Reviewing letters from the National Spiritual Assembly from the past few years

I was recently asked to study letters from American National Spiritual Assembly that touched on the the issue of racism and justice. Among these was a letter from February 25, 2017.  This post includes notes I took to record my thoughts as I studied that letter and some other letters from 2018 and 2019.

The American NSA starts the letter by saying there are two key areas where Baha’is can/should contribute most: 1) “affirm the true of the oneness of humanity” and 2) "remove the stains of prejudice and injustice from the fabric of our society."

So far, research on anti-racism efforts has confirmed that cooperative efforts between people of different groups helps diminish their prejudice.  More broadly, if people will establish and sustain lasting connections in their personal or work relationships with persons of different backgrounds, their prejudices against persons of those backgrounds will (generally speaking, as a rule) tend to decrease.  The mechanism for this is probably some enhancement of empathy and love for individuals of the “outsider" group tends to influence a broader perspective that is less prejudiced against all persons of that group. We’ve known about this since the late 1950s, and it's been replicated many times. The emphasis on “oneness of humanity” will therefore work, if it is built around helping people establish collaborative or affective relationships with persons of other backgrounds.

The other method for diminishing prejudice came after the technology of measuring implicit racism by studying differences in reaction times between identifying matches or mis-matches between words and images. Reactions tend to be quicker when preferred group images or words were paired with positive words or images and oppressed group images or words were paired with negative words or images. These measures of “implicit bias” revealed in a quantitative way how brains found it easier to associate African-American faces or names with negative words or images. The technology that seems to work against this (in addition to the old standard of establishing collaborative and affective relationships with persons from the oppressed group) is a sort of hybrid mindfulness and cognitive-behavioral therapy.  Persons must become mindful of prejudicial thoughts, and learn to monitor their own thinking to detect prejudicial assumptions or thoughts or fears, and then learn to replace such prejudicial thoughts with correct non-prejudicial thoughts in a matter-of-fact and non-fearful or guilty manner. That is, if people are horrified or ashamed to recognize their prejudicial thoughts or feelings, it becomes more difficult to diminish those intrusive thoughts.  People have to be accepting of their “racism" as a natural consequence of living in our society, and simply commit to working at replacing the racist thoughts with corrected non-racist thinking, recognizing that this is a project that will take time and effort and constant vigilance, but that it’s something everyone has to do, because the racist narratives in our society that produce these intrusive racist assumptions in our minds infect everyone (not just European-Americans or persons comfortable in their racist prejudices). 

Since the "fabric of our society” includes the mental habits of Americans, the NSA may also be calling for this sort of anti-racist cognitive work among the Baha’is.  

Beyond the problems of racist thinking or prejudices in the minds of individuals, we also have policies and behaviors that perpetuate oppression, and it’s likely that the NSA is also referring to these institutionalized racism aspects of American society when they refer to “stains" on the fabric of our society. Policies and laws that perpetuate inequality or oppression are more often solved by political practice (but not necessarily partisan practice, of course, although our popular culture and media tend to depict political practice as partisan, although it need not be, and in fact often isn’t).

The NSA uses the metaphor of a medical disorder to describe problems in American society. The symptoms (manifestations) of this disorder are, according to them:

1. Rampant materialism
2. Widespread moral decay
3. Deeply ingrained racial prejudice 

Those are rhetorically good points to make. I doubt the second point is technically true, or quite what the NSA (or the UHJ) think it is, but moral depravity is widespread, and a problem, so I don’t make much of a fuss about whether it's increasing or decreasing or steady (I doubt it’s increasing much).

Materialistic philosophy, and the dominance of the physicalist paradigm in popular culture and academic culture (including scientific culture) certainly feeds some of the nihilism, and the consequent emphasis on climbing the unending “hedonic ladder” trying to accumulate more and better stuff hoping it will enhance one's mood, or in contrast, despairing that life is pointless or without moral significance, and therefore we can make up anything we like to guide us. The NSA chose to blame “materialism” rather than “capitalism" because, I suppose, the toxic sort of capitalism that dominates our society and devalues life and spiritual qualities is itself a manifestation of the materialism at its root. We Baha’is are in some sense (a very limited sense) reactionary “paleo conservative” in our critique of society, because the emphasis on material development, economic growth, and the flourishing of consumer culture is something we do not favor (or oppose—we're essentially neutral to such things), while both the traditional liberal/radicals and conservative/libertarians in America take these things to be the highest good and the greatest aim of all their policies. In voicing our opposition to materialism (and as a consequence, objecting to some of the fundamental values of American economic conservatism, liberalism, and socialism) Baha’is are in a group with the paleo-conservatives, Greens, Christian socialists, and others who suggest that having more free time for sharing good experiences with family and friends, pursuing recreation and hobbies, improving the quality of our relationships to other people or the natural environment, connecting with others in more meaningful and supportive ways, or cultivating the mind or soul should be the aim of our policies and values, rather than economic growth or military power or higher levels of purchasing power, or whatever the dominant ideologies are extolling as the ultimate ends or the most effective means for achieving human happiness.

The third point is correct, I think. However, one must be a little cautious about it.  Back in the days of Abdu’l-Baha some Baha'is and friends of the Baha’i Community (such as Alaine Locke, a Baha’i, and W. E. B. DuBois, a friend of the Baha’is who attended some Baha’i events and published essays in Baha’i publications) were aware that the Baha’i Faith identified racial prejudice as a foundational problem in American society. This was even more true in the days of Shoghi Effendi, who was rather more explicit and vocal about America’s racism being one of our fundamental or central problems. In those days, the Baha’is stood apart from most other elements of society in our emphasis on racism as a problem (I think the Father Divine cult-like movement and the American Communist Party were two of the other groups framing racism as a problem in those days). So, up until recently, when Baha’is continued to say what we have been saying since the 1910s about American racism, no one could hear that message and think the Baha’is had jumped on some sort of bandwagon about racism.  In the past fifty years, however, anti-racist work and political action exploded, and the voices joined in emphasizing the problem of racism have included diverse opinions and perspectives, including some unsavory ones. Among Americans who are skeptical about anti-racist work there are of course the 10% to 20% who are traditional straight-out racists who openly believe in the idea that humanity is not one and African-Americans (or mixed-race, or American Indians, or whatever) are inferior. There are also a greater number (perhaps 25% to 33%) who do agree that humanity is one, but generally are skeptical of anti-racists because much of the anti-racist movement has become associated (in their minds, at least) with many other things, and some of those other things seem repugnant to this group of a quarter-to-a-third of the population that is not blatantly racist, but is cautious or opposed to some anti-racist work. To simplify too much, these are the people who don’t like David Duke, but voted for Trump. They know that sometimes people who call out racism are just virtue-signaling. They see that sometimes accusations of racism are just used to bully people and shut down a discussion. They are concerned that efforts to make our language less supportive of racism and prejudices are sometimes exerted in ways that are disrespectful or hurtful or ridiculous (“thought-police” and absurd “political correctness”). They point out that one can have principled opposition to affirmative reaction without being racist, and measures of racial prejudice that include opposition to affirmative action as measures of “bias” are unfair to those who have principled reasons, lumping them together with the people who oppose affirmative action simply because “it hurts whites and helps blacks”. That is to say, there is overlap between some conservative policy views and racist views, and to the extent that liberal or radical anti-racists are willing to perceive those areas of overlap as a manifestation of racism, they are failing to distinguish between ignorant racism and well-informed and principled conservative premises and values that are not racist, but lead to the same position. 

