are brought together in holy texts and lovingly transmitted from one generation to the next. The idea that Bahá’u’lláh expresses, one of the central ideas of his Book of Certitude, one of the earlier and most important works that he wrote, is that the nature of divine revelation has often been misinterpreted by its readers -- and by its sympathetic readers, not by the ones trying to disprove it but by those very readers that hold it in the highest veneration -- who have tended to misread it and misinterpret it by considering the surface of it and not looking at the deeper realities that lie behind it. Because the revealed word fundamentally has a symbolic nature and ultimately should not be interpreted in a literal manner; and it is very often the literal interpretation of scripture, particularly miracle stories, that leads to this perception of the conflict between science and religion today. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá puts this again in one of his talks in the United States in the following words:
| “ | holding to literal interpretation and visible fulfillment of the text of the Holy Books is simply imitation of ancestral forms and beliefs; for when we perceive the reality of Christ, these texts and statements become clear and perfectly reconcilable with each other. Unless we perceive reality, we cannot understand the meanings of the Holy Books, for these meanings are symbolical and spiritual—such as, for instance, the raising of Lazarus, which has spiritual interpretation. |
” |
[25:31] So I've just offered five principles found in the Bahá’í faith that collectively help to redefine our understanding of religion, of spirit and matter, and of the relationship between them. This principle of religion as essential relationships. The principle of correspondence -- "as above, so below" according to the Hermetic formula -- and the repetition of patterns. The principle of the equation of nature with God's will. The principle of the relativity of spirit and matter. And the principle of the symbolic nature of the revealed word and the necessity for its non-literal interpretation.
[26:19] I want to go further into this topic and discuss next several common features of what the Bahá’í writings describe as true science and true religions, beyond these principles that I've just mentioned. Common features, more in the sense of common approach and common way of looking at them. The first -- it occurred to me as we were listening to this beautiful introductory quotation that was read just a few minutes ago -- is this whole idea of science being a kind of divine bestowal. That there's something supernatural almost, although we know we don't literally mean supernatural, but there's something almost supernatural about scientific power and reasoning, the kind of power it gives us in the world. And this divinization, this sacralization of science and the scientific method puts it on I think a more even footing with what we think of more typically as spiritual pursuits and spiritual things. A second point is that the common epistemology that is shared, and by epistemology I mean a common approach to reality, and again in all of these I'm talking about what the Bahá’í writings define as true science and true religion and not the the blind imitation and superstition that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá excoriated in the opening quotation that I read from Paris Talks. This idea of the common epistemology or that there is for followers of true religion a kind of a scientific posture, a posture of observing and examining everything with a searching eye. A posture of being wary of arguments from authority, and being willing, indeed responsible for investigating the truth of things independently and for one's own. This idea is briefly stated by Shoghi Effendi in one of his letters to the high commissioner of Palestine in 1933:
| “ | The Revelation proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, His followers believe, is divine in origin, all-embracing in scope, broad in its outlook, scientific in its method... |
” |
[29:00] And in one of Bahá’u’lláh's tablets, the Words of Wisdom, he says:
| “ | The essence of all that We have revealed for thee is Justice, is for man to free himself from idle fancy and imitation, discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork, and look into all things with a searching eye. |
” |
[29:22] So there's a common posture of seeking reality and of searching into things and a willingness to question received authorities, particularly received religious authorities which true religion shares with true science. A third commonality is this common conception of both religion and science that ultimately the universe constitutes an ordered system, that there is something undergirding things which can be described as order or even reason. The word from the ancient Greek which is sometimes translated into the concept of order is logos [λόγος], which also can be translated as word, which is the the opening phrase of the Gospel of John, "in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." This "word" that was there in the beginning according to the Gospel of John, this "logos", could also be translated as a kind of ordering principle. There's something that orders the world that was there from the beginning. Bahá’u’lláh puts this very beautifully in a passage in the Gleanings which is one of the central works of extracts of His writings compiled and translated by Shoghi Effendi, Bahá’u’lláh's great-grandson. In this brief passage Bahá’u’lláh says:
| “ | A sprinkling from the unfathomed deep of His sovereign and all-pervasive Will hath, out of utter nothingness, called into being a creation which is infinite in its range and deathless in its duration. The wonders of His bounty can never cease, and the stream of His merciful grace can never be arrested. The process of His creation hath had no beginning, and can have no end. |
” |
[31:20] We have this idea of a Will that undergirds things, that calls things into being. The Báb, the forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, whom Bahá’ís consider a Prophet of equal stature to Bahá’u’lláh says in his mother book, the Persian Bayan, in the sixth gate of the of the third vahid of the Bayan:
| “ | God created all things by his primal will, and this primal will by Itself. |
” |
[31:56] So the Báb adds a twist to this idea of everything being generated by this ordering principle, and the twist is that the ordering principle generates itself! And there's a theological reason for this because one cannot ascribe the act of creation to the Divine Essence itself, because that would be ascribing a form of limitation to that Divine Essence, because to make God into a creator is to add attributes to that which ultimately in the end can have no attributes. At least attributes that we can comprehend. This idea of the world creating itself through this ordering principle, sounds a little like an idea in modern cosmology of the emergence of the universe through an act of self-observation [cf. the "it from bit" of John Wheeler]. Another current theory has it that the universe came into being not by the imposition of some exterior cause but rather by the spontaneous emergence of things through a vacuum fluctuation. Anyway, that was the third commonality, this idea that both in religion broadly speaking as well as in science there is an ordering principle behind things.
