p13 Why We Fight

The Burden of Proof of Deity

By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 22, 16 Mulk, 164 BE

This year I feel a calling, the spirit calls one must answer. I feel a strange proximity with at least two inmates of the Great Beyond, William Hatcher and G.W. von Leibniz. Leibniz was a great genius, but I feel an affinity to him in one respect at least -- like him, I keep calling for planning, organization and a cooperative approach to planned knowledge, and all the while in my own writing I am the reverse, solitary, unplanned, and sadly disparate, not to say disorganized. Just like old GW. As one article about GW says,

"Leibniz called for the creation of an empirical database as a way to further all sciences. His characteristica universalis, calculus ratiocinator, and a "community of minds" intended, among other things, to bring political and religious unity to Europe -- can be seen as distant unwitting anticipations of artificial languages (e.g., Esperanto and its rivals), symbolic logic, even the World Wide Web." (Leibniz, Wiki)

Leibniz believed in that all-important goal: unity. He held that the more knowledge we have at our command the less excuse we have to be disunited. Nor had he given up on religious unity. All these were fundamental principles of the Master.

I have taken on the atheists because they consciously reject both planning and unity. They not only spit out the central organizing Principle of the universe, God, they also reject the basic faith that G.W. Leibniz stood for, the belief that ignorance divides and knowledge will ultimately unite. They and their false gods, materialist ideologies, such as nationalism, communism and capitalism, eschew all planning and unification. They not only do not aspire to that, they fight it at every turn. Having denied God, they made denial into an art form. They honed their skills on alcohol and cigarettes, and then they turned to the environment, the one issue that affects our long term survival most directly. Even as the evidence of climate change piles above our heads, they continue to deny and cast doubt on it. Power inebriates, and denial is upheld for its own sake. To deny a Good God is ultimately to deny all good, all compassion. To deny the Eternal is to end concern for anything to do with long term considerations.

I always return to the one example that, sooner or later, must turn into an atrocity on a scale to dwarf anything that Stalin, Mao, Hitler or any other atheistic madman has subjected us to so far. I am speaking of the Chicago School of economists, headed by atheist Milton Freedman, who were responsible for decades of aggressive enforcement of restrictive government policies of "belt-tightening" around the world. They forced, threatened and extorted governments to avoid investing in human supports or infrastructure. They are thus directly responsible for the marginalization of over a billion poor in slums and favelas, none of whom benefit from the advantages of schooling, paid work, basic utilities, health care or even housing, none of the things that put our pampered and learned unbelievers in their privileged position in the first place.

These souls have none but God to protect them, and I pray for them constantly. The kids, during our children's Baha'i class, asked me once why I am so concerned about atheism, and as I explained why, the anger rose and I almost broke down in tears.

The position of these billions is so precarious, and as the seas rise around the planet, this is a humanitarian disaster in the making on a scale unheard of in history. As they start to die, keep in mind the scale involved. Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the three worst killers among atheist leaders, were only able to murder, directly and indirectly, quite a bit less than a hundred million souls each. Now our learned Chicago economists bid fair to kill billions, which will beat them out by an entire order of magnitude. Yet you just have to pick up a newspaper to find open admiration of callous and blatant selfishness. It is enough to make you want to vomit.

One of the issues in the believer-atheist debate is the question of weight of proof. Who has the burden of proof, the believer or the atheist? Is God the default, or doubt? I came across this, from the Universal House of Justice, writing in the mid-1980's, which makes it pretty clear where they stand on this question.

"The time has come when those who preach the dogmas of materialism, whether of the east or the west, whether of capitalism or socialism, must give account of the moral stewardship they have presumed to exercise. Where is the `new world' promised by these ideologies? Where is the international peace to whose ideals they proclaim their devotion? Where are the breakthroughs into new realms of cultural achievement produced by the aggrandizement of this race, of that nation or of a particular class? Why is the vast majority of the world's peoples sinking ever deeper into hunger and wretchedness when wealth on a scale undreamed of by the Pharaohs, the Caesars, or even the imperialist powers of the nineteenth century is at the disposal of the present arbiters of human affairs?" (The Universal House of Justice, 1985 Oct, The Promise of World Peace, paragraph 21)

Having read the squirming of atheists to avoid the burden of proof for so long, I can see clearly how in this passage the UHJ completely reverses the weight of proof. It is up to the ideologues to justify what they have done to the suffering masses of humanity. God has never had a chance to run things, and never will until the masses finally start thinking for themselves and hold to account their mesmerizers.

