In defense of Agape

Our Debt to Daniel

By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 03, 16 Sultan, 164 BE

Having concentrated for over a month on the theism debate, my backlog of other reading has been piling up. Finally I caved in and started auditing an audio book that I purchased a while ago from Audible.com, Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food." I do not want to review the whole book here, but suffice to say it is a devastating critique of what we should laughingly call "food science." He describes how food lobbyists corrupted first government, then science itself, until now instead of the disinterested advice that you would expect in an age where there are more scientists alive than all other past ages combined, we get an incessant flow of quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo about carbohydrates, nutrients, fatty acids, vitamins, lipids, you name it, instead of what worked for thousands of generations, actual food.

We are trained by advertising and government to pay attention only to ingredients and talk about impressive weasel words, rather than focus on what is known indisputably to make a difference to human health: eat less, have a varied diet of mostly veggies, exercise more and -- most important -- eat meals communally to reinforce social and spiritual bonds. Although that has been known for a long time, and in spite of billions spent on improving our diet, we are getting fatter and sicker. Instead of an improved diet we get what is now being called nutritionism, a full blown ideology like communism, fascism or capitalism. Like any ideology, a mental shortcut turns into a substitute for independent thinking, which greases the works of mass manipulation.

This ideology was born when our leaders-for-hire discovered that a diet report that mentioned an actual food product, or, worse, a law that required makers of artificial foods to call their products what they are, adulterants and artificial substitutes, very influential producers got upset. They dumped every politician who dared flout them. As long as politicians depend upon anybody other than the public to finance their re-election campaigns, this will always be easy to do.

So, the Karl Marx of nutritionism is the breed of corruption that I call "gun-to-my-head democracy." Under gun-to-my-head rule, the people sell elections to the highest bidder. The winner gets to pull the trigger of the gun that we are holding to our own head. So instead of food, we got ingredients, nutrients, verbal red herrings. The Das Kapital of nutritionism decreed: never mention foods. Just talk about ingredients. Never mention health. Just talk scientistic dubieties built on dubieties, buzzwords like cholesterol, lipids, vitamins, carbohydrates and so forth.

In the 1970's that subtle but crucial ideological twist, from food to obfuscation, gave manufacturers Carte Blanche to discard long-standing restrictions and regulations designed to protect the public from additives and artificial substitutes. Formerly the Hippocratic Oath applied to food adulterants: first of all, do no harm. Now the motto is: if you can throw it in, why not go for it? It takes ten years for problems to turn up after something new is introduced, ten more years, if ever, to prove that it was responsible and another ten years for to pass laws banning it. So if you have a big enough budget you can follow the example of the cigarette and booze makers and postpone the process indefinitely.

At the same time, study after meta-study proved that any traditional diet whatever, no matter how seemingly ridiculous -- that is, the blubber-filled Inuit diet or the almost one-hundred-percent fat meals of inhabitants of the mountainous regions of Turkey -- were all far more healthful than anything that ever came out of a factory or was advertised in the media. Traditional diets do so well because they are based not on ingredients but food, whole foods, combined with a low-stress, stable lifestyle, a rural setting, lots of exercise and fresh air, strong family and social bonds, plus the synergistic spiritual benefits that come from combining all of these.

From the point of view of real evidence, any and all culturally produced foods, set in their cultural contexts, are far better than artificial substitutes, concoctions brewed by a factory or fast-food restaurant. What traditional diets had in their favor was food -- I say "had" because healthful food-based diets are being abandoned around the world in favor of the proven-unreliable industrial Western diet. The stark fact, borne out by many studies, is that those deluded by nutritionist bafflegab not only get sick more often and die sooner from what they eat; worse, they are distracted from positive measures that really would protect their health.

I cannot help but relate this to the theism controversy. Anti-theists love to point to the bloodthirsty parts of the Bible, notably the notorious passage known as "the ban," and argue that the entire holy book is obsolete and worthy only of a recycling bin.

But the fact is that the first chapter of Daniel describes a fully controlled dietary experiment that puts to shame almost all that is being done by "nutritional science" studies today. Daniel's experiment compared the expensive, high-status but essentially garbage diet, meat and wine, of Chaldean royalty with a peasant meal based on bread combined with another simple food, legumes or pulses. Pulse was a stew of lentils and other seeds, and was the staple meal of all Jews, from peasant to king. And, as any Baha'i who has attended a pot luck supplied by our Persian brothers and sisters knows, lentils remain, along with rice, the staple of the traditional Persian diet to this day.