[33:27] The fourth, which is related to this, is the idea that everything has a cause. That there is an inviolable and unbreakable chain of causes which unites everything with everything else. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá puts this in the first chapter of "Some Answered Questions" in the following words:
| “ | Nature is that condition or reality which outwardly is the source of the life and death, or, in other words, of the composition and decomposition, of all things. This nature is subject to a sound organization, to inviolable laws, to a perfect order, and to a consummate design, from which it never departs. To such an extent is this true that were you to gaze with the eye of insight and discernment, you would observe that all things—from the smallest invisible atom to the largest globes in the world of existence, such as the sun or the other great stars and luminous bodies—are most perfectly organized, be it with regard to their order, their composition, their outward form, or their motion, and that all are subject to one universal law from which they never depart. |
” |
[34:47] The Bahá’í writings share with science the idea of an inviolable physical law of nature, which as we now know Bahá’u’lláh identifies with the will of God, so we're not taking God out of the equation, we're putting God all the way into the equation through this redefinition of nature as the divine will. A divine will which in certain aspects of it can be described using mathematical laws.
[35:25] A fifth and final area of consonance between science and religion, which should probably be a series of talks on its own and so I'm only going to mention these very briefly, is similarities in let's say top level structure between what theoretical physicists have described as being the most fundamental descriptors of the world as we understand it, and some of the most fundamental principles of true religion. And these top-level structures on the side of physics have been summarized in the book A Beautiful Question by the physicist Frank Wilczek, on page 75 of A Beautiful Question. Professor Wilczek says: "these big ideas" -- and he spends the whole book talking about them so I'm just compressing it into one sentence -- "these big ideas -- relativity, symmetry, invariance, complementarity -- form the heart of modern physics. They should be, though they are not yet, central to modern philosophy and religion." I remember when I first read this thinking huh, maybe they actually are central, at least in the Bahá’í faith, even if they're not central to modern philosophy and religion as currently understood. I can see this principle of relativity, the principles of symmetry and invariance which are two sides of the same coin, and the principle of complementarity also undergirding the Bahá’í writings in a very fundamental way. The principle of relativity has been described as the fundamental verity underlying the Bahá’í faith by Shoghi Effendi in one of his earlier letters, he says:
| “ | the fundamental verity underlying the Bahá’í Faith, that religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is not final but progressive. |
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[37:46] And the idea of symmetry or this idea of repetition of pattern is another way of describing symmetry is something which we've already mentioned, which Bahá’u’lláh again in one of his tablets, the Lawh-i-Haqqu'n-Nass, says the following, and this also should really be the topic of an entire talk on its own, but Bahá’u’lláh says this about this principle of repetition of pattern, he says:
| “ | Know thou that whatsoever can be found in this mortal world, this realm of limitation--every name and description, every form and attribute that can be seen or heard--hath, in each world of the worlds of God, manifestations and appearances corresponding to and befitting that world, and appearing with another name, another description, another form and another attribute. |
” |
[38:39] Kind of a mind-blowing idea, that there is a repetition of pattern not just between what we think of as the material and the spiritual but that every form and attribute, name and description has another name and perhaps another description repeated among all the "worlds of God". These worlds of God being realms of consciousness, as where ‘Abdu’l-Bahá talks about the realm of the plant and the realm of the mineral, the realms of the animal and the human and those realms of consciousness which lie beyond that of our own. There are repeating patterns, symmetries. And finally, complementarity: We're familiar in physics with the complementarity between particles and waves, which are different modes of describing the same thing. Bahá’u’lláh gives something like this principle of complementarity in his Tablet of Wisdom, where he says that the world of existence "came into being through the interaction between the active force and its recipient", he says these two "are the same yet they are different". There's a principle of complementarity there. And also in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's Tablet of the Universe ‘Abdu’l-Bahá expresses this principle of complementarity in a number of essential pairs in the following terms, he says:
| “ | ...earthly and heavenly, material and spiritual, accidental and essential, particular and universal, structure and foundation, appearance and reality and the essence of all things, both inward and outward – all of these are connected with one another and are interrelated in such a manner that you will find that drops are patterned after seas, and that atoms are structured after suns in proportion to their capacities and potentialities. Universal and particular are in reality incidental and relative considerations. |
” |
[40:36] What we think of as these unchangeable categories, lenses through which we see the world, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá assures us are all incidental and relative considerations. So these are all common features of true science and true religion. I gave five, the first being this idea of science as a divine bestowal, the second being this common posture of investigation, the willingness to question and to probe things, to look into everything with the searching eye. The third was the idea of an ordering principle behind things, that ordering principle itself being its own cause. The fourth was the idea of natural law as being inviolable and unchangeable, of there being an unbreakable chain that binds all causes together. And the fifth being the concepts that are found both in the realm of theoretical physics and very deeply within the Bahá’í writings as well. The principles of relativity, of symmetry and invariance, and of complementarity.