If we already have 30%-40% of the population firmly in agreement that racism is a fundamental problem, then we need to mainly work on the undecideds and the 25% to 33% who agree that humanity is one, but don't see the necessity for prioritizing anti-racism work. We may also need to work on trying to convert some of those 10% hard-core old fashioned racists, but that’s not my priority, because that’s an inefficient use of efforts.

But anyway, I agree that materialism is one of the central problems.  It is the root of nihilism (and the moral depravity that is fairly common in personal behavior and political policies and practice). Materialism guides our resistance to making necessary changes to prevent climate catastrophe. Materialism guides our inability to eliminate extremes of poverty. Materialism infects human relationships and diminishes the quality of friendships and family relations. Materialism supports the acceptance of people devoting so much time to frivolous pursuits and clownish rejection of idealism and sincerity, in a celebration of irony and cynicism. 

Likewise racism is one of the central problems. American racism with its specific dynamic of putting down African-Americans and other persons who aren’t identified with the hegemonic European-American majority causes health problems on a massive scale, and deprives African-Americans (on average) of several years of life and good health. To the extent that European-Americans gain advantages from it, it deprives them of moral innocence in all their successes, and diminishes the quality of their triumphs and accomplishments. The high levels of violent crime in America are rooted in racism.  The mass incarceration of Americans is rooted in racism.  The gross inequalities in wealth (and to a lesser extent, in income) are rooted in racism.  Our failure to live up to our ideals of being an efficient meritocracy where the virtue and ability of people corresponds to their life satisfaction, emotional security, and material comfort is rooted in racism. More broadly, the American racism that manifests in American fear or contempt for persons who come from lands beyond our borders may cause untold human misery in the long-run as we fail to promote good government and education and health care systems around the world, and fail to cooperate to maintain a peaceful world order and adjust our lives to avoid a climate disaster. 

The NSA says that we are all suffer from the effects of the maladies.  Yes. And that is the realization that makes the mindfulness/cognitive-behavioral approach to intrusive prejudicial thoughts work; people need to realize that every individual is responsible for their little part of the wide problem, but that doesn't mean each person should feel especially guilty or ashamed, because the problem is pervasive and nearly universal, and rooted in society and culture and history, so no single person can or should take responsibility (or blame or guilt) for the whole toxic thing, we each have the responsibility to do our little part to make ourselves and the world close to us a bit better.

According to the NSA's letter, the response to the challenge “lies in recognizing and embracing the truth… that humanity is one.” 

And who is not already embracing that truth?

Maybe the persons denying that truth are the 42% of European-Americans who say African-Americans are “about as well-off as” or “better off than”  European-Americans; or the 41% of European-Americans who say “too much attention” is paid to race and racial issues in the U.S. today.  Would it include the 32% of European-Americans who believed that Obama made race relations worse in the United States?  Maybe it's the 60% of European-Americans who did not "somewhat” or “strongly” support the Black Lives Matter movement? These are all figures from a 2016 Pew Research Center poll on race relations, and I’m trying to point out that the people who responded with these sorts of answers are probably more ignorant or prejudiced, but even among them, many might agree in the unity of humanity, and see their opinions as merely disagreements about tactics or strategies in achieving unity and justice in our society. In other words, the people who reject the unity of humanity are a minority in our society, and possibly a minority of fewer than a third of us.

So, does recognizing the unity of humanity mean something else, and something deeper?  Perhaps the majority of the country that would answer a survey with an agreement that “humanity is one” don’t really fully and deeply believe in the unity of humanity. That is, they may superficially agree, but they haven’t thought through the implications of that belief and incorporated their professed belief into some sort of action plan in their personal lives to promote unity.  Or, maybe it really is the case that it's that 20% to 30% who haven’t accepted the unity of humanity that is holding us back.  Clearly, to end the racial prejudices that people tolerate or lament-without-doing-much-to-solve-the-problem we do need that shared value about the unity of humanity, but how do we expect this acceptance to manifest, and how do we expect “sharing Baha’u’llah’s message” to encourage more people to accept the value?

The NSA reminds Baha’is that our methods are supposed to not divide people into contending groups.  We are instead supposed to bring people together in earnest and honest searches for answers.  That is true, and it’s a point I make when I teach my students about promoting social change. The human tendency toward tribalism and creating conceptual barriers between “in-group” (deserving of our loyalty) and “out-group” (enemies or potential enemies) undermines many attempts to solve social problems. And yet, of course, it’s a fact that sometimes when you are trying to improve society there really are “enemies” who (at least on that issue you’re working on) are opposed to you and trying to discredit or attack you. You may be able to bring people of good-will together to promote an intervention or technology that is likely to reduce racism, but there will be people of ill-will opposing you, and those people will see themselves as virtuous and good.  

When the NSA characterizes “current approaches that tend to divide people into contending groups” do they mean “those sort of current approaches" that tend to divide, meaning that there are some current techniques that fail because they lack love, inclusiveness, and reciprocity?  Or, does the NSA intend to characterize “current approaches” in general as usually having that flaw of being divisive and “tribal" in targeting enemies rather than being loving and inclusive?  The way the letter is written, it seems to me the NSA is characterizing “current techniques” in general as being divisive.  I disagree. Some current techniques are divisive. Partisan political processes, in particular, have become divisive, with Democrats claiming anti-racism as their cause and Republicans to some degree rejecting anti-racism because it is associated with their rivals the Democrats. But as someone who actually researches and studies efforts to reduce prejudice and racism, it seems to me that most of the work actually being done in this area is just as the NSA promotes: inclusive and non-divisive.  Well, the mass media may be emphasizing the divisive and partisan political nature of the issue, as that sort of controversy seems more attractive to the general reading audience, and advertisers want more of an audience, so commercial media promotes narratives that accentuate divisiveness.  But, really, within the realm of law and policy and anti-racism work in schools and communities, the leadership often comes from interfaith groups and idealistic people from across the political spectrum who are eager to collaborate on addressing the problem in inclusive ways.  At least, these are the people are thinking about how to be effective and actually get some measurable accomplishments. But even the divisive activists may have some measurable accomplishments they are aiming toward, and if they achieve those policy objectives, even if they do so through divisive means, they may yet have a net benefit to our society. Anyway, I hope the NSA doesn’t promote a narrative that “Baha’is know how to do this work because we emphasize unity and love and inclusiveness and most current activists are failing because they are divisive and partisan” because such a narrative is not going to go over well, especially if it comes in the same letter that says we shouldn’t be divisive. Actually, putting down people who are trying their best because their techniques have flaws and claiming that you could or are doing a better job because you don’t have those flaws is itself a sort of divisive behavior in which Baha’is are promoting their own “in-group” over the out-group of non-Baha’i activists.