It was therefore with great interest that I started to read the chapter on the "failed god of communism" in Christopher Hitchins' book, "God is not Great." Surely here I would hear their side of the debate. After all, Hitchens is a former Marxist, and only when that failed did he become one of the "unholy trinity" of anti-theists.

I was sorely disappointed.

I read it carefully, and read between the lines, and the only thing he seemed to be admitting was, "Marxism failed because it became a religion; religion is everywhere, and it is evil." He mentions Doris Lessing, who renounced Marxism when she heard that the Kremlin had broken into the Imperial museum and was putting the old regime's instruments of torture back to use.

As he points out, the same process happens everywhere, in Korea, in Albania; the longer atheist communism keeps its stranglehold on the people, the more religion-like it becomes. Thus, however much Hitchins demonizes religion, he has no choice but to admit that faith is an ineradicable, if not natural, part of the human condition. Even when atheists stay completely at the helm over many decades they must use the techniques of religion, or they fall apart. Even then they fall apart. They have no choice, since this benighted human race must flex its spiritual reflexes, or we die.

We die anyway, but I mean sooner.

Communism became a quasi-faith to keep its hold on the hearts as well as the bodies of large numbers of people, and it failed. The longer the experiment failed, the more obvious the need for faith became.

One point I have not seen brought up in this debate is the psychic damage that communism had on the people who lived through it. This is obvious to me, since I am married to one of its victims. For one thing, post-communism birth rates in these places remain ridiculously low to this day, almost two decades after the fall of the wall. This ideology bred an evil that is still wiping the people out, albeit in a less bloody manner. Official atheism gave women a visceral feeling that bringing a new life into the world is not only not worth the sacrifice; it is a positively immoral act. And at the same time that birth rates were dropping through the floor, alcoholism was shooting through the roof. Atheism is bad for the liver; it gives men the idea that our only hope is in a bottle.

Yet the mild and mealy-mouthed defenders of God in these debates continue meekly to sit back and defend. They let the burden of proof shift onto their side. They quake from taking the atheists of both right and left to task for their centuries-long failures. The center is falling apart, why will the center not hold? Give me Shoghi Effendi -- the one the Master called the "sign of God" -- on ideologies and atheism any day. He wrote in no uncertain terms,

"The Hegelian philosophy which, in other countries, has, in the form of an intolerant and militant nationalism, insisted on deifying the state, has inculcated the war-spirit, and incited to racial animosity, has, likewise, led to a marked weakening of the Church and to a grave diminution of its spiritual influence.

"Unlike the bold offensive which an avowedly atheistic movement had chosen to launch against it, both within the Soviet union and beyond its confines, this nationalistic philosophy, which Christian rulers and governments have upheld, is an attack directed against the Church by those who were previously its professed adherents, a betrayal of its cause by its own kith and kin. It was being stabbed by an alien and militant atheism from without, and by the preachers of a heretical doctrine from within.

"Both of these forces, each operating in its own sphere and using its own weapons and methods, have moreover been greatly assisted and encouraged by the prevailing spirit of modernism, with its emphasis on a purely materialistic philosophy, which, as it diffuses itself, tends increasingly to divorce religion from man's daily life." (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, 182-183)

The Guardian died before post-modernism came to the fore, with its deification of division and its sick moral relativism. This movement is too distasteful to have a wide appeal, but it is all too influential in the halls of academe. It, and movements like it, has successfully neutralized any strong guidance or positive action that the learned might have taken to plan our way out of this mess. Shoghi Effendi remains perfectly correct that the only hope we have is the Plan of God, even expelled and exiled from where it should have been embraced long ago, in the universities, laboratories and in the hearts of the ravaged peoples living in the West's centers of materialism,

"May this Crusade ... teaching Plans, and the concerted efforts of Baha'i communities in both the East and the West, provide, as it unfolds, an effective antidote to the baneful forces of atheism, nationalism, secularism and materialism that are tearing at the vitals of this turbulent continent, and may it re-enact those scenes of spiritual heroism which, more than any of the secular revolutions which have agitated its face, have left their everlasting imprint on the fortunes of the peoples and nations dwelling within its borders." (October, 1953, Shoghi Effendi, Dawn of a New Day, 171-172)

Loose ends

Gathering Loose Ends

It would be remiss to let the news of the BIC's poverty statement go without mention on this blog. It is called "Eradicating Poverty: Moving Forward as One," and can be read in its entirety at:

<http://bic.org/statements-and-reports/bic-statements/08-0214.htm>

 In researching this paper the UN Baha'i body consulted with Baha'i communities in several countries, taking advantage of the widespread nature of the Faith. I think this is the first time they have done that, and it is a good idea. As a result, they came up with an interesting definition of poverty.

