Unrelated

Three Unrelated Topics

By John Taylor; 2008 March 24, 05 Baha, 165 BE

 

Research Request

A Discovery about the Baha'i Position on Darwinism

Pupil of the eye

 

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Research Request

I am passing on the following research request from Antony Samy. If you can help, contact him directly at: <astony2002@yahoo.com>

"Happy Naw Ruz. From the history of the Faith, we gather that the Blessed Body of the Bab was hidden for 10 years in the House of Abdullah Pasha, in the room occupied by the Greatest Holy Leaf. I would like to know the exact location where it was hidden, on the wall? under her bed? corner of her room?  I also would like to know (about) any article/paper written regarding the arrival of the Body into the House of Abdullah Pasha. I appreciate your help."

 

Discovery about the Baha'i Position on Darwinism

 

My recent interest in the proofs of deity led to a study of the Master's tablet to Dr. Forel, one of His last and most important messages. I mentioned some of my discoveries about Forel in a recent essay called “Targeting the theist worldview," <http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/targeting-theist-worldview.html> Around then, I was prompted to read a short monograph on Forel, and now the following, longer, book-length discussion of Forel's relation to the Faith, which I ordered from the publisher:

John Paul Vader, "For the Good of Mankind, August Forel and the Baha'i Faith," George Ronald, Oxford, 1984

This book corrects several errors and misconceptions about Forel's understanding of the Faith. The earlier monograph states that Forel had been an atheist, based on a mistranslation of the German word for skeptic. Forel started off as an agnostic or deist, and apparently kept up a correspondence with the Guardian for years, which was unfortunately destroyed by his heirs after he died. So it is difficult to be certain what his final beliefs were. After his death in the early 1930's, Shoghi Effendi called him a monist in the following letter,

"At any rate there is no doubt whatever that the well-known Tablet revealed by 'Abdu'l-Baha for him (Forel) had brought a tremendous change in his monistic theories and induced him to accept the Message openly.

"However great the contradictions in Dr. Forel's testament in regard to his attitude towards the Cause we cannot fail but to recognize him as a Baha'i who had but a partial glimpse of the Baha'i Revelation. No one can claim that his knowledge of this Revelation is adequate, especially at this time when the Baha'i Faith is still in the embryonic stage of its development. Dr. Forel was sincere in his convictions but like every human being his comprehension was limited and this was not in his power to change." (Shoghi Effendi, The Light of Divine Guidance v II, pp. 16-17)

The penultimate paragraph here by the Guardian is especially important, as it applies to us all. It is easy for those of us who have the leisure to read the Writings to imagine that we understand the Faith adequately. We do not, and nobody will for centuries; even the Guardian does not make such a claim, as this sentence implies.

Forel's daughter, Martha Brauns-Forel, was a Baha'i too, a stalwart of the German Baha'i community, who lived through the Nazi scourge. Her father first studied the faith when he was staying with her and her husband.

I still have not finished my little research project on Forel -- I would like to get a hold of some of his non-Baha'i writing, much of which appears fascinating even were he not a Baha'i. His socialistic, Esperantist beliefs will become more important now that the poverty of Friedmanism is becoming obvious even to the fanatic free marketer.

However, I cannot resist sharing now a little discovery made in this book, a short quote from the Master about Darwinism that does not turn up in an Ocean search. It comes from a conversation the Master had with some German fellow that was published in an obscure German-language periodical. I think it is important, concise and covers ground untouched elsewhere. We of course are familiar with Abdu'l-Baha's brief discussions of evolution in Some Answered Questions, including question 49, Growth and Development of the Human Race (SAQ, 191), and question 50, Spiritual Proofs of the Origin of Man (SAQ, 195). But these treat the philosophy of Baha'i belief on its own merits; the following implies that Darwin's theory was intended (as I had begun to suspect from other reading about him, and about the theory's co-discoverer, Wallace) not so much as a scientific theory as an attack by atheists on religion. Anyway, here is what the Master told the German,

"Moses taught that the world was brought into existence in the six days of creation. This is an allegory, a symbolic form of the ancient truth that the world evolved gradually. Darwin can refer to Moses for his theory of evolution. God did not allow the world to come into existence all at once, rather the divine breath of life manifested itself in the commanding Word of God, Logos, which engendered and begot the world. We thus have a progressive process of creation, and not a one-time happening. Moses' days of creation represent time spans of millions of years. From Pythagoras to ibn-i-Sina (known as Avicenna) to the `faithful brother from Basra', through Darwin and to the blessed Manifestations of the Bab and Baha'u'llah, both scholars and Prophets have testified to the progressive creative action of the Logos (divine breath of life). The Darwinian and monistic theories of evolution and the origin of species are not materialistic, atheistic ideas; they are religious truths which the godless and the deluded have unjustifiably used in their campaign against religion and the Bible." (For the Good of Mankind, p. 17)

 

Pupil of the eye

 

Here is the latest music video made up by London, Ontario Utube videographer Penny Filias, done in honor of the contributions to American culture by Blacks, called "pupils of the eye."

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKrAjeuYsgE

 The Youtube blurb says, "This video was created to recognize, highlight, and honor the spirit, excellence and achievements of but a few of the many contributions to society made by black people. 'Hats off' to those represented here and those regretfully omitted due to time and space limitations!"

 My only comment is that recent discoveries based on ever deeper investigation of our genome indicate that the human race went through a "bottleneck," that is, the genetic diversity of non-Africans was severely and permanently reduced by at least two natural disasters.

 That means, in my opinion, that in future people of African heritage will be in high demand as breeding stock, since hybrid vigor dictates that the more diversity in one's genetic heritage the more robust the offspring. Every father and mother will be pushing their daughters and sons to marry into an African family in order to bolster their grandchildren's genes against the shock of the pollution and poisons that are assaulting our bodies from every direction. Other studies have reinforced the evidence that we all originally came from Africa. What could be firmer ground for pride of place than the fact that the original of all humans is the black African?