[41:49] So after all of this, and I hope that we still have time for discussion after this, I wanted to end this presentation by looking at a little bit of the flip side: I've been emphasizing how it's all the same if you look at it through the right lens, and one might be left with the impression that science and religion are not just in harmony with each other but are really the same thing, and I don't want to leave you with that impression either because there is a distinction between science and religion, just as there is a distinction between poetry and prose, and I wanted to suggest again in six different points all drawn from the Bahá’í writings ways of thinking about what that difference might be, to help us locate and zero in on what the difference between science and religion are. And the first of these, and these should go faster than the last sets of five and six points because I do want to leave time for questions.
[41:49] The first of these emerges from a reading of the Seven Valleys, which is that there's a distinction between what Bahá’u’lláh in the Seven Valleys calls the eye of distinction and the eye of unity, and I believe this also is mentioned either implicitly or explicitly in other mystical works of Bahá’u’lláh which are published in The Call of the Divine Beloved. In the Seven Valleys the eye of distinction, the eye which analyzes, the eye which sees things as separated into parts, is a particular characteristic of the first three of the seven valleys. These are different spiritual degrees and stations that the seeker traverses in their infinite journey to the creator, and in the early stages Bahá’u’lláh describes the seeker as traversing realms in which the law of distinction is predominant, the lens of distinction perhaps, is predominant, that one typically sees things as contrasting with one another. And one passes from this eye of distinction to the eye of unity in the fourth valley, and the remainder of the seven valleys are all traversed through this eye of unity, which emphasizes more the synthesis of things, sees things more as as wholes, sees holistically, passes from dualities and dualisms to monisms; passes from the idea of matter and spirit for example being two different things to the idea that it depends on your perspective; passes from statements like "this prophet and that prophet are saying different and contradictory things", and advances to a way of looking at the world in which one sees the harmony behind the apparent differences.
[45:08] The second distinction in the Bahá’í writings is the distinction between, the Arabic words here are 'ilm and 'irfan, which can be translated as knowledge for 'ilm and for 'irfan perhaps something like intuition or insight, and this pairing is found not just in the Bahá’í writings but in Islamic philosophy and particularly Sufism. The idea that there is a distinction between these two different modes of knowing, the mode of knowing of 'ilm being like the knowledge one gets of fire by reading about it in a book, versus the knowing of 'irfan, which is the experiential knowledge that one gets from touching and being burned by the flame. Both of them are knowledge, both of them are ways of knowing the flame, but how vastly different one is from the other.
[46:06] The third distinction or differentiator is between the notion of encompassing versus reflecting. One finds in various places in the Bahá’í writings, and I'm omitting the supporting quotations at this point for the sake of getting to the end, one finds the idea of encompassing as fundamentally defining the activity of the intellect, the activity of the human understanding at an earthly level, the the power of 'ilm as being this power of encompassing. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says that we understand things because our realities are able to surround those things, they encompass those things and because they're able to surround them they comprehend them in all their parts and they understand them. And this is contrasted with the power of reflection which is like the reflection of the sun in the mirror. And the difference between encompassing and reflection, both of them comprehend the thing that they are contemplating, but the power of reflection is able to reflect something which is infinitely greater than itself. The mirror of the heart can reflect the infinitude of the sun and capture perfectly its disk and its brightness without encompassing its reality. And there I think lies I believe some key to understanding the difference between 'ilm and 'irfan.