When a letter says that Baha’i ideals challenge current assumptions I always try to understand what those current assumptions (the wrong assumptions, I guess) are. Also, if we are going to “revolutionize our conceptions of the relationships that should exist between individuals, society, and institutions”  I wonder what the NSA is talking about. Which “conceptions of the relationships that should exist between individuals, society, and institutions” are currently so off-base and wrong that we need revolutionary rethinking and change?  Which conceptualizations? Name one. If they asked me to think of some, I could come up with a few, but they aren’t uniquely recognized by Baha’is or through the specific Baha’i Revelation.  Is there some value statement or mission statement of some group, or some opinion expressed in an editorial or implicit in some legislation that the NSA could point to and say, “see, that is the sort of conception of ideal relationships between individuals and society/institutions that has become outmoded and needs revolutionary change because of the fact that humanity is one,” or are they just writing essentially that “things are very bad now, and we’re misguided, so we need revolutionary rethinking of how society ought to be” and expressing that in the vague language of “conceptions of the relationships that should exist between individuals, society, and institutions”?  I just have trouble believing that this has been carefully thought out, but perhaps it has been, and some Baha'is have written about it, and I just haven't been exposed to their thinking.

The NSA does offer the insight that there is a spiritual reality to human beings, and perhaps they mean to claim that current institutions are ignoring that fact. They also claim that there is a moral requirement that “all be given every opportunity to fulfill their potential and contribute…” and yet this is in fact an underlying moral value of American liberal thinking, according to Berkeley scholars such as George Lakoff (who says that liberal Americans approach morality in policy by using a metaphor of a nurturing family that provides what children need so they can achieve their potential) or Robert Reich (who says that liberals should frame their arguments for their policies with an argument that the public has a moral duty to offer everyone, including the children of poor and oppressed minorities, an opportunity to fulfill their potential as human beings). The idea expressed by the NSA that we need a recognition that there is a moral duty to give people the means to meet their potential in terms of growth and making contributions is also pretty fundamental to economist-philosopher Amartya Sen, or the late philosophers John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, who sort of provide the moral philosophical bedrock for mainstream American liberalism. 

Although I identify as a “Baha’i” or an “independent seeker of truth" rather than as a radical or liberal or green, and I do find the tendencies toward group-think and partisanship among self-professed radicals, liberals, and greens to be sometimes tedious, it is pretty clear to me that the moral philosophy at the foundation of most of their policy ideals is pretty much the same as what Baha’u’llah teaches, and in fact many of the artifacts of the western democratic liberal tradition, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent conventions on human rights, as well as the social welfare safety nets that reduce the misery of poverty and the regulatory regimes that constrain the worst excesses of the wealthy power-elite and capitalists by protecting workers and consumers and the environment all seem to be manifestations of the spirit of the Baha’i Revelation in human government. When I was young, most conservatives shared in these beliefs, and the difference between conservatives and liberals was a matter of to what degree we ought to regulate and constrain, or redistribute and provide security, or promote human rights. It has only been since the 1990s that American conservatives have dropped out of that consensus, and really only since the Trump take-over of the Republican Party that most conservatives are rejecting the value of human rights, or a social welfare safety net, or constraints on the power of capitalists. 

I don't think the NSA means to attack all these things, but when one is pointing out that there are serious flaws in the existing social order, and we need revolutionary thinking about what should replace what we have now, it’s sometimes worthwhile to constrain your rhetoric to critiques of those aspects of society that are rotten and harmful. If you criticize everything, you risk failure when you attempt to bring together people in a loving and inclusive way. Some of what we have in society today is working or attempting to work, and much of what we have is informed by a conception of human beings as spiritual beings.  

At the top of page 2, the NSA says that Baha’i community knows how to be a force for progress. They point to the Five Year Plan and the work of community-building and personal-and-social transformation. They are, I suppose, referring to the practice of small-group study of scripture and pilgrim’s notes incorporated into books (the "Ruhi" books) that emphasize engagement with the ideas and the practical expression of those ideas through activities, with an emphasis on devotions and children's moral education classes. I read The American Baha'i and follow Baha’i news online, and I'm aware that there are indeed many anecdotal examples of very good development associated with such a process. Small and intimate groups in which people discuss issues of great personal meaning (like values or spiritual reality and one's own personal struggle to be a better person) have been powerful tools for mobilization and transformation for centuries. The United Method Church was established out of a reform movement in the Anglican Church and spread widely, probably because of John Wesley's use of small groups like these.  Small groups have been key to the growth of the so-called “mega-churches”.  Small group study circles were an important tool in the spread of Maoist and Leninist ideology in China and the Soviet Union. Yes, small groups can be extremely effective technologies.  

Likewise, efforts to focus on values and ideals and goals, and then translate those values into action, is a fundamental process in the entire community organizing or political action strategy. Every decent textbook on community organizing or community activism will devote significant attention to the importance of finding shared values, common visions, and a mission or purpose that all members of a group can embrace and use to guide their activities and the processes in which they attempt to achieve their goals. So, study groups that focus on values and ideals and then work cohesively to implement those values in some sort of service activity are going to have a far better chance of success than groups that do not take their values as seriously or groups that only talk about values and goals without thinking and doing things that implement those values in observable and measurable actions. The Baha’is offer some particular examples of how these techniques can work with materials drawn from Baha’i scripture and associated community writings, and it’s important to share our example, but our methods aren’t especially revolutionary or innovative.  The fact that we use Baha’i materials is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of our processes.  But, to some extent, our actions will be held suspect by outside observers to the extent that our efforts are seen as having a priority of proselytizing and gaining more visibility and support for our own religion, rather than purely serving the community simply for the sake of improving the world. It’s sort of an unfair criticism, since any belief system, whether religion or ideology, will naturally seek to show its advantages and attract more adherents, so any effort by any religious or ideological group will have mixed motives, and along with the goals of service and helping humanity will be mixed goals of winning more followers and allies and and cultivating a sympathetic public. 

The NSA says there must be a “many-faceted approach” to changing society. For Baha'is, there are three general types of approaches that seem most relevant to the UHJ.  One of these is “teaching" (expansion and consolidation) so that there will be more Baha’is; more Baha’is with capacity to help us achieve our goals of creating a better world though an understanding of the Revelation brought to humanity by Baha’u’llah. Another of these is social action.  These are essentially activities of service, but they may also be engagement in non-partisan political practice (trying to get persons with power to pass and implement laws and policies that benefit people and promote justice and peace and human rights and well-being). The third is "engagement in the discourses of society” and that essentially means to listen to others and learn from them, and when a receptive audience is found, sharing any insights from the Baha’i scriptures or community practices that might be useful or helpful. The NSA is saying that the three types of approaches are all needed, and they are implying that we ought not neglect any one or two of the approaches by over-emphasizing one or two of the favored approaches. 

