Targeting the Theist Worldview

The Master's Disquisition at Stanford University

By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 23, 17 Mulk, 164 BE

I want to discuss today the proof of God that `Abdu’l-Baha gave in His address to Stanford University. Shoghi Effendi, in his history of the first Baha'i century, spoke of the enthusiastic reception of a discourse on "some of the noblest truths underlying His message to the West." (God Passes By, 291) It  was given on the eighth of October, 1912 to one of the larger audiences before which He had spoken. The Guardian spoke of, "His illuminating discourse before an audience of eighteen hundred students and one hundred and eighty teachers and professors at Leland Stanford University..." (Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, 289). As had taken place at Howard University, they gave `Abdu’l-Baha a standing ovation afterwards. (Marzieh Gail, Dawn Over Mount Hira, p. 192) Abdu'l-Baha Himself gave this talk prominence. He advised at least one young believer, Ramona Brown, to memorize it. When, in the twilight of His Mission, He received an inquiry from an atheist as to whether he could in good conscience, “Yes or no?,” become a Baha'i, He not only wrote back the major Tablet now known as the "Tablet to Dr. Forel," but also included a copy of this talk, as it had been published in the local newspaper, "The Palo Altan." Marzieh Gail writes that,

"The November 1st, 1912, issue of the Palo Altan is entirely devoted to 'Abdu'l-Baha's visit and His California addresses. The editorial is titled: `The New Evangel.'" (Id.)

In addition, this address is perhaps the only one where what the introductory speaker, university president Dr David Starr Jordan made a statement memorable enough to enter the modern Baha'i lexicon. Jordan declared, "`Abdu'l-Baha will surely unite the East and the West, for He treads the mystic way with practical feet." (H.M. Balyuzi, Abdu'l-Baha - The Centre of the Covenant, 287)

This Stanford address is certainly one of His weightiest and most representative summaries of the Baha'i view of God and the universe, and I will not presume to deal with everything in it. I am concerned only with what impacts upon the proofs of the existence of God.

Abdu'l-Baha starts by defining science as the "discovery of the realities of things," adding that the attainments of science have ever been the greatest part of the human legacy. Science illuminates our world and outlasts the sovereignty of kings and empires. The names of Plato and Aristotle are still on people's lips while the pomp that was Greece and Rome have passed away entirely.

"Kings have invaded countries and achieved conquest through the shedding of blood, but the scientist through his beneficent achievements invades the regions of ignorance, conquering the realm of minds and hearts. Therefore, his conquests are everlasting." (Promulgation, 348)

To give an example of my own of the eternal achievements of a scientist, the man who wrote Abdu'l-Baha just before His ascension, Dr. August Forel, and who received a “facsimile” of this speech as part of His reply, had his own list of undying "conquests." He was one of three researchers who established what we now call the neuron theory of the brain, and his meticulous work on one area of the brain in particular resulted in its being named for him. Now if you drill a hole through your skull and move your finger about you will come across a region named the "campus forelli." Let me know what goes through your thoughts when you hit it; maybe you will find something new and eternal too.

Having established the greatness and sanctity of science, `Abdu'l-Baha goes on to say that since the oneness of humanity is the fundamental teaching of Baha'u'llah, therefore He will speak about the oneness of all phenomena, an "abstruse" aspect of divine philosophy. Thus implying, I suppose, that in order to grasp our fundamental oneness as human beings we need a prior understanding of the singleness underlying the entire universe. So, let us plunge into the challenging first paragraph of His disquisition,

"Fundamentally all existing things pass through the same degrees and phases of development, and any given phenomenon embodies all others. An ancient statement of the Arabian philosophers declares that all things are involved in all things.”

The fact that the Master mentions the "Arabian philosophers" is significant. As I began my engagement with the current "new atheist" debate a month ago, I happened to listen to a summary of this branch of the history of learning in an audio-book called "Avicenna and Islamic Philosophy." I was surprised at how much more sophisticated the discussion of this question was way back before 1000 AD than anything being said today in the West. For example, the first Arab philosopher al-Kindi summed up the relationship of science and religion by saying that "Truth is truth." It cannot contradict itself. Compare that three word unification of science with theology to the false, clumsy and rather silly dichotomy drawn by some secular scientific celebs of today, who follow Stephen Jay Gould in calling them "Non-Overlapping Majesteria." In the theist debate, how far backwards we have slid in a mere thousand years!