[47:41] The fourth is what we could call the principle of "verticality". To try to state it briefly, it is that we human beings, and everything in the universe, exist on a journey which is proceeding from the One and returning to the One. And this journey as it proceeds from and returns to the same One, ultimately forms a circle, it's the circle of existence. The circle comprises arcs, arcs of descent and arcs of ascent. And what part of that you define as being the arc of descent and what part the arc of ascent is entirely dependent on where along that circle you are. So we being human beings like to put ourselves at the center of things and so we see ourselves as being in this special position exactly halfway, between the arc of descent and the arc of ascent.
[48:52] And what we consider spiritual or physical, how we look at the world, depends on our orientation with regard to that circle of existence. We are, like it or not, whether we admit it to ourselves or not, whether we realize it or not, passing both from and to our ultimate goal. Now, the overall direction of motion along the circle of existence is out of our hands. We have the choice of ignoring this and focusing instead on our present degree of existence and those which precede us. And therein lies the difference between a materialistic mindset and a spiritual mindset. A materialistic mindset which focuses on the things which are in our own degree or "behind us" on the arc of descent, and the spiritual mindset seeing the things that are "ahead of us", representing higher degrees and states of consciousness. This is not to assign an absolute moral value to one versus the other, because after all we have to take care of material things to sustain our material existence! But at the same time, in the grand scheme of things, the moral arc of the universe is bending in the forward direction, the direction which leads to ever-increasing circles of unity and, ultimately, in the return to the One.
[50:15] Let me wrap this up and reiterate that if we stay within the received definitions of religion and God and spirit and revelation, then there is indeed a contradiction between them to which I at least cannot see a resolution. But if we look at how the Bahá’í writings redefine these theological categories, we find instead that there is a kind of complementarity between materiality and spirituality, almost as though religion and science are complementary systems of knowledge and practice. Complementary in the sense that one of them represents the horizontal direction and one of them represents the vertical direction. The horizontal being the physical, the physical world which extends outwards infinitely in space and in time, there's an infinite number of things to know and explore within the reaches of this infinitely stretching plane, this plane of the physical world that includes all the stations and degrees that have gone before us on the arc of descent.
[51:42] But that's not all there is to the world, there's also the vertical dimension. It's that verticality which differentiates the spiritual from the physical, even though they both occupy the same "three-dimensional" world. It's just that it's divided into these different directions into which one can focus one's life and one's actions. And so we might end with the idea that the mindset of the "true" religious person can be thought of as the application of the scientific method to matters of the spirit, to matters vertical as well as matters horizontal.
[52:33] So let me stop there and and open it up for for questions and thoughts, and as the questions come and as the conversation continues I'll be gradually cutting and pasting these quotations into the chat box so that you don't need to chase them down yourself. That might fill up the chat box and distract it from the questions but I'm not sure if there's a better way to do this, but let me know.
[53:01] [Host 1] I just wanted to thank you again so much for your talk, it was really interesting. I mean I really like the part where you talk about like the commonalities between science and religion, like how the universe generates itself and that that could be like the Will of God. It's just interesting how like religion is also a source of scientific thought and like powers. So now we have our Q&A portion so if you have a question you can either write it in the chat and I'll read it out or you can use the zoom raise hand function which you can find at the bottom of your screen, you click participants and then it's a raise hand button in blue.
[53:40] So we have a question in the chat from Erwin, he says: "Please comment on the idea that the kingdoms of creation, mineral, vegetable, animal, human, manifestation are not limited to our planet."
[53:51] [Dr. Phelps] Yes, that's a really interesting question because there are only a few places in the Bahá’í writings that I'm aware of where they seem to make a statement that has a direct scientific consequence. Most can be interpreted in some spiritual way or other that isn't necessarily saying something about the physical world, but there's something that Bahá’u’lláh says which is hard to interpret any other way: "know thou that every fixed star hath its planets, and every planet hath its creatures, whose number no man can compute." And a number of people asked ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's ministry what is meant by this and in a few places he explains further that by creatures is meant beings capable of knowing and and loving God. So that's an example of an idea in the Bahá’í writings which I think has direct scientific consequence, and that is that the universe is filled with life. Almost as if the universe wants to be alive. It wants to wake up, it's in the process of waking up and becoming conscious everywhere. It might be doing it at a different pace in different planets. Certain planets may remain cold and dark or hot and boiling for their entire existence and the conditions for the emergence of complex life like on this planet may never emerge. But that doesn't mean that they aren't part of this chain of being that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá describes, within which even the plants, even the rocks are part of this process of unfolding consciousness. It might sound counterintuitive and strange to say that rocks have spirit, but ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says exactly that, he says even the mineral has spirit in its own degree. That spirit is a spirit of attraction, of cohesion that makes the rock hold together and not be a gas or a liquid. So ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's concept of spirit is one which extends all the way down the chain of being, so to speak. And it's partly within that perspective that we look out into the universe and we see it as being filled with life. And we see also that the universe wants to wake up and it wants to consummate the circle of existence, it wants to return to the creator. And the way the universe returns to its creator is by conscious awareness, as in how our awareness of the divine reality within us can be thought of as completing that circle of existence. That being the case, we would expect the the process of evolution as it unfolds throughout the universe on other planets, other galaxies and so forth, would eventually lead to the emergence of intelligence at least equal to our own if not surpassing our own. The universe must be filled with life, not just oceans of alien bacteria but complex, intelligent life, life that is also asking where it came from and where it's going. That of course says nothing in particular of course about life visiting this planet, which I believe is unlikely given the lack of evidence. But the existence of intelligent life in the universe with which we may someday come into contact, or perhaps communicate with thousands of years before we make physical contact, is I think highly likely.