This seems to me a new thing; expansion and consolidation is now equal to social action and engaging in public discourse. This is a good development.  When expansion and consolidation were emphasized over the other aspects, sometimes Baha’is would act insincerely, pretending friendship or genuine interests in the lives of others, but dropping people when it became clear that they did not have much interest in joining the Baha’i Faith.  That was a problem, and pointing out that you can engage in social action and public discourse to complement expansion and consolidation should validate a more genuine and sincere outreach by Baha'is, where they establish lasting friendships and alliances with persons of other faiths or no faith who share most of our values and want to work with us on some aspects of transforming society. 

The NSA then offers a paragraph about “core activities” and briefly summarizes what these are, characterizing these as “profound and revolutionary”.  I think they correctly suggest that genuine friendships that result from such activities will help destroy prejudice and racism. I think that there must be a very large set of combinations of activities that would work, and the current “core activities” are just one sub-set among many that would do a reasonably good job of creating an orientation toward serving humanity and developing deeper lasting friendships, given the material at hand (Baha’i scriptures and associated writings by Baha’is and their allies or like-minded persons combined with the minds of humans living in this time). The emphasis on friendships and service in Baha’i “core activities” brings benefits that are just what we should expect based on the long-known empathy increases and prejudice decreases following efforts by people of different backgrounds to cooperate together so they can to achieve something good. 

In a paragraph where the NSA writes about the “spirit of learning" they are evidently referring mainly (or perhaps exclusively?) to learning about what we are accomplishing in our Baha’i communities.  Baha’is incorporate into their “core activities” a consistent practice of evaluation and reflection so that they can learn what works and what doesn't work, and the “spirit of learning” is an attitude that processes can be improved if we pay attention to what is making us feel good and what is achieving the sort of result we want, and likewise recognize what seems to be involved with our failures or lack of successes. I think there ought to also be a spirit of learning that pushed Baha’is to look at what others outside the Baha’i Faith are doing. Some people are achieving good results in community development or anti-racism work, and Baha’is ought to take notice.  When groups are not succeeding, Baha’is also ought to take notice.  Sometimes failures may be consequences of groups not having a perspective that humans are spiritual beings, or lacking a moral perspective that emphasizes the necessity of helping people live up to their potentials. But there may be other problems faced by groups that are not-Baha’i, and some of these may offer us lessons.  Learning can work both ways, if Baha'is are to take a role as “teachers” to the world, we should remember that teachers can learn from their students, and secular groups or groups identifying as Christian or Islamic or Buddhist may have valuable lessons for us.

It's worth remembering that ‘Abdu’l-Baha used the term “Baha’i” to describe three different groups of persons.  At its broadest, He described Baha’is as persons who generally agreed with the teaching of Baha’u’llah and worked to implement the teachings of this Revelation.  By that definition, many persons of other faith traditions and even some persons professing no faith tradition are Baha’is, and may sometimes be doing far more for the Baha’i Revelation than the Baha'is themselves. He also used “Baha’i” as a term for persons who identified with the Baha’i Faith in their self-concept. In that sense, Americans who call themselves “Baha’is" when asked about their religious identity are the Baha’is.  But also, there was a habit in the first decades of the 20th century to use the term “Baha’i” or “True Baha’i” to refer to an idealized sense of how a Baha’i ought to live and behave, and by that sense, very few, and perhaps none of us could claim to be Baha’is. In this sense we aspire to be Baha’is or we hope to become Baha'is and work at being Baha’is. I sometimes think our faith community has lost something by seemingly forgetting the first and third ideas of what “being a Baha’i" means, and simply using the prosaic sense of “officially belonging to the religion headquartered in Haifa” as the only meaning of the label. 

The NSA draws our attention to the example of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, although they do not specifically mention anecdotes like his insistence that he not reside in a hotel that served only European-Americans and excluded African-Americans, or that he insisted that African-American Baha’is sit closest to him in venues that had traditionally excluded all African-Americans. Anyway, it would be good if someone would produce a book full of examples of how ‘Abdu’l-Baha manifested in his “smallest gestures” and his boldest acts that humanity was one. The NSA letter just refers to “His shining example” and I hope the readers are all familiar with some of those activities and actions.

The NSA then reminds us that most Americans want what we do.  They mostly yearn for spirituality.  They mostly want genuine justice and prosperity for everyone. 

 Later, in December (the 8th) of 2017, the NSA congratulated the American Baha’i Community for its successes in promoting awareness of Baha’u’llah in the Bicentenary of His birth. The letter reminded Baha’is to be welcoming and flexible.  They reminded us to use wisdom, in the Arabic sense of Hikmat, I think, meaning: give what is wanted, and not too much, and withhold what isn’t wanted until someone is ready.  That is, listen to people and know them as they really are, and respond to who they are with attention to their specific needs, rather than just broadcasting your own ideas as you like, regardless of your audience.

On January 31, 2018 the NSA wrote another letter, reminding the Baha’is that we have useful solutions to problems in the world, and we must give society action so that we can make a difference. This letter also described the qualities of a good teacher, and recommended that Baha’i communities try to have these qualities, and they mentioned one quality as genuine love for all people, similar to God's love for people. They also mentioned humility and a concern for common well-being.

The letter of December 25, 2018 written by the NSA, used Shoghi Effendi's characterization of American political life (deceitful and corrupt) and his recommendation that the American Baha’i community “first… regenerate the inward life of their own community, and next… assail the long-standing evils… in the life of [our] nation” to illustrate their point that American Baha’is ought to be putting time and effort into their religious community life and then also working to transform the broader American culture.  

In a letter to participants in an African-American-themed Baha’i conference from November 27, 2019 the NSA reminded Black Baha’is of their duties to try to make the community great, and mentioned some of the African-American Baha’is who worked to promote the Faith. 

Perhaps the NSA hoped that these letters would make the audience (Baha'is) feel more committed to working to make their communities better, and then also working to make the wider society better. I do feel that after studying all these letters, I'm more motivated to contribute more time to helping my Baha'i Community and my wider community.  I'm already volunteering significant quantities of time in some efforts outside the Baha'is community, or with some Baha'i friends, and I my professional life already requires me to work on some of these issues as well. Anyway, the letters has passages that were inspiring, and that is one of the uses of organized religion; it inspires us to act with virtue and find meaning and purpose in activities directed toward service. So, that was time well-spent.

A response to a gay Baha'i

Back before the Internet's widespread use, when people were using electronic bulletin boards and e-mail lists to discuss various things, I was often engaged in groups that discussed the Baha'i Faith.  Back then, a common topic was the fact that our religion, the Baha'i Faith, teaches that people ought not express love through homosexual behaviors.  The sources of that teaching, the actual teaching, how that teaching is interpreted, what was actually intended, how the teaching is implemented in Baha'i community life... all these things were regularly discussed.  And then, in the later 1990s more people became involved in internet discussions of these things.  It seemed to me the same things kept getting discussed, and the same ideas were repeated so often that I became very bored with the whole topic.  It's been over ten years since I've ever posted on this topic, but a recent blog post inspired me to write about it again.  I think I offer a few insights that are not often repeated in these discussions.