"Poverty can be described as the absence of those ethical, social and material resources needed to develop the moral, intellectual and social capacities of individuals, communities and institutions. Moral reasoning, group decision-making and freedom from racism, for example, are all essential tools for poverty alleviation. Such capacities must shape individual thinking as well as institutional arrangements and policy-making. To be clear, the goal at hand is not only to remove the ills of poverty but to engage the masses of humanity in the construction of a just global order."

`Abdu'l-Baha might have added to this the need for an impulse from soul, a will, a plan, a habit of charity, and what He called the Power of the Holy Spirit, all of which are necessary to eradicate the extremes of poverty. The BIC adds that we need a spiritual turnaround,

"It is now increasingly acknowledged that such conditions as the marginalization of girls and women, poor governance, ethnic and religious antipathy, environmental degradation and unemployment constitute formidable obstacles to the progress and development of communities. These evidence a deeper crisis -- one rooted in the values and attitudes that shape relationships at all levels of society."

They say we have reason for hope for success when they write in the introduction that "a palpable optimism emerges from the attention and momentum generated by the search for solutions to this worldwide challenge." I plan to write more about this in due course.

It is difficult to grasp the deeply revolutionary nature of this Revelation. This will remain so for centuries to come. According to notes by one Bob Sylvester, Doug Martin stated in a talk that,

"the Bab was the only revolutionary in the last 100 years. Other so-called revolutionaries were only interested in their own particular part of the world. The Bab's vision was both revolutionary and universal. His Revolution focused on altering the consciousness of mankind. The Bab was the Receptacle of an entirely new Order. He broke Words open. He needed to use vocabulary in a way that expressed conceptions that were beyond the capacity of the "educated" of the time."

 For example, as we saw here not too long ago, we owe the concept of "Manifestation," as opposed to "prophet," to the Bab. This is important to bear in mind now that a new book by Nader Saiedi on the Writings of the Bab is being put out by the ABS next month. It is called "Gate of the Heart: Understanding the Writings of the Bab," and can be found at:

 http://www.bahai-studies.ca/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=A&Category_Code=LIT

 The Bab was the main influence on Abdu'l-Baha in his formative years; in childhood, He was a Babi not a Baha'i, and memorized the Bab's Tablets, not those of Baha'u'llah, most of which were yet to be revealed. So when you feel the genius of the Master, the language He uses in formulating the Baha'i principles was born in the Bab's use of language. So, not to be wordy about this, I am looking forward with great anticipation to getting my hot little hands on Saidi's analysis, which I just ordered in advance.

 For some years the Universal House of Justice has been encouraging Baha'is to make use of blogging in their teaching efforts. The original idea of a blog was a place where you share your links; posts are brief and to the point, and restrict themselves to URL's where the reader can follow your footsteps throught the tangled Web that the Internet is weaving. However, for an essayist like myself, blogging is the exclusive forum for all work and opinions. Either way, Writer's Magazine, always willing to hand out advice, offers the following "20 Tips for Good Blogging," at:

http://www.writersdigest.com/writersperspective/20+Tips+For+Good+Blogging.aspx

My wife Marie has become a blogger too, mostly in Czech. Here is her English blog:

<http://mariebernadetta.blogspot.com/>

Our two kids are both either planning or actively working on blogs of their own, and I will announce their URL's in due time. From my point of view, all this blogging in one house puts tremendous competitive strain on our computers. True, we have three computers available, plus one in parts in the garage, but still I find that whenever I get up for a snack or a drink of water I return to find my seat has been taken by one of our three other, rival writers. Whatever happened to diversity in hobbies? Why can't somebody take up needlecraft, or skydiving, or something?

Reader Lynnea writes: "I have been wondering if you have heard of, or are involved with FreeCycle (which in many places in Canada has changed to Full Circle)? I like the basic idea of keeping things out of the landfill, and it's also a great way to meet new people for me." She shares the following links:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freecycledunnville/

http://www.fullcircles.org/

For some years I have been an inactive member of the above freecycle group. Our junk is piling up, so I guess I had better become less active. I admire Lynnea's impressive efforts at recycling goods en masse, which dwarfs anything I have heard of around here. I have always thought that the products sold in used good stores, such as Goodwill, Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul, should be housed in large packing containers and trucked from town to town on a regular basis. By increasing exposure, their products would be more likely to be sold to a good owner.