[57:53] [Host 1] Now we have a question from Bobac[?] so I'm going to unmute you now.
[58:08] [Audience member 1] First of all thanks for your insightful talk. You said that science and religion share similar epistemology. So my question goes like this: in science, science consists of systematic search of truth with the power of observation and reason, like experiment and rationality. Whereas in religion there are many propositions whose truth are God given, are given to to us, like the propositions in morality. So we know that backbiting is not right, that's a true proposition, we cannot question. So do you see any conflict in this point of view?
[59:04] [Dr. Phelps] I don't see a conflict because the "givens" of religion, from my understanding of the Bahá’í writings, are not intended to be accepted without question by us. They're intended to be put into practice and their validity determined by applying them in the world. Bahá’u’lláh gives the example of, he describes himself not as the giver of unquestionable truth, but as the Divine Physician. In one of his most famous passages, he says I'm the Divine Physician, I have my finger on the pulse of mankind, of humanity, I perceive its sickness and I prescribe the cure, and that perspective invites us to look at the role of the Manifestation as like a doctor who comes and says I have this cure for you. Well how do you know whether the doctor is true or not? Well you apply the cure, and if the cure does what it says then you know that the doctor is true... In that sense I think the the two are quite consistent with each other. At the same time, as I stated, I didn't want to leave with the impression that the two are totally equivalent to each other. The insight that the Prophets bring, the insight into the interrelationships that proceed from the realities of things, though they flow as consequences of reality in a similar sense that the laws of physics flow from the consequences of the interactions of atoms, in that sense it's "scientific", they are not arbitrarily saying do x, y and z because I said so. They're saying do x, y and z because it is ultimately in accordance with the structure of things. The prophet would say to us, though you may be unaware of the structure of things and unable of yourselves to unfold all of the intricacies of that structure, I am coming at you from a position of greater awareness of those interrelationships, and the reason you can trust me is because when you try out these principles, when you apply them in your lives, they work.
[1:01:53] [Audience member 1] Thank you. Thanks.
[1:01:59] [Host 1] So now we have a question from Valerie so I'm going to unmute you now.
[1:02:07] [Audience member 2] Thank you, oh god I have so many questions, maybe I can ask one or two of them but the first one is I would love to hear your understanding of God as a physicist, as well as a Bahá’í.
[1:02:36] [Dr. Phelps] Great question, a long question, would require a whole talk I suppose, but to try to sum up how I personally have come to understand and see God it is ultimately as a reality beyond being. I focus on, when I read the Bahá’í writings about God what catches my attention most are statements such as God's names and attributes are beyond all comprehension. Among the names and attributes of God are God's oneness, God's existence. To say something "exists" is to attribute something to that thing. If God, if the essence of the Divine, is truly beyond all names and attributes, as the Bahá’í writings emphasize repeatedly, then that reality has to be beyond oneness itself, and beyond being itself, and beyond existence itself. Which means there's nothing we can do, I mean we're stopped, we're halted at the end of our search by this, as Bahá’u’lláh says, by his words: "thou shalt never know me". And Bahá’u’lláh uses this metaphor of "the tree beyond which there is no passing", the Sadratu’l-Muntahá, this phrase which is sometimes found in the Bahá’í writings. Well what is that? It is said that in the deserts of Arabia sometimes a tree would mark the end of the road, and beyond that there is no more road, it ends at that point and if you proceed beyond that you're going to get lost in the trackless desert, because there's nothing to distinguish one direction from the other. And I think that's how I think of the concept of God. At a level of approximation, one can think about and relate to God as a "being" with which one has a prayerful conversation, with which one is in a personal relationship, but that sense of God is, I believe, fulfilled by the relationship that we have with the Prophet of God, with the Manifestation of God. When we're talking about the "Essence" of God there is nothing in fact that can be said about it, there is only only the trackless desert, the the mist of unknowing.