I've never actually cared much about this issue.  For a while, perhaps for several months when I was in my late teens or early 20s, I did think that homosexuality was probably unhealthy or wrong, but I never felt any emotional negativity about gay people. I've had very close friends, whom I loved very much, admit that they felt homosexual attraction to me, and I have felt some slight regret that I was never able to reciprocate those feelings in any way, and I have sometimes felt that my non-sexual or non-erotic love for other men has been devalued because, in general, American culture devalues non-sexualized love.  But, anyway, gay behaviors don't strike me as worth much attention, outside of the social context that makes them important (because of the persecution of gay people). I understand that because many people feel extremely prejudiced against gay people, and society inflicts harm on gay persons, therefore we have a need to protect the rights of gay people, and defend them, and so forth, and that appeals to me.  But, having never had strong emotions about it, I sometimes don't understand the fuss at an emotional level.  Some people enjoy playing chess, and some don't, but who cares?  If there was no persecution and discrimination against homosexuality, people's sexual orientation would be, for me, of about the same importance as people's orientation toward enjoying a game of chess.

I am, however, very thankful for the social critique that gay activists have brought to us, because in my opinion, heterosexual behaviors are generally quite problematic in this world; and I think gay theorists give us some very useful insights into the problems of sexism, homophobia, machismo, and so forth.


Anyway, I'll share my response to the blog post here on my own blog.  The original post to which I was responding was at this link, and may still be there.

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Thanks for sharing a lovely essay with the world. Your heart seems pure and loving, and your faith seems strong.  I agree with your friend, the Baha'i Faith needs famous gay Baha'is who stick with the Faith.

A few points to consider:

Homosexuality and homosexual behaviors, and the experiences of homosexual behavior or identity, will be extremely diverse. In different times and places, with various cultures, such behaviors have been quite frequent or extremely rare. Evidently, the social context matters for how people express their sexuality.

There is always a biological (emerging from our biochemistry and evolution quite independently of the family and cultural environment we grow up in) element to everything in human behavior. Obviously.  What else could there be? Even supernatural or spiritual aspects will be manifested in actual body changes and chemistry, which will exist because of biological evolution.

Homosexual behavior and feelings, or sexual orientation, in general, speaking about populations of humans, seems to exist along a continuum, which is sometimes measured by the Kinsey scale.  If you are at an extreme end of the Kinsey scale, your orientation may be purely homosexual or heterosexual, but some sexuality researchers believe most people exist along the continuum, and it is our language (which divides us into pure categories) which pushes us into "homosexual" or "heterosexual" categories (although, if you are at extreme end of the scale, you would presumably be purely homosexual or heterosexual, and so, from that point of view, it might be appropriate to think of the issue in dichotomous--homosexual or not homosexual--terms).

All speech is, to some degree, political.  After all, Baha'u'llah pointed out that "utterance is an essence which aspires to exert an influence".  When we use language, we are attempting to influence others.  "Politics" (broadly defined) is the effort to influence others.  So, suggesting someone's work is "politically motivated" rarely tells us much that is useful.  What work isn't?

The Baha'i Faith and the "Cause of God" can be understood in many ways.  In one sense, the Baha'i Cause is the general cause of God for this age and for all ages: people ought to create societies that maximize human flourishing and happiness; people ought to be ethical and treat each other well; men and women ought to be equal; prejudices should be eliminated; peace should replace war; justice should dominate, while tyranny and injustice should be diminished; people should cultivate their spiritual natures and seek to worship and respect the Divine, etc. In such a general sense, many people who have never heard of the Baha'i Faith are already "Baha'is".  In another sense, Baha'is are members of the organized religion of the Baha'i Faith.  To what extent that organized religion is an imperfect but honest attempt by flawed human beings to create a system and organization that reflects the intentions of Will of the Creator of the Universe, and to what extent it is an actual incarnation of the Will of that Creator, is somewhat mysterious, and it may be impossible to distinguish those two aspects of religion (its existence as a creation of humans and their societies, and its existence as a supernatural embodiment of Providence).  In another sense, the "Baha'is" are persons who actually live up to the teachings and ideals promoted and revealed by Baha'u'llah, and in that ideal sense, everyone can strive to be a Baha'i, but no one should expect to actually be one, just as no one can realistically expect to be "perfect" in some absolute moral sense.

Baha'i individuals and Baha'i communities vary tremendously in regards to their strengths and weaknesses, their failures and successes. Gay Baha'is might be able to find complete acceptance and love in some Baha'i communities, and certainly in some loving friendships with Baha'i individuals, whereas in other communities the homosexual Baha'is might suffer cruel persecution and ostracism.

Religions must offer guidance to persons in many different cultures, in many different times. On one hand, they need to stand above historical trends, so they can condemn what is wrong, even in times when what is wrong becomes widely accepted.  On the other hand, they must also be flexible, embracing moral thinking and new insights about reality as civilization advances and humanity matures.

When it comes to moral laws and truth, we must consider what is absolutely true, and what is true in particular contexts.  As a thought experiment, imagine that homosexual identities and behaviors are objectively morally correct and favored by God in 0.5% of humanity, discouraged but tolerated in 1.5% of humanity, and spiritually harmful in 98% of humanity.  Suppose that human nature being what it is, if a religion is entirely supportive of homosexual behaviors and identities, 5% of the population would identify as homosexual, and 20% would sometimes engage in homosexual behaviors; whereas if a religion is mildly unaccepting and discouraging, only about 0.5% of its believers will take on the homosexual identity and perhaps fewer than 2% will ever engage in homosexual behaviors.  From a utilitarian point of view, if that was the objective situation, which position would be more spiritually healthy for the religion to take?  But, I'm not a strict utilitarian, and the psychological and social suffering of the small minority who would persist in following their core nature in their homosexuality while worrying about their rejection of the guidance offered by their religion concerns me.  And, by the way, I'm not at all certain the scenario I've suggested bears any resemblance to the actual situation. Perhaps homosexuality in the modern North American sense is objectively morally neutral, and what Shoghi Effendi was describing was the homosexual behaviors he knew from the Middle East and upper-class 1920s England, which may differ substantially (in terms of morality) from what 21st century North Americans do. Or, perhaps homosexuality really is a spiritual sickness or distortion of the spiritual nature of humans in all its forms and manifestations. I don't know, and I don't even have an opinion, it just doesn't matter to me, as there are so many other problems in the world that are very clearly wrong.