Looking for something else, I stumbled across the following cautionary note from the secretariat of the UHJ, called "Taking Positions on Political Decisions of Governments." It is not clear to me if this is coming straight from the infallible institution or just its minions, but it is worth considering in either case:

"One of the greatest obstacles to progress is the tendency of Baha'is to be drawn into the general attitudes and disputes that surround them. The central importance of the principle of avoidance of politics and controversial matters is that Baha'is should not allow themselves to be involved in the disputes of the many conflicting elements of the society around them. The aim of the Baha'is is to reconcile viewpoints, to heal divisions, and to bring about tolerance and mutual respect among men, and this aim is undermined if we allow ourselves to be swept along by the ephemeral passions of others." (2003 Jan 12, Taking Positions on Political Decisions of Governments)

It seems to me that there is a fine line we have to tread here. On the one hand, it is unlikely anybody is ever going to pay us much mind if we restrict ourselves only to insipid, non-controversial issues. At some point, the principle of consultation kicks in. We only consult about what matters to us, what is of concern, and what will make a difference to our lives at the time that we consult. Nobody bothers to deliberate about matters passed in the past.

On the other hand, attitudes are such that if you respond to a controversial issue, you are playing right into the hands of rabble rousers who have defined the question in their own terms. Their goal is to divide and conquer, and usually if you say boo one way or the other, you only contribute to polarization that invisible puppet masters have set going. It is impossible to come away clean and pure from a mud wrestling match.

John Grayzel made an interesting comment in an interview in the latest World Order Magazine about this question. I had heard of "deep ecology," which takes environmentalism to a rather silly extreme, but I had never heard of "deep consultation." Deep consultation, done in a Baha'i way, seems to make a lot more sense than deep ecology.

"Another contribution to development of the Chair will be the concept of approaching problems through consultation. Even at the University of Maryland's Center for International Development and Conflict Management, where people are dealing with conflict management, the reigning paradigm is negotiation, or perhaps sometimes arbitration, or maybe, occasionally, remediation.2 But all of these are binary models. It is always about somebody versus somebody else, and the object is to balance out interests so each party can walk away without beating the other up."

World Order Interviewer: "Or compromise?"

Grayzel: "That is right. The idea the Baha'i Chair would like to explore is this: `How do we all come out better by working together, perhaps through something that neither of us even imagined when we starred?' The nearest we get to this involves techniques called principle-based negotiation. But even when you analyze such techniques, you find that they are based on the presumption that people are fundamentally motivated only by their own interests. Rarely do they accept the idea that people can truly rise above their own interests and find a common, higher purpose.

"Deep consultation is another area that I hope the Chair will explore. Consultation is something that can be used in conflict resolution. It can also be useful in other arenas. For example, how can business work with civil society so that common goals, not differences, are stressed? It is not helpful to say: `Business is there to make a profit, and government is there to control it.' Why isn't there a way in which we can look at our common purposes and find common solutions? Hence the idea of using consultation as the basic approach to problem solving is another area on which the Chair will focus.

It seems to me that "deep consultation" is all about going beyond negative freedom (as described in yesterday's Badi' Blog essay) and looking at positive freedom, which is invisible but far more important. The Columbia Encyclopedia uses an excellent example explaining this distinction: a smoker takes several turns on the way to pick up a pack of fags. Outwardly he is free to turn wherever he wishes, but invisible enslavement of body and mind force him to go where he does. He has negative freedom but is heteronymous, he has no positive liberty, or autonomy, of his own.

As Jesus said, the truth shall set you free.

That is, truth has a force of its own to liberate us from the thin, diaphanous, insidious "veils" of slavery to our desires. As He said to Pilate, I do what I do that the truth may be perfected. That is what we all should be doing, perfecting the truth, no matter what our outer motions. The only truly, perfectly ordained motions that I know of are the genuflections of the Oblig.

I think of this as I go through these motions during my every other day saying of the Long Oblig.

I think then of my positive freedom, for only now are my bodily motions totally under divine command. These movements seem designed by God to collect together all those thin veils of superstition and negative freedom -- when I kneel with face to ground they settle around my sides, then I suddenly leap to the air, my hands spread out in the air, and that tears, rips them to shreds. Doing that leaves the solar panels of my soul with a direct interface to truth, and I have a little higher energy level for the next twenty-four or (in my case) 48 hour period without bodily expressed prayer. Only after such prayer-in-motion is one detached enough to indulge in what Grayzel calls "deep consultation." I think that this is what Baha'u'llah was talking about when he expressed the following value judgment about the Baha'is He met with personally,

"'The Blessed Beauty often remarked; "There are four qualities which I love to see manifested in people: first, enthusiasm and courage; second, a face wreathed in smiles and a radiant countenance; third, that they see all things with their own eyes and not through the eyes of others; fourth, the ability to carry a task once begun through to its end.'" (Stories of Baha'u'llah, Compiled by 'Ali-'Akbar Furutan, 51)