[1:05:18] [Audience member 2] Thank you, would it be terrible if I asked my second question?
[1:05:23] [Dr. Phelps] Go right ahead.
[1:05:25] [Audience member 2] So scientists are really trying very hard to understand dark matter and I'm wondering if you have your own sense of what that is?
[1:05:40] [Dr. Phelps] No one has a clue, it's a bit of an embarrassment actually! You have this substance which supposedly comprises the majority of the matter content of the universe, and not a clue what it is. And it gets better: there is a cosmic pie chart [2] where we think that a couple percent of the universe is matter, luminous matter, or matter made of atoms and protons and neutrons like we know, and then this bigger chunk of it, 30% or so, is dark matter, and then an even bigger chunk is dark energy, and even less clue about what dark energy is. We have a model in which 95% of the content of the universe scientifically describable as having some mass energy equivalence, nevertheless there are no theories that the community has been able to rally around even to say this is the most likely thing. There are dozens of standing theories as to what dark matter comprises. People will spend their entire careers, and thank God they are, just eliminating certain of the possibilities. Imagine spending your career building a detector which might sit at the bottom of some god-forsaken mine, to show in the end that nope, nothing was detected. Now that is actually a significant advance for science! Some people have to do this because otherwise there are a hundred possibilities, and the only way to go forward is to start eliminating the possibilities one by one, finding some way of constructing some experiment that could differentiate between whether that thing is there or not. My hope was higher, when I was actively doing cosmology 20 years ago, that at some point in my lifetime we would crack this, and find out what what dark matter really was. But as far as the reading I've been doing, which is from the outside looking in nowadays, articles in the press and so forth, it doesn't strike me that anyone is really any closer to it now than they were 20 years ago or 40 years ago.
[1:08:22] [Audience member 2] Thank you.
[1:08:25] [Host 1] So now we have a question from Liz in the chat, and she says one of the things that has helped me become more accepting of various approaches to God is something you speak of in the summer school talks, it makes it easier to teach the faith when we can accept that there are multiple approaches and that is okay.
[1:08:44] [Dr. Phelps] Thank you, yeah this idea of relativity of religious truth I think is so fundamental to my understanding of the Bahá’í faith, and it goes far beyond just the idea that religion is progressive and evolutionary, which it is, but the idea that religious truth is relative allows us to accept, embrace and validate a whole range of approaches to these questions. You know for example the question of the nature of God, I mean some people will naturally gravitate to thinking about God in impersonal terms, and others naturally gravitate to thinking about God in personal terms, there is space for both ways of thinking. One doesn't have to say oh this one is right and that one is wrong. I think that's one of the incredible strengths of the Bahá’í teachings and which it has to have if it's going to fulfill its promise to unite the religions of the world. It's not going to do it by creating a master doctrine that everyone on the planet is eventually going to sign on to and say yes, I believe the following elements of this master doctrine. I don't think personally that that's how this thing is gonna unfold. I think instead it's going to be more like a meta-religion, it's going to be a meta-perspective, a big umbrella, within which, in accordance with the principle of the relativity of religious truth, these various approaches, these various pathways towards the divine, some of which may even look secular to us, others which may look even atheistic or non-theistic to us, but nevertheless have a valid spirituality of their own, all of these are going to find a place in the spiritualized humanity of the future.
[1:10:35] [Host 1] We now have a question from Shapiro[?] so I'm going to unmute you now.
[1:10:44] [Audience member 3] Alláh-u-Abhá. Thank you for your talk Steven and the effort that you're making. I wanted to ask you in the context of the first question that was asked, in a lot of the Bahá’í writings Bahá’u’lláh refers to the heavens and the 'aradin' (the two earths), do you think as a scientist and somebody who has a better insight in these things than I do, that within this cycle of the Bahá’í faith, mankind will be inhabiting two planets?
[1:11:24] [Dr. Phelps] Well I think mankind could eventually inhabit millions of planets! The Báb goes further than "the heavens and the earths", he usually adds the additional phrase wa ma baynahumaa, or the heavens and the earth and that which lieth between them. One finds this often in the prayers of the Báb: whenever you see the phrase, "and whatever lieth between them", you know you're reading a prayer of the Báb's! So anyway there's an idea of infinite plenitude of life and consciousness being scattered throughout the universe, wherever it's possible to emerge it's going to emerge. Why would it be limited to one planet or two? Why not three or four or a million? I think and hope that our destiny ultimately is to scatter our life and consciousness to the stars, that's the only way that we will outlast the inevitable death and decline of our own star, of our own sun which we know has a finite amount of nuclear fuel, and has a set lifespan.
