Principles as Proofs

Envisioning Peripatetic Principles

By John Taylor; 2008 Jan 23, 5 Sultan, 164 BE

Dear Friends,

I woke to find that today I have the ineffable honor of a migraine attack. My thoughts, like many of the Writings of Baha'u'llah, have become discursive, wandering unpredictably from one thought to another, without rhyme nor reason, with no willed means of control. Since writing something new is out of the question, I will proofread and share an old essay. The following essay I wrote in 2002, about a month after the essay I re-posted here a couple of days ago. It is a first attempt to do what I plan to redo here soon, only in more detail and more systematically, that is, go through each of the principles as a separate proof of deity.

 I missed the dramatic event mentioned at the start, starring Jolene Nichols and Ron Speer commemorating the experience of Baha'u'llah in the Siyyih Chal, for one reason or another. I did hear from others afterwards that they succeed, that it was edifying, reverent and enjoyable.

 The Baha'i Principles as Proofs of Deity, Introduction

 Originally written: 2002 Dec 16

 This is the first in a series on the Baha'i principles as proofs of the existence of God

 A problem we all have to deal with is how to imagine the greatest story ever told, the biography of the Manifestation of God. How do you visualize what transcends the sight of human eyes? Anything you see or even imagine is liable to turn into an idol. For that reason, all images and other direct depictions of the Manifestation are not allowed.

 And of course whenever something is disallowed, people go overboard.

Our community is about to stage a dramatic presentation in a local restaurant, Reader's Cafe, on the incarceration of Baha'u'llah. I had the job of making up tickets for that event. No doubt the local actress starring in this production has found ways to depict Baha'u'llah's incarceration in the Black Pit of Tihran without taking the shortcut of using improper images. But I was surprised to find that one believer actually objected to the word "dramatic" in the title of the play. If we can't show the face of the Manifestation we shouldn't be able to even put on a presentation with the word "dramatic" in the title!

I say all this because if you hit this link you will see a web presentation on the arrest of Baha'u'llah and His imprisonment in the black well of Tehran. The Baha'is of New York City evidently made it up. Hopefully it will be up there permanently.

 <http://www.nybahai.org/siyahchal/>

Visualization is vital to understanding, and I found this visual reenactment showing what Baha'u'llah might have seen while entering His imprisonment to be quite helpful. I look forward to showing it to my eight-year old daughter, since she loves to read aloud the words that appear up on the screen like that.

The picture in this video of the inside of the Siyyih Chal has evidently been approved, but of course Baha'u'llah forbade depictions of His sufferings in that stench-filled, dark and dank location. When I first read His warning not to do this, I assumed that He meant that it is impossible to depict that place, and that we should imitate certain Christians who dwell upon lurid descriptions of the agony on the cross. However, Balyuzi and other Baha'i scholars take it to mean that we are not permitted to try to display, or even to describe that "Black Hole of Teheran."

For many years I have tried to visualize the Baha'i principles. Also, a couple of years ago I went off on a wild goose chase trying to visualize the Badi months in a series of essays. I found advantages to doing this. I noticed that the time sequence of a plotted story combines scattered visual and verbal data and gives abstract concepts a place in an ordered sequence. I continue to seek a proper visualization and temporalization of the principles of the Faith.

I am about to launch upon an experimental visualization of the proofs of deity using the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar and its gardens as a visual framework for the principles.

I just reviewed a book called, "Plato, Not Prozac!" It has an afterword called Beyond Client Counseling that describes a special kind of meeting that he calls "Socratic Dialogs." These are not to be confused with Socratic or elenchic method, which is a purely negative way of coming to a definition, refuting it, then refuting a revised definition, and so forth. A Socratic dialog is a more positive technique that takes at least a weekend for an expert to extract from people's ordinary experience a "world class" definition of an abstract concept like hope or love.

A more informal version of this is what he calls Philosopher's Cafes, where you hold a meeting in an informal setting and discuss a problem or whatever is on peoples' minds. Marinoff has only two rules for his discussion groups: one, everyone must be civil and considerate of the opinions of others, and two, no namedropping. You have to concentrate only on your own experience and not borrow ideas and systems made up by others, no matter how illustrious. Marinoff has founded two Philosopher's Cafe's in New York City, one in a cafe in Greenwich Village. I had been thinking of setting up such a group in our own "Reader's Cafe," Dunnville's combination restaurant and bookstore. Now that I have read this, I think I will talk to the proprietors about it.

In the series of essays that are about to follow I want to examine the Baha'i principles as proofs of deity. Both separately and taken together as a whole, the Baha'i principles are strong supports for faith in a Supreme Being. The fact that they are not a single proof but several demonstrations of deity does not lessen their effectiveness. Many medicines are compound in nature and manage to cure conditions that do not respond to any single remedy.

Through the ages a broad spectrum of arguments has been put forward for and against the existence of a Supreme Being. The spread of atheism and agnosticism have not been checked by the proofs of deity so far advanced.