Baha'u'llah, I think, was looking for outer manifestations of positive liberty. It was clear whether we were doing our prayers, it was written on our faces. If the solar panels are free of veils, your batteries are fully energetic, your moral courage is strong, you smile, the soul is radiant, you look for yourself at the truth that you are perfecting, you focus, you carry things through to the proper end. And when you talk, your consultation skills are deep, and positive rather than negative in both truth and freedom.

p33 The One Gotcha

Sharing and Positive Liberty

By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 20, 14 Mulk, 164 BE

I use videos to keep my thoughts turned to where they can do the most good, that is, the urgent question of whether we are responding to Global Warming, and if not, why not?

 Toward that end I got out an eleven-year-old VHS video tape from the Dundas Library called "Turning Down the Heat; The New Energy Revolution." It is narrated by David Suzuki and was produced by Canada's National Film Board; it has the usual upbeat, optimistic tone, assuming that innovations like electric cars and wind turbines will catch on soon. It sounded sparkling new, most of it, very innovative and doable. So much can easily be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and as they point out, much work is underway. But three quarters of the way through I realized with a chill the reason that a 1997 film about alternative energy can seem so fresh and undated after over a decade was because virtually nothing has been done in the interval to implement these ideas. In fact, as with the electric car, what little progress was underway back then has been either reversed or nullified. It is all documented in the film, "Who Killed the Electric Car," available in most libraries.

 The most interesting and promising energy technology of all is, they explain, geothermal heating for buildings. All you have to do is drill down into the earth and shoot down water-exchange pipes to heat your home or office. Unlimited warmth is under our feet. With this method you get all the free, greenhouse-gas-free energy that you could ask for. But, as they explain, there is one gotcha.

 You have to share.

 You have to enter into contracts with your neighbors above and below to freely allow the heat to rise up from floor to ceiling. You might say, "Well, that does not seem so hard. Just sign a contract." No way. Sharing and sharing alike goes against the very heart of our system. Then in a very impressive shot, they just take an airplane over a city as they explain, and I am paraphrasing freely,

 "Our whole capitalist system is designed to avoid sharing. Independence is our ideal; dependence on one another is anathema. That is why each of these buildings is freestanding, completely exposed to the elements, and churning away at the fossil fuels. Anything but connect together and share not only the heat but public spaces and facilities. It does not matter how efficient this would be, we love our freedom and independence more than anything."

 If they had just said that with nothing going on on the screen it would not be as persuasive as zooming over a typical city with its high buildings standing apart from one another and reaching crazily into the sky, instead of doing the common-sensical thing, hugging each other and the free energy to be derived from the ground. I think the cityscape was Vancouver, but it could have been any city in the world. Their point makes you see how powerful and universal is our drive for total independence from one another, or to speak more exactly, our drive to deny the interdependence that is inherent both to our bodies and our souls.

 I think the distinction, popularized by Isaiah Berlin, between positive and negative freedom explains our puzzling, suicidal drive to stand apart, even unto death. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains it in this way,

 "Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting -- or the fact of acting -- in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities." (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/)

 Now Baha'u'llah defined liberty differently, according not to the divide between individuals and collectivities, but to the distinction between animals and humans. If I understand the Kitab-i-Aqdas (not to mention the Lawh-i-Aqdas) correctly, animal liberty is negative, and human liberty is positive. That is, the animal level is wholly subject to the arbitrary law of nature, whereas the human level, being endowed with the capacity to comprehend the abstract laws of nature, can wield power over natural law. As a result, it is a willed, planned kind of liberty. According to this, only the human being can achieve what Kant called autonomy, whereas an animal by its very nature can only aspire to heteronomy, or negative freedom.

 The reason our cities are so stubbornly dedicated to an architecture of freestanding folly, exposed surface area and all-around wasted energy is that we only understand negative freedom, the kind of freedom that allows the individual to do what he or she wants as long as no harm is done to others. As Baha'u'llah says, this is the freedom of brute beasts that indulge their appetites without considering anything beyond sensual pleasure and avoidance of pain. Beasts evolve physically, not mentally, and do not hold to principles, ideals or theories.