At the same time, it raises the point that everything lives, has its time, and dies. Everything on this planet, every human life, and as we read ‘Abdu’l-Bahá talk about universal cycles -- chapter 40 or 41 in Some Answered Questions -- he says there are universal cycles on the level of civilizations as well, which are born and have their time and they die and no trace remains, and another cycle begins. If we apply that principle to the planetary level, perhaps we won't go to the stars after all. Perhaps some astrophysical event will wipe out life on the planet before we manage to go to Mars or establish colonies on the moon or what have you. Suppose the sun has some kind of eruption or goes nova at the end of its life cycle and all life in the solar system is snuffed out. The question then arises, what was the point of it all if our civilization and if life on this planet has an ultimate endpoint? Is that actually a problem theologically speaking? And if it's not a problem for human life to pass away and be replaced by the next form of life, if it's not a problem for a civilization to end without a trace, and for another civilization to come along after it, then why would it be a problem for us to imagine that life on this planet may have an endpoint? Particularly if we believe that the whole universe is filled with life and consciousness. If that is the case -- I'm not sure that it is, this is just rampant speculation -- but if that is the case then it would I think lead us more to... it would be a pretty profound insight in the sense that the purpose of creation, the whole point of it all, would then be located now, here, in this moment, rather than say in some "golden age" that we may attain a thousand years from now, or the next thing that's going to happen after that. It comes down to where we locate the purpose of existence and where that purpose of existence is being served and where it's unfolding, it becomes the here and now. I can't immediately think of a more profound shift in consciousness than something like that.
[1:15:16] [Audience member 3] Thank you.
[1:15:20] [Host 1] Our next question comes from Bella and Nathan in the chat, and they ask do you have thoughts on Douglas Hofstadter's writings on strange loops? Some of the quotes you read reminded me of that, for example logos creating itself. I previously thought all his examples involve something like a misperception or illusion, but your quotes make me think maybe there's more to it.
[1:15:40] [Dr. Phelps] Yeah, I can't comment on strange loops in particular, is this in Gödel, Escher, Bach? I read it in high school, and I can't remember the details of it, but certainly the idea of there being self-generation... Perhaps related to this is an idea expressed by John Wheeler in I think the 1960s or 70s, he was the originator of the idea of black holes, but he also had this idea of the universe coming to being through this recursive act of self-observation which he called "it from bit". This idea, which was expressed in mathematical terms, for which there's no direct evidence but it remains a potentially valid scientific theory of the origins of things, strikes me as not at all incompatible with the Báb's mention of the Primal Will being self-created. Could not the universe be self-created in that same sense? If, quantum mechanically, a system has to be "observed" to resolve into one of the infinite possibilities that it represents, then what "observed" the universe? One I suppose has two logical possibilities, although maybe it's a false dichotomy, one would be it's "observed" by "something on the outside", which may be a traditional theological conception of some God outside space and time that makes it all happen. But the other logical possibility is that the observation happened "within", it was recursive act of self-observation, which strikes me... this may be a bit of a tangent, but it strikes me as not all that far away from something that the Báb said, quoted by Nader Saiedi in Gate of the Heart where the Báb talks about the soul, he says the soul is, and this is a paraphrase of the quotation in Gate of the Heart, he says that the soul is a mode of the divine self-remembrance. We think of the soul as being some separate fragment of reality that's floating separately from other souls and from God and it's in the universe somehow, as a thing among things. But the Báb describes the soul in truly mind-bending terms, as as a mode of the divine self-remembrance. In that sense it's not separate from reality itself, it's a fragment of the consciousness of the divine. And in that sense our knowledge of ourselves is equivalent to the knowledge of God (that's one of the Islamic hadith, "he who hath known himself hath known his Lord"). And through that act of self-observation, through that act of self-awareness or self-consciousness, one recapitulates in microcosmic terms the creation of the universe on macrocosmic terms. One participates in the creation event by becoming self-aware. Anyway that's a bit of a rabbit hole so maybe we'll stop there.
[1:18:51] [Host 1] So I think this last one from the chat is going to be our last question in the interest of time. Komron[?] asks, please comment on God being immanent in nature and the Bahá’í perspective that while God is present in nature but is beyond that. Bahá’í writings have abundance of examples about elements of natural world and relating them to spiritual principles, please elaborate on the Bahá’í perspective.
