Thought Experiment

Pre-existence, and ePhilo

By John Taylor; 2008 Jan 15, 16 Sharaf, 164 BE

Before we go to ePhilo today, a reader phoned in a question about pre-existence, especially as it relates to the opening passage of the Seven Valleys.

"Praise be to God Who hath made being to come forth from nothingness; graven upon the tablet of man the secrets of preexistence; taught him from the mysteries of divine utterance that which he knew not; made him a Luminous Book unto those who believed and surrendered themselves; caused him to witness the creation of all things (Kullu Shay') in this black and ruinous age, and to speak forth from the apex of eternity with a wondrous voice in the Excellent Temple..."

The question came as a surprise, and my first impression was the pre-existence is a paradox, for how can there be existence before there is existence? Even if there were, how could we existent beings conceive of such a thing? Coincidentally, I was just auditing C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, and he gives a very clear explanation of this idea. Although Lewis takes it from a Christian slant there is very little that a Baha'i would object to in it. He has a gift of clear explication of difficult concepts, and I must say that Lewis makes a few points and insights that I had not thought of. From the Baha'i perspective, Abdu'l-Baha in Some Answered Questions gives in a few places very good explanations of the several senses in which the idea of existence before existence is is used in divine philosophy. For example, He starts off the chapter "Real Preexistence" saying,

"Some sages and philosophers believe that there are two kinds of preexistence: essential preexistence and preexistence of time. Phenomena are also of two kinds, essential phenomena and that of time..." (Some Answered Questions, 80) "... The second sort of preexistence is the preexistence of time, and that has no beginning. The Word of God is sanctified from time. The past, the present, the future, all, in relation to God, are equal. Yesterday, today, tomorrow do not exist in the sun." (SAQ, 116)

Lewis offers the analogy of a novelist, who may pause in the middle of a fictional character's speech to think about what is happening, and may even go off and do other things for days, return and finish the speech; the long break does not affect the character at all. He also gives a very interesting description of Sonship, how preexistence plays out in the love God has for the Son, or, in Baha'i terminology, the Manifestation or Self of God.

Atheism

I am reading books from both sides of the current atheist versus believer debate at the same time. I am becoming all too familiar with the accusations that atheists are laying against religion and faith in God. Here are some general comments about what I am learning.

George Santayana said that skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and I have no doubt that there will always be a percentage of the population who prefer doubt over belief. Within the bounds of moderation that is a good thing. But chastity can be carried to far, in which case it becomes priggishness, Puritanism, a dismal, killjoy sterility. In other words, skepticism is a necessary part of the creative process, but it is not the whole of it. If we were all totally chaste the human race would die out in a single generation.

Same way, if the new group of propagandizing atheist authors get their way and everybody becomes a total skeptic, I think it would not only kill religion, it would also kill science, art, poetry, music, and everything that involves faith and creativity, which means all that is human as well as divine. An artist has to believe that producing an image of beauty makes a difference, a researcher must have faith that knowing what she finds out about the world is worthwhile. Sure, they have to be critical in order to do what they do, but they also need ample portions of faith, which is knowledge of things unseen. In the dialectic between skepticism and faith, one hand washes the other.

 Now, back to the ePhilo discussion.

 ePhilo: I still don't see ... that the Baha'i Faith is categorically different from other faiths....

 JET: The Baha'i Faith is most emphatically _not_ in a different category from other faiths. The Oneness of Religion is one of our most important principles. There are three onenesses, One God, One Religion and One human race. We believe that the core essentials of every religion are one and the same, love, the Golden Rule, the goodness of God. The social teachings, important as they are, are ultimately incidental. They vary according to the time, place and culture in which the faith grew up. But no religion teaches hatred and oppression as a core ideal, for if it did it would not last much longer than a generation, and the major world faiths have been around for centuries. Even Baha'i is coming up on its 200th anniversary.

 ePhilo: One theme which keeps coming back is that the Baha'i Faith is categorically different from other Faiths. This time you addressed this point by mentioning the "written charter, authentic and straight from the founder."

 JET: I must jump in here to add that this principle of covenant is a point of distinction, a unique aspect of the Baha'i Faith in this age, as are the other dozen or so principles of the Faith. But that does not change the inner core, the love of God for us, and His desire to teach us. This is no different from other Faiths. We often explain this aspect of the Manifestation of God's teaching method by comparing it to a Grade Four science teacher and, say, a Grade Eight science teacher. Assuming both teachers are properly qualified, both are equal in how much they know about science. They teach the same science but at a level a certain age group can understand. The fact that they emphasize different aspects of science, often with apparently totally different content, does not change their fundamental agreement. The goal is always the same, to spread knowledge, understanding of nature, experimentation, and other aspects of the scientific method. The particulars, while essential, do not nullify the core goal, knowledge.

 ePhilo: While I'll admit that I don't know exactly what this charter is, I have a strong suspicion that it does not address what I consider to be the fundamental commonality of all Faiths -- the idea that an extra-natural God intervenes in the natural world, whether through prayer, prophets, or manifestations.