 The reason we are suspicious of positive freedom, the kind that is compatible with sharing, is that we deny even the possibility of positive, human freedom. We see each other as animals, and deny whatever goes beyond the vision of the materialist. We equate positive liberty with totalitarianism. We assume no matter what, that the state will by its very nature, by our very nature, arrogate to itself the job of enforcing obligatory positive freedom, whether we want it or not. The Stanford article continues,

 "As Berlin showed, negative and positive liberty are not merely two distinct kinds of liberty; they can be seen as rival, incompatible interpretations of a single political ideal. Since few people claim to be against liberty, the way this term is interpreted and defined can have important political implications. Political liberalism tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. Critics of liberalism often contest this implication by contesting the negative definition of liberty: they argue that the pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization or as self-determination (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) can require state intervention of a kind not normally allowed by liberals."

 This is important to remember, for here the Baha'i principles vary from their usually liberal stance. Shoghi Effendi's famous maxim that the Baha'i Faith is orthodox in morals but liberal in principle is not without its escape clauses. We do not stand for negative freedom, but for positive autonomy. Nor is this autonomy defined or derived exclusively in terms of the state; it comes primarily from the individual's search for truth, and this individual advancement is, or should be, supported by religious and other major social institutions. Consultation harmonious combines spiritual initiative with planning based on social conscience.

 Positive freedom is enshrined and embodied in the Baha'i principles. From them we learn that each and all have a positive duty to develop themselves to the fullest degree possible. Where there are systemic obstacles, the principle of promotion of education kicks in. All have a positive right and duty to investigate truth for themselves, and where some fail or do not have the means, all must see to it that such injustices are permanently removed. Our plans and built space should aim at making each person an independent seeker, empowered, enfranchised, happy. This has nothing to do with totalitarianism and everything to do with sharing. It is our only escape from runaway global climate anarchy.

p13eth

The Moral Revolution leading to the Lawh-i-Aqdas

By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 19, 13 Mulk, 164 BE

One thing you notice right away like a slap in the face when encountering the New Atheists is an attitude of overweening arrogance. They are proud, and consider it demeaning for anybody to believe in an Almighty God; the teaching of religion is nothing more than a set of instructions in how to be slavish. The moral outlook of faith is unworthy of free men. In spite of their name, 'new' atheists, their attitude is not new; it has been around as long as power was centralized, as long as too much civilization corrupted those who led it. It was born as soon as a few came to lord it over the many, and it continues today, in a time when the numbers of downtrodden has grown from mere millions to more than a billion souls. In the time of the Roman Empire by some estimates three quarters of the population were slaves. The proportion of rich to poor today is, in spite of vast increases in wealth, far worse. Iniquity, thy name is Western Civilization! So little wonder the anti-theists are bold and brash, they are on top and nothing but a Deus ex Machina has a hope of bringing them down.

Today I pass the Badi Blog off to my betters, first to Jesus, specifically the first thing He said in His Sermon on the Mount, the nine Beatitudes. Then the baton goes to Patrick Glynn, whose wonderful explanation of the revolutionary moral significance of the beatitudes came as a revelation to me. Here I thought I knew the first thing about Christianity. I had not realized how diametrically opposed the beatitudes were to the moral outlook of the Greko-Roman world. What a forceful reminder of why Baha'u'llah called His own tablet addressed to Christians His "Holiest Tablet," (Lawh-i-Aqdas), and why it ends with a set of twenty-one – our age of majority -- beatitudes of His Own.

The Beatitudes

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt 5:3-12, NIV)

 
 from God: The Evidence, Patrick Glynn, Chapter Five, Reason and Spirit (pp. 138-139)

Such is the great surprise as the twentieth century turns into the twenty-first: The very logic of human inquiry is compelling a rediscovery of the realm of spirit, of God and the soul. This process has both a positive and a negative thrust. In the first place, we see the mounting evidence for the existence of a spiritual dimension of reality. Along with this new evidence has come a growing recognition of the severe limitations of science and reason as tools for understanding the ultimate truths.

 

A MORAL REVOLUTION (pp. 152-155)

We should point out how radically novel these ideas were in human history. To be sure, the Greek philosophers developed a universal idea of "man" that saw the irrelevance of cultural and ethnic standards. It was this philosophical universalism that ultimately underlay both the culturally syncretic Hellenic empire and the later expansion of Roman citizenship to non-Roman cities and individuals.

But as free as philosophical universalism might have been from cultural prejudice, it was deeply hierarchical in its view of the human being, when it came to class and gender as well as intellect, beauty, and other qualities and talents. It divided human beings not so much by culture as into categories of "high" and "low." Citizenship in the ancient world was more in the nature of a privilege than a right, something that differentiated a "gentleman" from inferiors; women were, of course, denied political participation, and slaves were legally defined as property or chattel. (Notably, crucifixion was a form of punishment generally not suffered by Roman citizens and normally reserved for slaves.) In the doctrine of the Greek philosophers, perhaps not surprisingly, the philosopher was understood as the highest and best man who had a "natural" right to rule over his less intelligent fellow citizens.