Anyway, the Bible tells how Daniel came to the king of Babylon saying:

"Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's meat: and as thou seest, deal with thy servants. So he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days. And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat." (Dan 1:12-15)

Compare that to today.

Just as in the recent film "Supersize Me," the difference in the two diets was so spectacular that visible results were apparent within weeks. Except more so, since the modern experimental subject of "Supersize Me," Morgan Spurlock, was monitored by doctors with far more sophisticated indicators than simply looking at his face. Yet these far more sophisticated doctors look on helplessly as a worse diet than meat and wine is foisted not upon one nation or region but the entire human race.

The big difference between then and now is the development of gun-to-my-head democracy. In Daniel's experiment the producers did not finance the science, nor did they tell the shah what to think or do. So all the king had to do was observe how much healthier the pulse eaters were and mandate that diet for his entire court.

Simple.

So which is the scientific society, the traditional or the Western? Remember, today we are blessed with vastly greater numbers of scientists than then; and each of our scientists is far better schooled in more advanced scientific knowledge than the nutritionally ignorant Persians of 605 BCE ever dreamed existed. Daniel himself, we can be sure, had never heard of vitamins or cholesterol. But now special interests trump facts. As Pollan's book documents, our collective diet is far worse than in Biblical times, worse than the worst traditional diet of today.

How could this happen? After all, Daniel was a prophet, not a scientist. Yet as far as is known, he was the inventor of the controlled experiment. Not just of the controlled dietary study, but he invented the entire methodology of the double blind, controlled experiment, which of course is the heart and soul of the scientific method. Yet ironically his invention is uncredited and rarely mentioned. Here is one of the few references I found on the web:

<http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/trial_records/bc/daniel/daniel_commentary.html>

Our persistent, willful ignorance is very strange. Why is there no mention of this anywhere in our education? Even advanced history of science courses, even religious studies courses ignore the fact that the inventor of science was a prophet of God! Surely this should be taught as early as Grade Two and emphasized throughout our education. It is basic scientific and religious training, but as you can see at the following site, a married couple, one a nurse, the other a sociology professor, both highly educated, deeply devout Christians who are already committed to advocating creationism, came upon Daniel's experiment as if it were a new discovery:

<http://www.icr.org/article/327/>

This essay, "Daniel and the Classic Experimental Design," written by the husband, James William Treece, Jr., tells how he found out that Roger Bacon is credited with the invention of the controlled experiment (this of course ignores its common use by Muslim scientists for hundreds of years before that, much less by the Indians and Chinese -- but that is a prejudice for another day). Treece writes,

"Roger Bacon is considered the father of modern science. He helped to develop the methodologies for confirming or refuting hypotheses by an ethical system of gathering empirical data through systematic observations. When he published his "Opus Majus," in 1266 A.D., he described the controlled experiment as a means of acquiring scientific knowledge."

"Daniel used the classical experimental design in Nebuchadnezzar's reign, in 605 B.C., 871 years before Bacon conceived the idea... It is interesting to speculate whether Bacon may have developed the experimental method from reading Scripture. Personally, there is little doubt in my own mind that he really did discover the experimental method from reading Daniel. He was emphatic in his belief that all wisdom comes from God and personally believed that Scripture was a means of increasing faith, not a source for refuting theological arguments. `For all wisdom is from the Lord God, as the authority of the Scripture holds....'"

So, the controlled experiment came not from a university-trained scientist but a religious prophet. Are scientists grateful for their debt to religion? No, they are too busy chasing the tobacco and alcohol lobbies for funding for their latest experiment. And then the anti-theists hold up the Bible for mockery as impossibly anachronistic!

This raises many historical questions: could it be that "traditional" and "primitive" are not synonyms? Could it be that a people who have survived for more than a few hundred years on a given diet had something going for them? May they not have been improving their menus all those years, without the benefit of professional scientists? Could it be that the great faceless ones of history, women, accomplished such a thing? After all, they are the ones who cook the traditional meal. Were they innovating all those years, doing what Daniel did, watching the faces of those they fed and adjusting their diet accordingly? Is it possible that amateurs can succeed where university trained scientists and nutritionist nomenklatura are failing miserably?