 JET: Yes, that is a commonality of the Abrahamic Faiths, of which the Baha'i Faith is one. I notice that you say "extra-natural" instead of supernatural. Supernatural means superior, of a higher order; we are talking omnipotence, whereas extra-natural implies possible equality, or even inferiority. This leaves it open for gods like Mithras, pagan idols, teapots or spaghetti monsters. These latter polytheisms are characteristic of corrupt religion, be it nominally monotheistic or not. This is why every religion in its early days is accused of atheism. Baha'u'llah and His family and followers in Akka were pelted by stones in the streets because they were thought to be atheists.

 ePhilo: I contend that any divine intervention in the natural world would leave a trace which should be measurable and/or open to natural analysis, whether through repeatable experiments, or through statistical analysis of historical data. Such traces are yet to be seen -- or rather, when they are seen, they do not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

 JET: This is a question of skepticism. Historical data proves nothing to a skeptic. David Hume, for example, famously pointed out that the fact that the sun has risen for billions of years does not prove that it will rise tomorrow. All we have is what habit teaches us; causation is not an inevitable, necessary link; it could fall apart at any moment. So, no matter how much evidence there is for a God, or how little, it does not matter. There will always be believers and there will always be doubters. To prove that, let us perform a thought experiment.

 At one point you mentioned that a Baha'i asked you to imagine the word "Jesus" written in the stars, thus proving the truth of Christianity, at least to Christians. Since we are talking about a proof, we have to prove God universally, to Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and all other faiths, and non-faiths as well. Let us say then that our star cluster somehow not only spelled Jesus, but when a Muslim looked at it she saw "Allah," and a Jew saw "Yahweh," and so forth. Would that be enough? No, the skeptics in our class are already raising their hands, saying,

 "Hey, what about the parts of the sky that do not have that universal proof written on it? Why did God not write His proof there as well?"

 Let us say that God had anticipated that objection and when we looked closer, lo and behold, there too were written convincing proofs to all who cared to look. Let us say that God extended His proof to every atom of the universe. If He left out one atom, we all know what would happen, there the skeptics would congregate, saying, "Hey, why did God neglect to write His name on this atom? Does that not prove that He was either negligent or lazy?" Okay, would that suffice? Certainly not, what about the skeptics who closed their eyes and not see the proofs, could they not still say, "I see no proof, where?"

 In view of that, then, say God wrote his name in flaming letters on the inside of our eyelids. Could not the skeptic then scramble his thoughts, or intentionally misinterpret the letters of the word to mean something other than God? Well, God could take over his brain and force the skeptic to see reason, or He could hide the skeptic's very denial from himself so that it does not occur to him to doubt. But it seems certain that as long as he is given an ounce of leeway, he will surely be able to deny if he so chooses.

 We could reverse this entire experiment and imagine the same situation in a mirror. Suppose that God wanted to hide all evidence of His existence and for some reason wanted to give skeptics the upper hand. He could just leave the world as it is, or He could go further. Instead of saying "Jesus," our star cluster sign might say: "There is no God." A small number of persons of faith might still say, "I believe." If they were pigheaded enough, they could deny right up to the closed eyelids and the internal thought avoidance techniques of a dwindling free will.

 Whether it is a question of either denial or affirmation, my bet is that among the billions of souls on earth there would still be at least one clinging to one side, either doubt or faith, no matter what.

 "Call upon God, or call upon Rahman: by whatever name ye call upon Him ... to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names." (Q17:110, Yusuf Ali)

 Are you and I those two lonely extremists? If so, what could conceivably common ground between us? By the way, the thought experiment I just performed was a variation on Avicenna's "floating man" experiment, and I shall return to that in due course.

 ePhilo: If Baha'u'llah is a reflection of God, how can I objectively recognize Him as such?  I have tried to specify what I would count as proof. If it could be shown that a human being existed who claimed to be a way that we could see God, and who also had knowledge that men of his time should not have had, and who promoted a consistent, unchanging message, I would take this very seriously.

 JET: The way to do that is to read the words of Baha'u'llah directly. The way to get wet is to jump into water. I still recall the place where I was when I was persuaded that no human could have written what I was reading, which was a passage in "Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah." That was the moment, spiritually, when I became a Baha'i. I was on the bus from Ancaster to Hamilton, and I happened to look up from the book, and we were driving by the newly-built McMaster Medical Centre. Now whenever I drive by I think of that passage and the change in my life that it made for me.

  ePhilo was kind enough to send some more jokes about our common opponent, the agnostic. So here they are:

 The apathetic agnostic is like the dual major proctologist / civil engineer.  He's professionally certified to know his butt from a hole in the ground.

 Monty Python has a routine were an Atheist gets upset about the church bells.  It turns out that he's actually a lapsed atheist.  Finally, when he succeeds in getting the bells to stop, he says that this just goes to show that there's nothing an agnostic can't do when he's not sure he'll succeed.

 Then there's the agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac who stays up all night wondering where there is a dog.