Even more important, the classical philosophers' ideas of virtue, as is well known, were radically at odds with those of Christianity. They viewed compassion as a sign of weakness and humility as the embodiment of contemptibility. The most "virtuous" man, according to Aristotle, was the man with a "great soul" who "thinks he deserves great things and actually deserves them." Modesty and humility were far from virtues; they indicated mikropsychia) or a "small soul":

"A man who underestimates himself is small-minded [that is, literally, "small-souled"] regardless of whether his worth is great or moderate, or whether it is small and he thinks it is smaller still."

For Aristotle and the Greek philosophers generally, the "worth" of a human being could be ranked; some people were simply worth more than others-notably the intelligent, the beautiful, the proud, and so forth. Moreover, after philosophy, or intelligence, pride was the core virtue of the classical philosophical outlook, the "crown of the virtues. " (Richard McKeon translates Aristotle's notion of "big-souledness" simply as "pride." See Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle, New York: Random House, 1941, p. 992)

When Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount with the statement "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3), he is flying in the face of this classical worldview and, of course, of the views of "this world" generally. Indeed, as the atheist philosopher Nietzsche recognized, the essential logic of classical virtue was radically this-worldly, not surprisingly, since it was based purely on reasoning about the material and human world. In the classical understanding, the strong, the beautiful, the intelligent, the rich were not just better off but morally better than the weak, the poor, the meek, the downtrodden.

That is why Nietzsche, in some ways the embodiment of the Satanic voice in modern philosophy (even by his own definition!) (As Nietzsche wrote, "Goal: the sanctification of the most powerful, most fertile and most excellently infamous forces, to use the old image: the deification of the devil." Quoted in Liliane FreyRohn, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Psychological Approach to His Life and Work, tr. Gary Massey, Zurich: Daimon, 1989, p. 191), identified the rise of Christianity in the ancient world as a fundamental moral revolution and the triumph of what he called "slave morality. "

All of our most modern ideas about humaneness, kindness, and charity, about ethnic, cultural, and religious tolerance, and about the essential dignity of the human being -- regardless of race, gender, abilities, or station -- originated in the New Testament. This is not to say that they are the exclusive preserve of Christianity -- or even that they have been practiced by  Christianity or Christians more than by other religions or peoples. Such values lie at the core of every major religion. (As Gandhi said, "If a man goes to the heart of his own religion, he has reached to the heart of the others, too." (Robert Ellsberg, ed., Gandhi on Christianity, Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis, 1991, p. 12)

But as a purely historical matter, the New Testament is the point where these values entered the bloodstream of human history, where the vision appeared with a wholeness and emphasis capable of transforming the nature of human societies. That this transformation has taken two thousand years and is still far from complete should not be surprising, given what we know about the nature of human beings, given what a scientist might attribute to biology and a Christian to "sin."

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Western philosophy is like the prodigal son of Jesus' parable, at the end of his long quest for freedom. So untenable are his circumstances that even pride must eventually surrender. And pride is precisely what he must surrender before he can return to the Father. But will not the call of the Father eventually prevail? Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, p. 147)

Note that the New Testament makes the opposite' claim: All public goodness is based on private goodness. Indeed, Jesus' most radical assertion is that we are what we think in our inmost private thoughts: A married man who desires another woman has already committed adultery (Matthew 5:27-28). The human evils we see in the world originate in the evil thoughts of human beings.

"But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, slanders" (Matthew 15:18-19).

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Examples of Jesus' message of tolerance, from GOD: The Evidence, p. 151

The message of tolerance, of the irrelevance of cultural, ethnic, and even religious divisions, pervades the New Testament texts.

When Jesus is asked to define the concept of loving one's neighbor, he tells the story of the good Samaritan, who helps a man who has been beaten by the roadside, after a priest and a Levite pass him by (Luke 29: 25-37). The priest and the Levite belonged culturally to the "holiest" rank in first-century Jewish society. Samaritans were viewed as an "unclean" race, literally Untermenschen. (Jews and Samaritans had feelings for each other resembling those of today's Serbs and Croats, only more intense.) In the gospel of John, Jesus converses with and accepts a drink from a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. This is a violation of the religious taboo against sharing a vessel with a Samaritan woman, who was regarded as unclean. The woman registers surprise: "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" His disciples are similarly "amazed" to come upon him in the midst of this conversation with an untouchable (John 4:5-42). Jesus' attitudes toward women were notably "modern" and advanced, a point also illustrated in the synoptic gospels.