Abdu’l-Baha continues,

“It is evident that each material organism is an aggregate expression of single and simple elements, and a given cellular element or atom has its coursings or journeyings through various and myriad stages of life. For example, we will say the cellular elements which have entered into the composition of a human organism were at one time a component part of the animal kingdom; at another time they entered into the composition of the vegetable, and prior to that they existed in the kingdom of the mineral. They have been subject to transference from one condition of life to another, passing through various forms and phases, exercising in each existence special functions. Their journeyings through material phenomena are continuous. Therefore, each phenomenon is the expression in degree of all other phenomena. The difference is one of successive transferences and the period of time involved in evolutionary process."

This, it seems to me, is different from Aristotle’s concept of a long chain of causation ending in a First Cause. It is a little closer to the branching tree of knowledge popularized by Descartes, Bacon and the encyclopedists. The Master’s argument is perhaps closest to Leibniz’s monadology, and later quantum mechanics, where each phenomenon is a mini-chain of causation holding in itself a mirror image of the whole. Difficult as this "super-overlapping majesteria" concept is, it is surely important to try to grasp it as clearly as we can. All the findings of modern physics and biology since He spoke have confirmed His vision of the nature of things, but I do not think much of it has entered the popular imagination as it should.

No single image I know of can convey the intimate inter-mixture of elements that the Master is describing, although in the following sentences He offers a hint by simply pointing to His own hand. We need but look at our own body to see that the atoms there not long ago were part of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms.

In my slide presentation on the proofs of deity, I had to describe this idea as quickly and economically as possible. I meditated a long time and came up with the idea of a "target chart" to display how the machinery of our universe reflects and recycles itself. I was gearing up for a huge graphical imaging project, but to my surprise I discovered that you can churn out a target chart in PowerPoint with the click of a mouse; then you can customize its colors after only a few more seconds of fiddling. I would like to show the graph, but it is a pain to post pictures here, so I will describe it in words.

Imagine a target, a large circle with concentric rings of different colors inside. Look at the target face on and it looks flat, like a paper target at a shooting range, or maybe a dartboard. The only way you can distinguish levels is by color. But if you move your head to one side, you can see that this is a three dimensional chart. Each inner level is a higher plateau than the one outside. The outside and lowest level is the mineral kingdom. The next higher step up is the plant, then the animal, and finally in the center of the target chart is the human. All are made of the same material elements and atoms. But it takes depth perception to perceive that the inside levels are "higher" or more complex than the outside ones.

We know from our earlier discussions that among philosophers there have been worked out at least three major worldviews, none of which can be "proven" by reason alone, but one has to adopt at least one in order to take a reasonable and coherent stance in the face of a universe that nobody understands completely, or even adequately. It is not unreasonable to go beyond reason and fix upon matters of faith in uncovering the reality of things. That is why some faith based worldview is inevitable, whether we recognize it or not. The first and simplest worldview is that of materialism. This recognizes only sense impressions, and the evidence worked out by science. It is popular among secular thinkers and atheists, be they weak, strong or anti-theist. Among philosophers, though, it is becoming rare, having been discredited by, among other things, science itself. Two other possible worldviews are the idealist and theist.

Using the analogy of our three dimensional target chart, a materialist is a sort of Cyclops without depth perception who looks straight on at the chart and refuses to move his head. Plato portrayed him as a denizen of a den, his head chained so that it sees only shadows moving on the wall. In any case, to the materialist everything is made of atoms and that is the end of the story. Nothing is higher, more complex or precedent to anything else. All is atoms and their interplay, and causation is an illusion.

In our target chart image, an idealist would be someone who holds his head on the ground beside the chart and sees only its depth. He never sees or recognizes the surface colors of the target chart. For an idealist, then, all material reality is an illusion, nothing but “a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Matter is a mirage in comparison with the ideal, the depths and heights of the theoretical, highest plateau.

A theist has the worldview of a rubbernecker who tries to see length, depth and width by moving her head around as much as possible. This is why many historians of science describe the scientific quest as the reverse of "Non-Overlapping Majesteria," rather as a process of "triangulation," of calculating where you are between the fixed locations of scientific and religious points of reference. Pure materialists and pure idealists, while standing on ground that is utterly irrefutable, miss out completely on this interplay of dimensions. The greatest thinkers, like the two that Abdu'l-Baha mentions, Plato and Aristotle, performed that triangulation by combining spiritual and material science, and that, the Master once said on another occasion, is why their accomplishments were so powerful and memorable. By factoring in God as well as material reality  into the equation, an investigator, as by a GPS device, can determine exactly where she is in the broader scheme of things.

We have taken a large bite into the Palo Alto disquisition. Let us chew and digest the implications for the time being and return another day.