Five Points

In the Lecturer's Superbowl

By John Taylor; 2008 Apr 08, 19 Baha, 165 BE

Some guys follow football, hockey or baseball, I follow the annual best lecturer competition among Ontario professors, sponsored by TVO on their show, Big Ideas. Since we do not have a television, I access the talks by means of TVO's podcast service. This year there was a delay of months as I figured out how to get the talks onto our iPod. Late last night at last I listened to my first contestant, one Christopher diCarlo. I found out this morning that he was the eventual winner of the contest. What a disappointment, like watching the Stanley Cup final as the season opener. Anyway, it probably deserved the honor as I learned a lot in spite of the fact that I was dropping off. His words washed over a semi-conscious brain. In other words, it was just like my old student days.

This lecture was broadcast on March 29 2008 and was called "The Relations of Natural Systems." <http://www.pluggd.tv/audio/channels/big_ideas/episodes/4486n>

I reviewed the talk again this morning, and here are my notes.

diCarlo opened up by pointing out that the greatest discovery in history was a negative one, that is, we learned to recognize what we do not know. Socrates and the other skeptics were the first teachers to teach about the limits to knowledge, and to show how effective epistemological humility can be. It is how the scientific method came about.

(half asleep, I think: obviously this fellow is an atheist, since religion has been teaching that humility since day one by means of an obscure technique known as "prayer")

diCarlo continues, saying that there are 5 questions that are the most important in the world, namely,

What do or can I know?

Who or what am I? or, How do I define myself?

Why am I here at all?

How should I behave?

What is to come of me?

As he listed these questions, a strange image popped into my semi-catatonic mind of a pentacle or star. This is the symbol of man, and was the form in which several Tablets of the Bab and Baha'u'llah were written, and here it was, floating before my face. As he named each of the five questions it appeared at a pointy end. The first question, what can I know?, popped up at the "head" of the pentacle. What am I? came on the right "hand" or arm of the star, and why am I? sat at the left hand. The right point or leg was the question, how to act? and at the left leg was, what is to become of me?

diCarlo went on to say that each question can be answered naturally (small t truth) or supernaturally, by means of big "t" Truth. The natural or scientific answer would be something like:

What can I know? This is limited by language and my understanding of the physical universe.

Who am I? I am a physical being that evolved through accidental combinations of atoms over millions of years in a chaotic universe.

Why am I here? Accidentally, without reason. We could as easily have not been here.

How should I behave? That depends on the rules we come up with in discussion. We may decide on a Machiavellian "might is right" approach, or take an egalitarian, cooperative approach.

What is to come of me? Nothing. We have one life to live, so do not blow it.

Or, alternatively, the questions can be answered supernaturalistically, or in terms of religion.

What do or can I know? I know absolute truth. How do I know that? I have it all written down here in this holy book. I can just read my infallible guidance out to you.

Who or what am I? I am essentially a spiritual being. Behind the physical body is a je ne sais quoi.

Why am I here? To do God's work. To behave in a manner befitting the God that created me.

How am to behave? According to what the scriptures tell me.

What is to become of me? That depends how I behave towards others while I am here.

Our learned professor then goes on to say that the latter supernatural world view is absolutely certain. Believers say, "I have nailed it." Many believers, maybe, but not Baha'is. Our world view is as relativistic as any scientist's. The Guardian, following the Iqan, stated that,

"the fundamental principle which constitutes the bedrock of Baha'i belief (is) the principle that religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is orderly, continuous and progressive and not spasmodic or final." (Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Baha'u'llah, 115)

The physical monument of our relativistic credo, of our as it were "post-Einsteinian" transcendentalism is the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar, which according to the Guardian is a symbol of the "fundamental verity underlying the Baha'i Faith, that religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is not final but progressive." (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, 185)

This relativism of Baha'is raises the question, if we recognize and claim to know the absolute, why are we not absolutists? Would it not be more loyal to our Creator to hold that God is capable of giving us absolute certainty by the miracle of faith?

No, again, I hark back to the existence of prayer. If God made us absolutely certain there would be no need for prayer. If there were no uncertainty, if our will were utterly identical with God's, Jesus for instance would not have prayed to have the cup of martyrdom to be taken from His lips. No, there would not even be a need for questions. The pentacle that symbolizes the human, and the five questions coming out of its points, would have as little meaning for people as it does to a rat or a tree.