And -- most to the point from a theist's point of view -- could it be that we in our scientific age might have something to learn from traditional religion as well as traditional diet? Could women have been making quiet, undocumented advances in religion over the centuries too? Could amateurs have been refining such traditional religious values as chastity, modesty, "family values", the Golden Rule, and so forth, have greater survival value for a culture than the atheism presently rampant among academics?

I have been watching on videotape a nonfiction series produced for PBS's "Frontline" called "From Jesus to Christ." It is about the early history of Christianity. While it taught me a lot, an inadequacy became evident when at one point the narrator says something like: "There were many sympathizers who were attracted to Judaism, though its strict dietary laws kept them from joining the religion. This occurred throughout the Empire because at the time there was nothing in Greek or Roman religion to compare with mealtime at a Jewish synagogue. Later, when Paul took the Christian version of this feast, known among them as the Agape, or love feast, beyond the Diaspora to new areas, the new Faith caught on rapidly." In other words, there was a need and Christianity filled it.

But hold on a minute! There was nothing like a collective meal in the religion of the time? Surely the student of history should pay careful attention to that.

How could it be that there was nothing like a coming together over a good meal happening among the supposedly tolerant polytheists of Greece and Rome? Could the anti-theists be wrong? Could religion progress over time, using an undocumented but valid version of the scientific method? Does the eventual triumph of Christianity over polytheism mean that they had something new and positive to contribute to religious thought and ways of associating? Is that --the ability to bring people of diverse classes and backgrounds together over a single meal table -- an inherent advantage of one God over many? After all, the Baha'i principle says it all; we all eat the same food, breathe the same air, and love the same God... And is not food and mealtime the perfect occasion to blend the worlds of the public and the private? If so, the earlier polytheist religions were either/or, either worship was private to a given god, or it was public piety, forced worship of the state god, but it was never both at once.

So, like traditional diets, could group innovation in the Agape love feasts of the early Christians have been kept anonymous, faceless, invisible and unrecognized even today?

The love feast remains the cornerstone of the Badi' calendar. As Abdu'l-Baha points out here, the 19 Day Feast is rooted in the Lord's Supper, which Jesus held just before offering Himself as final sacrifice on the cross,

"... make of the Feasts occasions of joy and fellowship reminiscent of the feasts that our forebears used to hold in connection with their commemoration of the Lord's Supper..." (Compilation of Compilations, vol. I, p. 428)

I do not think Baha'is are unique in this. A classic joke among Jews is that their faith is not so much a way of living as a way of eating. The ancient Zoroastrians came together to eat on calendrical feast days, as do Hindus and virtually ever faith that has grown beyond one locality and one language and culture.

 What is missing is an appreciation by educators of the crying need to teach at all levels those aspects of religion that are universal, including communal meals and feasts. An interview in the latest World Order Magazine talks about a course sponsored by the Maryland Baha'i Chair that, it seems to me, should be the model for every curriculum in the world.

"Dr. Suheil Bushrui, the first person to hold the Baha'i Chair, gave (a) key course ... on the common spiritual heritage of the human race. (It) represents the first generation of what the Chair brings that is different from most university communities. If you go to most universities and take a course on a religion, the closest you will come to an ecumenical course is comparative religion -- how is Hinduism different from Judaism?, and so on. But Dr. Bushrui does not explore how religions are different; rather, he looks below the veneer to see how they are similar, how they are all part of a common spiritual quest and a fundamental and enduring need." (John Grayzel, in World Order, 2006, Vol. 38, No. 1, p. 19)

As long as schools continue to ignore the fact that religion is part of the common spiritual heritage of the human race the ignorant will continue to chop up, misunderstand, misrepresent and calumniate religion, and believers will fail to take pride in the best aspects of their faith. To give a current example of the bloopers making it into print, the most recent anti-theist bestseller, Hitchins' "God is not Great" (I take refuge in God for repeating such a title), says that religion,

"comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species ... it is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs. Today, the least educated of my children knows much, much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion."

Of course this is the reverse of the facts, as "In Defense of Food" and the Book of Daniel both demonstrate. The founders of religion understood human dietary and spiritual needs far better than all our best scientists with their vaunted lexicon of nutritionist terms combined. And what is worse, it is unlikely that science will make any more progress unless and until it openly acknowledges its debt to religion, to God and his prophet Daniel by humbly swallowing their pride, like the Prodigal Son, and going back to start where Daniel left off.