Creeping Credentialism

Creeping Credentialism

 

Oneness of God series, Science and Religion

 

By John Taylor; 2006 May 03

 

As part of our discussion of the principle of One God we are going through each of its derivatives, also known as the Baha'i principles, as illuminated by the "Great Being" statements in the Lawh-i-Maqsud. Our concern today will be with the principle of harmony between science and religion.

 

"The Great Being saith: The man of consummate learning and the sage endowed with penetrating wisdom are the two eyes to the body of mankind. God willing, the earth shall never be deprived of these two greatest gifts. That which hath been set forth and will be revealed in the future is but a token of this Servant's ardent desire to dedicate Himself to the service of all the kindreds of the earth." (Tablets, p. 170)

 

As I understand this, scientific knowledge (consummate learning) and religious insight (a sage of penetrating wisdom) act as two eyes to the body. We know from high school science class that the reason why all higher animals are not Cyclops but have two eyes is in order to have depth perception. The apparent redundancy allows the brain quickly to calculate what is close and what is far; two eyes suffice for that, a third or more really are redundant. Since we live in a three dimensional world, having two eyes working together offers a strong evolutionary advantage.

 

In the same way, individuals need to inhabit both science and religion, action and reflection, in order to live a full life. Like two eyes, the slightly different perspectives of science and faith allow us to learn from experience, to adapt to change and succeed in the face of adversity. Socially, this is just as true. Our "consummate" scientific investigations work best when combined with the moral discipline that religion instills in large numbers of people. We need both, and not both separately but both working together cooperatively, intimately, in order to adapt and avoid social excess.

 

Even when we accept that science and religion are equal, we tend to think of them as separate, unrelated, especially in a secular society. It is not that the need for sages is ignored. As the influence of professional clergy and theologians declined over past centuries, many surrogate professions have arisen specializing in wisdom, such as consultants, gurus, spiritual advisors, artists, psychologists, and so forth. The question is, can they all gain a unified vision without faith? The compound eyes of flies are useful to perceive motion, but not depth. It would be a hopeless task to cure a sadly spiritless and sick world with a hodgepodge of competing specialists, disunified by a single vision.

 

The essayist Theodore Dalrymple, himself a shrink, documents many of the symptoms of social decline in contemporary England. He interviews prison inmates and soccer louts and asks them to their faces, why do you indulge in this violent behavior? Their answer is always, "I want to let my hair down, let out some steam." He has traveled the poorest places on earth, and he concludes that poverty does not explain the brutish nihilism increasingly prevalent in England. The poorest of the poor have wonderful attitudes, better than the elites in the richest nations. The illness and corruption of the inhabitants of nations that used to proudly proclaim their civility and civilization is, as Baha'u'llah says, a form of collective blindness.

 

One of Dalyrmple's observations perplexes me, though I do not suppose I should be surprised. He asked repeat offenders in prisons whether they like being incarcerated and they always said yes. Why? An enforced routine and predictability, plus permanent separation from women. Women, it seems, introduce an unpredictable, violent, explosive element into their lives. The relations between the sexes must be in a sorry state indeed to make jail seem like a blissful retreat! But equality of the sexes is a polarity too, like the two "eyes" of science and religion, and they need to harmonize and become pacified as well.

 

From all this I conclude that what is blinding our eyes is not ignorance or darkness but the isolation of one eye from the other. In other words, credentialism. One eye wants to dominate the other, exclude its findings, rather than letting the brain (the principle of One God) sort it all out for us. So let us look a little at credentialism.

 

Celebrities are dying all the time, but one recent death made me sit up and take notice, the passing of urban reformer Jane Jacobs. Reading over the articles about her life I was interested to read of her fight against credentialism. She refused a dozen honorary degrees because she believed that schooling is not serving society as it should, that in her specialty, city planning, arrogant experts actually are the bad guys. Instead, she believed, unqualified average people should have the first say about decisions that are shaping the urban landscape. Again, I should not be surprised. The most famous example of creeping credentialism is told in the Bible, in John, wherein is asked: "Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?" (10:21) It happened that Jewish religious specialists were outraged at this miracle, which did not come out of the human hierarchy of religion. They arrogantly questioned a man just cured by Jesus.

 

"They said to him again, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered them, "I told you already, and you didn't listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" They became abusive towards him and said, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don't know where he comes from." The man answered them, "How amazing! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God doesn't listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshipper of God, and does his will, he listens to him. Since the world began it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." They answered him, "You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us?" They threw him out." (John 9:26-34, WEB)

 

This is the big question in any decision making process, who do you listen to? Whose words carry weight? What is the speaker's qualification? The blind man who now sees offers the only valid qualification possible in questions of God, the unknowable essence, and of religion: to worship God and do His will. If someone is sincere and does God's will, he or she is qualified no matter what. Yet the blind guides shut the man up, saying in effect that his handicap proved he was a born sinner, so what he says cannot be worth anything. The arrogance of these leaders led to a rebellious attitude among the Jews of the time, which in turn led to their being repeatedly crushed and suppressed by the Romans. This whole society paid for their arrogance in blood. The Qu'ran goes over the same ground, predicting that pride and false perception of qualification will bring societies down wherever they are found:

 

"With power had we endued them, even as with power have we endued you; and we had given them ears and eyes and hearts: yet neither their eyes, nor their ears, nor their hearts aided them at all, when once they gainsaid the signs of God; but that punishment which they had mocked at enveloped them on all sides." (Qur'an 46:?)

 

So the only way society will ever gain the perceptive vision we need to survive will be for our "eyes" or experts to get over their pride and look together through the principle of One God, which is love.

 

"But he who hates his brother is in the darkness, and walks in the darkness, and doesn't know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes." (1 John 2:11, WEB)

 

This is why Baha'u'llah Himself adds, just after this "Great Being" statement that even His Revelations from God, independent as they are, are "but a token of this Servant's ardent desire to dedicate Himself to the service of all the kindreds of the earth." (Tablets, p. 170) Whether our learning is in science or faith, its animating purpose is to love and serve God, and by extension all of humanity. The most valuable service is to illumine that, the most harmful to obscure it. May we all be luminaries sharing our light in the great brain of Spirit.

--
John Taylor

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