God doesn't seem overly concerned with our psychological suffering or physical suffering.  After all, this universe relies on natural selection, with all the death and misery that includes, and uses predation, competition for scarce resources, mutations, diseases, and death, as the process that forms atoms and molecules into bodies capable of manifesting the human spirit. Also, natural evil, like the disasters that kills thousands, millions, or possibly somewhere in the universe, billions of lives, seem fairly regular.  God seems mostly concerned with our spiritual well-being, and supposedly, when we understand that, the emotional, mental, and physical suffering we sometimes endure may seem more acceptable, since such suffering offers us opportunities for spiritual growth.

It is possible that the "homosexuality" condemned by Shoghi Effendi and forbidden to Baha'is is general homosexuality, even the sort of modern North American homosexual behaviors and identities.  It's also plausible that it is not, and the situation we have now in modern homosexuality is not the sort of thing that was condemned, and therefore we should allow it without any concerns.  It's possible that Shoghi Effendi's interpretation was right for his time, but the Faith should be able to evolve and change its legislation to reflect a new consensus, but it's also possible that Shoghi Effendi's interpretation is still the best one, even now, and the faith should not ever change its rules about homosexuality.  It's possible that the law exists to protect many people from doing spiritual harm to themselves, even though it imposes great hardships on a few persons for whom homosexuality is spiritually harmless or beneficial, but it's also possible the law is beneficial for everyone, and it's also possible that the law is just God giving us more hardship in this mortal world to build up our spiritual abilities, and it doesn't really protect anyone from spiritual harm because homosexuality isn't necessarily spiritually harmful.  It's possible God doesn't care at all about homosexuality, and this rule about homosexuality is just an artifact of culture and history that has been inflicted on the religion through the religion's human failings, but it's also possible God really does not want humans to express their homosexual tendencies. All of these are possibilities, and Baha'is (and other people who believe that religious truth comes from Revelation and authoritative Sources such as Manifestations of God) must each consider these approaches and use both their independent search for truth and rational faculties along with their respect for authority and attraction to ideals of purity to figure out what they believe.

The Baha'i Faith as a social institution is either "stuck" or "blessed" with specific interpretation from the last Guardian that will put it "behind" the progressive morality that accepts and celebrates various sexual orientations and new conceptions of marriage.  For Baha'is or potential Baha'is (in the sense of being official members of the organized religion) who are gay, this is going to be a big challenge. For people who think that religions ought to be perfect and also think that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, this will also be a problem.  For people who think homosexual behaviors and identities are wrong or misguided, it won't be a problem.  For people who expect even good religions to have imperfections, who also think that modern homosexuality in North America is no more problematic than modern heterosexuality in our culture, it's still a problem, but maybe not enough of a problem to keep them out of the Baha'i Faith.  It's up to individuals to decide for themselves what this aspect of the Baha'i Faith means to them in terms of whether they want to join the organized religion or just be a Baha'i in the broader sense of desiring the core Baha'i goals of unity and peace and so forth.

I hope some of these ideas or observations are useful in our mutual search for truth and "whatever is pleasing to God".  Please remember that I write with no more authority than anyone else on this subject.

Religions are like subjects in science.

Sometimes my co-religionists (Baha'is) describe the concept of progressive revelation as an idea that humanity is culturally evolving, and is able to handle certain forms of truth and teachings at different times appropriate to the sophistication of society and general intelligence levels.  Thus, the oldest levels are good enough when people live simple lives, and then religion became more sophisticated with very ancient Hinduism and Judaism when people settled in cities, and then Christianity and Buddhism came along when there were empires and very complex societies, and then Islam came along with national identity and more sophisticated science, and the Baha'i Revelation is most appropriate now, and is a religion suitable for a time when everyone is literate, and many are scientifically trained, and the world is being united by technologies of transport and communication. In essence, earlier religions are like grades in K-12 and the Baha'i Faith is like college.

I don't like that way of describing Progressive Revelation. One problem with it is that there are many simplistic and foolish thinkers in the "more advanced" religions just as there are many very sophisticated, wise, and mature teachings in some of our oldest religions.

  Today I was reading John Polkinghorne's recent (2011) book Science and Religion in Quest of Truth.  He makes a nice point about how one uses various sorts of sciences and even different aspects of physics to understand the whole natural work. We scientists suppose there is some sort of an objective reality lying beyond us, and this is glimpsed through our scientific techniques, reading instruments and measurements, applying mathematics and logic, requiring testing and verification, peer review, and so forth.  We use Newtonian physics for some things, and Relativity or Quantum physics for other things, and we use Biology, Chemistry, Geology, and so forth for understanding various aspects of reality. I'm a social scientist, so I have a lot of problems with background noise (because human lives and minds are so complex) that natural scientists don't have in the same degree, but it's all essentially the same process.

 I think it would be more accurate if Baha'is used this sort of idea as a metaphor for Progressive Revelation.  Just as various forms of science help us understand reality and truth, the various religions and their traditions and scriptures help us understand how people have tried to understand and worship God.  A person who wants to understand how nature works needs to study Chemistry, Physics, Biology, and so forth.  Psychology, Sociology, Linguistics, Anthropology, and Medicine are also useful sciences to gain insights.  A person who wants to understand God ought to study scripture, theology, the sociology of religion, doctrines, community life within various congregations, religious history, and so forth, and also ought to investigate Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, various new Religions Movements, and that sort thing. The scriptures and teachings of all religions may contradict each other sometimes because religions are vulnerable to people imposing their own flawed understanding on things (much more than science, but science has this problem too). In other cases where religions seem illogical or contradictory, it may be a case like particle-light duality or quantum physics or imaginary numbers in mathematics, where the nature of reality itself is not the sort of thing easily grasped by our minds.

In essence, the Baha'i Faith is this recognition that all the various religions and their approaches to God and Truth ought to be embraced and incorporated, just as science and the scientific method (rational thought, the human intellect) must also be applied if we are to find God and adequately Worship and "know" God.  The Baha'i Faith offers a framework in which we can integrate the religions and sciences into a whole, and as part of this framework, the Baha'i Revelation offers scriptures and social teachings that represent some of the latest or most recent Revelation materials we've received.

So, studying the Baha'i Faith and embracing Baha'u'llah is something like keeping up with the latest scientific journals across multiple scientific disciplines, while remaining within one of the older religions is like specializing in a particular discipline and remaining focused on significant works that took place a while back.  There is nothing necessarily wrong or "less sophisticated" about this.  I enjoy reading Darwin, Feymann's lectures, essays by Lewis Thomas, Rene Dubois, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Konrad Lorenz, Gregory Bateson, and so forth, but the fact that I prefer reading mostly life scientists does not mean I think sociologists or chemists are  wrong or less significant, and the fact that I am particularly fond of a bunch of people who mostly wrote between the 1950s and 1990s doesn't mean I have made a bad choice.  Maybe I just like the style of someone like Loren Eiseley or Rachel Carson more than the style of whoever is the more recent scientific writer or essayist.  Yes, much of what these people wrote about is dated, but quite a bit of it transcends time and catches the beautiful essence of science anyway.