It is understandable that many atheists and agnostics have sought to define their convictions in a more positive way than in reference to a God that they deny exists. Many call themselves naturalists, materialists or humanists. Some, notably Noam Chomsky, prefer to brand their core beliefs as "standard enlightenment values."

The European Enlightenment indeed marked a turning point in the currents of Western ideas. On one hand it marked a liberation from centuries of forced dominance by traditional religion. On the other hand, the Enlightenment Project marked an eclipse in the belief in God. Since the Enlightenment theism, the belief in a personal God, has gradually lost vitality and influence in intellectual circles. The number of atheists and agnostics among the educated has increased steadily, especially in the West. If lack of belief could be counted as a religion, it has been estimated that in most developed countries so-called "humanists," be they atheist or agnostic, weak or strong, positive or negative, including those, whatever their beliefs, who label themselves as "non-religious," all combined together they rank among the two or three largest "religions."

I believe that unlike the question of the nature of the soul, sometimes called the mind-body problem, which may never be solved, the problem of disbelief in God can respond to careful analysis and investigation. When the merits of the Baha'i principles are better understood the belief in God will naturally and inevitably begin to regain ground. When religions regulate themselves and learn to cooperate in harmony, the force of the belief in God will again be felt in every sphere of human endeavor. As for the Baha'i principles, they are already closer to the best of "Enlightenment values," that is, what most atheists already believe, than any other set of beliefs, be they religious or secular.

When I encountered the Baha'i Faith in my youth I did not use the names "humanist" or "enlightenment values" but I definitely believed them and firmly disbelieved in a God. God seemed to have nothing to do with enlightenment. The Enlightenment, the shedding off of the chains of religion, was where liberal values came from. I had been some kind of atheist for at least ten years. I had lately become what can only be called an evangelistic atheist upon contact with the unbelieving philosopher Ayn Rand. When I encountered the Baha'i principles I was shocked to find a theistic system that taught the best of what I had come to believe as an atheist. Over a few months of investigation and conversations with Baha'is, I came to totally reverse my convictions about Deity.

Belief in God did not seem so absurd when it was pointed not at nonsensical dogma but at principle, these powerful ideals and noble goals set up by the Baha'i teachings. These principles are not only a wonderful prescription for the ills of the world, they grow in subtlety and power the more I investigate them. Almost thirty years I have studied them and I have hardly begun to plumb their depths.

I became a Baha'i at the start and still remain one for the same reasons that I had originally held to atheism: I believe that the system of liberal "enlightenment values," as now clarified and purified in the form of the Baha'i principles, is indisputably the best solution; they are our last, best hope for an answer to the dire problems facing mankind. Once I understood how God fits into and informs principle I grasped the potential force that principle can have in the world. Most atheists and agnostics do not realize how negligible an obstacle the existence of a God really is, when it is conditioned by pure principle. Especially since Baha'is -- and all pure theists -- believe that God is, strictly speaking, unknowable anyway.

It should not be surprising that these principles actually place most of our distinctive Baha'i beliefs closer to those who call themselves humanists and hold to "standard enlightenment beliefs" than to virtually any other group that calls itself "religious." Most religions reject science, while most atheists embrace it. Yet such is the bugbear of belief in God that Baha'is tend to be intimidated and our teaching activities ignore atheists, agnostics and other non-religious.

As I said, many various proofs of deity have been put forward. However, the only proofs that are exclusively and characteristically Baha'i are the Baha'i principles.

In two talks in New York in November, at the end of His stay in North America, the Master pointed out what is most distinctive about the Baha'i Teachings that He had been expounding upon. He named Covenant, the "most great characteristic," first; then He pointed to about a dozen of the Baha'i principles.

It is true that `Abdu'l-Baha did put forward proofs such as the Via Negativa, the experiential and others as weighty proofs of Deity. We shall be looking at these from several points of view in the coming essay series. But He never claimed that the experiential or Via Negativa proofs are exclusively Baha'i. On the contrary, they are clearly inherent to virtually everything of value in older religious scriptures.

Principle is definitely the new and original contribution of the Baha'i Faith to the history of ideas. It is therefore worthwhile to explore them on their own, as well as in the role of proofs of deity.

I will walk through each principle as if it were one of the nine gardens that surround each and every Mashriqu'l-Adhkar. I will use the technique that Marinoff describes for teasing out the truth of an abstract issue. If his proposed uses for philosophers catch on as I think they should, I foresee this as literally taking place. Philosophers will cure people much more effectively than therapists ever did by the "peripatetic method" used by Plato and Aristotle, simply walking around and discussing truth in auspicious surroundings. In future every Baha'i will walk to the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar for dawn prayers anyway. A supplemental walk through the gardens surrounding them may become an additional spring-point for philosophical as well as spiritual inquiry.

So, enjoy the upcoming series of imagined excursions through the nine temple gardens while talking over nine Baha'i principles.