[1:19:13] [Dr. Phelps] Right, the question of is God "immanent", or is God "transcendent". It's one of the most fundamental theological categories. We'd like it to be a meaningful question to ask, is God within all things, or is he outside and beyond and transcendent. And I believe the answer for all of these dichotomies that we think of as fundamental, is that every dichotomy breaks down at some point. This particular dichotomy is broken down in a verse of the Qur'án, "we will show them our signs on the horizons and within their own selves". The afaq is the the horizons and the anfus is the selves or souls. And God's signs are supposed to be found within both of those. So the idea is not original to the Bahá’í writings but goes back centuries if not millennia, that the signs and evidences of the divine are to be found equally in the world "beyond" as they are in the world "within". We don't have to choose between them, we don't have to say it's one or the other, we don't have to say whether pantheism is more true than traditional theism, or deism. This is actually a point made by Bahá’u’lláh in his tablet to Mánikc͟hí Ṣáḥib, his Zoroastrian friend from Baghdad days who wrote to Bahá’u’lláh nine different questions and Bahá’u’lláh's answers are found in two different tablets that are published in The Tabernacle of Unity. In the longer of these tablets Bahá’u’lláh quotes the entire text of the questions and answers them, and that's how we know what the questions were. The particular question of Bahá’u’lláh's friend was about there being four different schools of thought, or four different ways of thinking about the relationship between God and creation, and Mánikc͟hí Ṣáḥib lists the four different schools which can be very simply translated in modern terms as 1) theism, God being basically outside the universe, created the universe at some point, sends Prophets every now and then. 2) Pantheism, God is within all things, immanent within the world. 3) Deism, that God created the world and then stepped back and is no longer actively involved. And then 4) atheism or agnosticism is well, who knows, basically. There's cycles of growth and death and the Prophets and the Kings say this and that but really they're just trying to maintain order in the world. So those are the four options which Mánikc͟hí Ṣáḥib poses to Bahá’u’lláh and he asks which of these is true? And Bahá’u’lláh doesn't say, well, option A. He says "be anxiously concerned with the needs of the day in which ye live and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements". He asks Mánikc͟hí Ṣáḥib to be pragmatic and to go with what works! And this is all in line with Bahá’u’lláh's own imagery in that same tablet of himself as the Divine Physician. But he continues on and gives a multi-level answer to that particular question. And in the end he says one can provide a justification for each of these four schools of thought. Because each of them is representative in some way of the truth. So that's a paraphrase of Bahá’u’lláh's answer, but he doesn't exclude one of these ways of thinking, and only affirm another way of thinking. He very typically, and this is not the only place it happens, Bahá’u’lláh very typically when confronted with these dividing questions, that attempts to divide truth from error in some theological way, Bahá’u’lláh very typically answers that it's a little of both, depending on your perspective, and please don't fight about it!
[1:23:30] [Host 1] Thank you so much again for your talk, it was so interesting. I think everyone enjoyed it, there were so many great questions. So now I'm going to introduce our speaker for next week our speaker is going to be Dr. Farzam Kamalabadi and his topic will be why do Bahá’ís believe the promise day has come? And again these talks occur every Saturday at noon eastern daylight time so please invite your friends and family. If you'd like to be on the weekly mailing list for these events please reach out to the email that we put in the chat below, and now we're just going to close with a closing prayer.
[1:24:05] [Dr. Phelps] Let me just interject, if you wanted the quotations that I was using I can easily cut and paste them into a document and share them with the organizers and you can find a way to share with others who request it. I didn't get a chance to paste it into the chat box.
[1:24:25] [Closing prayer] Glory be to Thee, O my God! Thou hearest Thine ardent lovers lamenting in their separation from Thee, and such as have recognized Thee wailing because of their remoteness from Thy presence. Open Thou outwardly to their faces, O my Lord, the gates of Thy grace, that they may enter them by Thy leave and in conformity with Thy will, and may stand before the throne of Thy majesty, and catch the accents of Thy voice, and be illumined with the splendors of the light of Thy face.
Potent art Thou to do what pleaseth Thee. None can withstand the power of Thy sovereign might. From everlasting Thou wert alone, with none to equal Thee, and wilt unto everlasting remain far above all thought and every description of Thee. Have mercy, then, upon Thy servants by Thy grace and bounty, and suffer them not to be kept back from the shores of the ocean of Thy nearness. If Thou abandonest them, who is there to befriend them; and if Thou puttest them far from Thee, who is he that can favor them? They have none other Lord beside Thee, none to adore except Thyself. Deal Thou generously with them by Thy bountiful grace.
Thou, in truth, art the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Compassionate. -Bahá’u’lláh
[1:25:50] [Host 1] Have a great week everyone, see you next saturday.