    And so we have people who prefer Orthodox Christianity or a particular school of Sufi teachings within a Shia Islam tradition, or Tantric approaches to Shiva in Hinduism, or the Dalai Lama's Tibetan style of Buddhism or the "Japanese Protestantism" of Genku and Shinran. . . it's just like different sorts of scientists and different sorts of studies or experiments.  Whether it's religion or it's science, it's all part of a search for Truth.

Hawking and Mlodinow say God did not create the universe

The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Grand Design. The title was “Why God Did Not Create the Universe.”

When a certain type of scientist makes this claim, their position always runs along these lines: science can explain whatever phenomena a religious person uses God to explain, and since science can explain it without requiring God or supernatural powers, it follows that God and supernatural powers don’t exist. Boiled down to its essence, the argument is that if we use parsimony (Occam’s Razor) we won’t have any reason to believe in God, at least not any reason based on our desire to explain or describe what we perceive in the universe.

The Hawking and Mlodinow argument follows this line. They point out that when people didn’t know much about science, they made up stories about gods or supernatural forces to explain their experiences. Even now, some people suppose there must be a God because there is something rather than nothing. We exist in a universe that seems to have just the right settings to allow life to evolve, and our planet seems remarkably well-suited to human evolution. This seems like a remarkable coincidence, so perhaps God designed the universe to be just right for us. Yet, science (as presented in the Hawking and Mlodinow book) has shown that there can be many universes, and universes can emerge from nothing, and if there are a nearly infinite number of universes it follows that there must be some universes such as ours where life as we know it can evolve. And since life has evolved here, this just happens to be a universe where it’s possible for life to emerge and evolve. So, we don’t need God to explain this universe, its creation, or its remarkable suitability for life.

The sort of God this argument dismisses is one who would fashion a creation in such a way that there would be gaps, cracks, holes, and incongruities within the creation so that intelligences within the creation would be able to logically discern the existence of the Creator, and understand that the Creator had intervened within the creation. It also dismisses a God who would set up a universe with two conflicting systems, one a system of physical laws and forces working according to a particular set of rules, and another a system of supernatural forces working according to an entirely different set of rules. In other words, the "God of the gaps" idea that we believe in God because only God can explain certain observed phenomena (like the existence of the universe) is refuted by science which has eliminated all gaps. This is an argument against a God who inspires belief because people need a "god hypothesis" to fill in explanations for things that aren't understood.

But really, there is no point in entering into a debate with such assertions. Occam’s Razor (the rule of parsimony) will always rule out God. Any evidence of God (defined as an all-powerful, all-knowing, Source of creation and Sustainer of reality with attributes analogous to what we experience as will and consciousness and emotion) can be explained parsimoniously as evidence for more advanced civilizations, rather than God. That is, in a universe such as ours it is quite plausible that there could be entities who belong to races or civilizations that evolved and advanced past our current technological state hundreds of thousands of years ago, or even millions or tens of millions of years ago. There could be beings in this universe that passed our present state of evolution and knowledge over a billion years ago. Such entities and their civilizations might be able to manifest all sorts of powers and technologies which would look to us like the work of an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator God. But, if we apply the rule of parsimony, we must stick with the hypothesis that all indications of this “God” are in fact the manifestations of natural and scientific technologies far beyond our current understanding. Advanced alien races and technologies, rather than supernatural gods or magical powers of a deity, can always be suggested as an alternative scientific explanation for what appears to be evidence of God. Such explanations, which conform to Occam’s razor, give us questions about any god that science eventually finds. For example, from what race of beings did this god evolve, and how did the god develop powers and attributes, and by what technologies or physical laws does this god manifest seemingly miraculous powers and attributes? This is quite different from the typical religious contention that God was uncreated, and God is above questions related to causes, technologies, and so forth.

Some people come to belief in God through the teachings of Messengers of God. Unlike many other branches of human religion that follow Messengers of God whose lives and revelations are considerably obscured by historical distance and lack of solid evidence, Baha’is follow the Revelation of a Manifestation who lived from 1817-1892. There are plenty of obscuring legends and exaggerations around the life of Baha’u’llah, but we have enough physical and historic evidence, as well as original source materials, to make some factual observations about His life and message.

Yet, even these, which I take as convincing proof and a basis for faith, could never overcome a strong attachment to the rule of parsimony. Baha’u’llah revealed scriptures of high excellence and wisdom, sometimes spontaneously and rapidly. This seems like a possession by the Holy Spirit or a Revelation from God to those who have faith. But, rather than resort of supernatural explanations, one could use the rule of parsimony to point out that many people have revealed poems, stories, and other miraculous material while in trances, or under hypnosis. There have been cases of automatic writing (spirit writing) and so forth, all related to dissociative mental activity, and this isn’t so different from the way Baha’u’llah revealed Baha’i scriptures. Baha’u’llah evidently saw and heard things that others couldn’t hear, and this sort of phenomena is fairly common in people who suffer from schizophrenia, or persons who aren’t mentally ill, but who experience objectively non-real experiences such as alien or fairy abduction or conversations with dead ancestors (at least non-real to mortal observers, but I have no idea about what is going on in the brains of such people). Delusions are also widely known, and Baha’u’llah’s beliefs about His station could be explained as delusions without invoking a supernatural God to explain them. The fact that Baha’u’llah seems to have fit in with prophetic predictions about a Manifestation of God could be dismissed, if we use parsimony, as coincidence, or as stretching the facts to fit vague prophetic traditions. A person could just argue that Baha’u’llah didn’t in fact fulfill prophesies. Likewise the remarkable or miraculous events surrounding Bah’u’llah’s life or his remarkable abilities could be dismissed as untrue stories, or merely remarkable coincidences or luck. It is always more scientific to invoke Occam’s razor and explain away aspects of Baha’u’llah’s life as coincidence, false stories, or something else that doesn’t require a divine supernatural God.

Even if one did accept that something seemingly supernatural was going on in Baha’u’llah’s life and Revelation, it would be more parsimonious to suggest Baha’u’llah was merely using natural forces that science hasn’t yet detected and explored, rather than to accept that God was involved. In fact, in some of Baha’u’llah’s writings (such as the Tablet of Wisdom) it appears that Baha’u’llah was picking up some ideas current in his time and culture about history, rather than picking up direct factual information about history. This fits with an idea that natural technologies or powers were involved, rather than an all-powerful, all-knowing Divine Force.

Baha’i writings about miracles also seem to take this view, that miracles and miraculous events should not be relied upon as evidence, unless one has directly experienced the miracle or event for oneself. The supernatural stories surrounding Baha’u’llah are evidence to those who were present when the miraculous events took place, but for the rest of us, such stories are merely stories, and we should not take them as evidence for Baha’u’llah‘s status as a Messenger of God. After all, there are many people who have sometimes exhibited miraculous powers or encountered supernatural forces, and this sort of experience isn’t really all that unusual.

What frustrates me is that atheistic scientists who present these arguments that Occam’s razor and the rule of parsimony remove God from the question because science can explain everything without God are claiming that the domains of logic and empirical evidence (the sort of evidence that can be reproduced and manipulated through experiment) are sufficient domains to explain the world. In essence, they are claiming that science and logic and rational thought are sufficient for our beliefs and models of the world. This is, I believe, a mistake. There are other domains of life and other models of understanding that work quite well, and are needed, and some of these domains are outside of science. Religion is one of these domains. I think when religion makes propositions about the natural world, it is the duty of the religious person to subject their assertions to scientific investigation. But the scientific method is not an especially useful way to investigate the realms of meaning, value, ethics, theology, and so forth. There are other realms such as arts, economics, human relationships, dreams, and various other aspects of the world that may also lie mostly outside of the scientific method. That is, we use models of understanding and meaning within these realms in a way that makes science and rational thought not really very useful. Scientific methods can be applied in order to try to unify all knowledge under the umbrella of reason and rational thought and the scientific method, but I think the scientific method will not eventually capture a satisfactory understanding of all aspects of human experience and life.

The continuing attempt by certain scientists and atheists to remove superstitious belief in a God who must intervene to make things happen in this universe is usually quite unsatisfactory. They are arguing against a level of theological understanding that seems to only exist in certain fundamentalists or very conservative and traditional theologians. It seems a waste of their intellect. I suppose there are enough literally-minded religious traditionalists and fundamentalists running around in our world to keep the atheists and scientists busy, but rarely do I see anything written in a sensitive way that would really persuade a literalistic believer. Nor do I see a sophistication in the dialogue that would engage with someone who had a more sophisticated critique of scientism or a more post-modern theological belief system. Mostly, these books are intended for an audience that already accepts science and tends to have a simplistic view of religious believers, or a condescending view toward religious faith. It is of course interesting news that cosmologists have answers they find logical and scientific to questions such as why is there something instead of nothing, and how did the universe emerge out of the pre-universe, and why is it that our universe has scientific laws and constants that seem to make it such a nice place for life. But to then take answers to such questions and make a claim that this tells us something new and important about God is not very convincing.

I continue to have faith, but I see my faith as being outside of my scientific approach to the world. My faith is unscientific. That’s not a problem that needs to be resolved.

Videos with Baha'i Themes.

I've decided to share some Baha'i-themed music videos today. I'll start this one from the Pacific Ocean Islands, featuring a song about gossip.

And then here is one from Merz. I'm not sure if it has a Baha'i theme, but Merz did some great Baha'i songs in the past.

Here is a Baha'i Prayer with a slide show:

Here is some dancing and music, including Kevin Locke playing flute.

Spring is here

Well, this is the week that Primavera (primus ver)—Spring—bursts forth here in Springfield. I rode my bike back from the office on Tuesday with a t-shirt on. Our maple trees came out in flower on Monday and on Saint Patrick's Day (Tuesday) they were pretty much in full bloom, not that maple tree flowers are spectacular or anything. They look like tiny red or yellow fuzzy spikes. Our forsythia will bloom tomorrow, I think, as the buds are yellow and big. The crocus flowers were blooming a week ago, or earlier.

It's Spring Break. I've been working on catching up on giving students feedback on their papers, and I've been reading—some academic stuff for papers I'm writing, and some interesting stuff I just wanted to read. I just listened to a great song on the radio driving home from a friend's home tonight. It's Airborne Toxic Event's Sometime Around Midnight.

I had a nightmare a couple nights ago where I was in the future, and people were watching, for entertainment, people being voluntarily decapitated. It was like a game show where contestants were getting their heads cut off, and trying to maintain a smile as their heads were cut off. I guess it was understood that before irreversible death set in the heads were reattached to the bodies and no permanent harm or scarring would result. I was horrified. The horror was mostly at the empathy I (as a human) was feeling for the "contestants" on the show. I couldn't understand why they were doing it. What leads to such dreams? I am a pessimist about most popular entertainment, and I suppose the dream was a manifestation of my fears about where cultural trends were headed. I think I had been considering something my father mentioned this weekend when he visited, that in some ways the Romans were more barbaric than the "barbarians" who overran the Empire, and of course one of the most famous aspects of Roman evil was their pleasure in watching public executions and gladiatorial combat. The theater of the cruel. And I'd also been reading about Maimonides and his ideas about martyrdom. He thought it was wicked to seek out martyrdom, and one was morally obliged to avoid martyrdom. He was working against the Masada Complex in Jewish culture. All that could have contributed to the dream. Or maybe it was in some way precognitive. Just tonight a friend showed me a film Frank Miller's Sin City. It featured a decapitation, and it was, I thought, presented as a form of theater of the cruel, an exercise in immediacy, savagery, and brutality to elicit strong feelings of horror and disgust at a deep emotional level, forcing the audience to reject what we were witnessing and turn away in panic at our own animal enjoyment of the violence (I didn't feel much enjoyment). But I don't know, maybe it was just an amoral artistic exercise reveling in violence. Bread and circuses. But, like my dream, there were scenes reveling in violence. In my nightmare I was horrified that people would cheerfully submit to a "game" of being decapitated. Here, a day later, I was horrified by an artifact of my culture that "entertained" by showing a hero possessed mainly by the desire to torture evil-doers.

I was reminded of that first Mad Max film where Max finds the gangster who killed his wife and child, and ties him up next to a bomb, and lets him have a saw, and tells him that he has time to saw off his limb and escape before the bomb goes off, and the murderer is begging for mercy, and the film is constructed so we are supposed to feel satisfaction, because Max is getting revenge and the criminal is quailing. And yet, if we stop and reflect, this is extra-judicial killing, itself a form of evil and murder. But evidently satisfying feelings for revenge is like satisfying feelings of hunger or thirst. It's a deep physical need. But one that does not provide long-lasting satisfaction.

Back to that idea of decapitation, I was also thinking of martyrdom. I try to read Baha'i history on almost a daily basis, and there certainly is plenty of shi'ite martyrdom imagery in the Baha'i writings. Most Baha'is know about Baha'u'llah's vision of the Maid of Heaven when he was stuck down in a dungeon, but what about Ali-Muhamad (the Bab) and his vision of the Imam Husayn's bloody head? And I do think of our modern Baha'i martyrs as heros. Many of them were modern, well-educated, materially successful persons who could have renounced their faith to save their lives, left Iran, and then rededicated themselves to the Faith once in safety. That might have been what Maimonides suggested they ought to have done. But they refused to recant, and they died, even as recently as the 1980s. I met the son of one of these martyrs, and he was not really very happy about his parent's choice. I got the impression, although he didn't actually say this, that he would have rather that his parent had followed the advice from Maimonides. And going willingly to one's execution, with a smile on one's face, that is an ideal for religious people who take faith and God's commandments seriously.

Yet, there was my dream, where people were doing this for "fun" to entertain others or prove their own extreme abilities of self control and pain tolerance. Anyway, it's odd what one will dream about. I have disturbing dreams about once or twice a week, and they usually wake me up between 5:30 and 6:30, and I can never get back to sleep after them, so I just get up usually.

Here, I've embedded a video of that song I liked so well.