In the story of the sisters Mary and Martha, Mary is portrayed as absorbed in Jesus' discussion of spiritual matters, while Martha plays the traditional role of preparing an elaborate supper. When Martha complains of her sister, Jesus reproves Martha, indicating that there was no reason to prepare an elaborate meal ("only one thing is necessary"), that this was her choice, and that her sister Mary had "chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:38-42).21 (Jesus' attitudes toward women were also a good deal more advanced than Paul's, whose culturally saturated views  of women's subordinate role in public worship prevailed in Christian thinking for most of the past two thousand years.)

Interfaith Advice

Here are some things that readers have sent me over the last few days. First, the Reggie-inspired theme song for World Religion Day called One World, on YouTube. Then, if you are looking for somewhere to go while humming that tune, "Why I Believe: Journeys of Faith," a series of discussions responding to the New Atheists, taking place in Hamilton. Then, a new book on how to conduct yourself while at that meeting, called "What the World Needs to Know about Interfaith Dialogue," put out by my old buddy and eminent television personality, Dick Landau. If you cannot afford to spring for that, Ed sent me some rough and ready advice on interfaith interaction principles, taken from "Islam for Dummies."

 

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 World Religion Day Song, One World

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgYabZpne3A

 

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 Why I Believe: Journeys of Faith

 

  A two-part series sponsored by the Hamilton Interfaith Group,

  WED. MARCH 5 AND WED. APRIL 2, 2008, 7-9 PM,

  HAMILTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, 55 York Blvd

  (auditorium, first floor).

  Entrance is free. Refreshments provided.

  In an age when faith in God is being ridiculed, portrayed as a delusion, and religion in general is regarded with suspicion, why do people persevere in believing? What does religion or Faith offer to people? Why does it matter? This series invites individuals of various faith communities in Hamilton to discuss why they believe and why religion matters to them.

 

  SERIES PARTICIPANTS:

  March 5: Moderator: ANNE M. PEARSON

  RICHARD PRESTON, QUAKER

  YAHYA FADLALA, MUSLIM

  MAHENDRA DEONARAIN, HINDU

  JOY WARNER, CATHOLIC

 

  APRIL 2: Moderator: CHRISTOPHER CUTLER

  JOSEPH WOODS, BAHA'I

  SISTER TINH QUANG, BUDDHIST

  RABBI JORDAN COHEN, JEWISH

  For more information: email A. Pearson pearsonam@sympatico.ca or Chris Cutler christophercutt@gmail.com

 

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 "What the World Needs to Know about Interfaith Dialogue"

 

  by Richard M. Landau, MA

  Comprehensive ebook shows you how to build bridges between conflicting religions.

  Yes, it's true that many wars and conflicts have started over religion. Now here's an electronic book that shows you how purposeful inter-religious dialogue can actually bring about peace. The product of 25 years of research and practice, What the World Needs to Know about Interfaith Dialogue, is a comprehensive ebook that covers virtually every aspect of dialogue between diverse religious groups.

  blurb: "Finally someone has shown how the world religions can  work together for the common good. It's about time!"

  by Richard M. Landau, MA Toronto, Canada

  http://www.how-to-succeed-at-interfaith-dialogue.com/

 

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 Moving toward Religious Dialogue  Adapted From: Islam For Dummies

  Principles of dialogue

 Participation in a local interfaith organization is one of the better ways to get to know people of other religions, because you not only find out more about other religions, you also get to know people of differing faiths at the personal level. In this time of dialogue, keep in mind the following guidelines:

  Practicing fairness: Each side must represent the beliefs of the other side in a way that members of the other religion can affirm as accurate.

  Expressing empathy: Each side must make an honest effort to appreciate the appeal of the other religion to those who are attracted to it and to understand how the religion functions for its believers and makes sense to them.

  Avoiding misuse of scripture: In dialogue, you can't apply your own scripture to determine what's valid or invalid about beliefs of other side. If you do this, no dialogue takes place and each side quotes its own proof texts.

  Staying open to change and challenge: Participants don't want to simply repeat the party line of their religions without grappling with what the other side says. Otherwise, no dialogue occurs and two monologues that pass each other in the night.

  Steering clear of denunciations or debates: No dialogue takes place when one side wants only to denounce the positions of the other side. Dialogue isn't a debate in which one side tries to get the upper hand.

  Showing reciprocity: Apply the same standards to yourself, your own religion, and the scriptures that you apply to the religion of others.

  Avoiding preconditions: Preconditions declare the most crucial issues as settled or out of bounds before the discussion begins.

  Being cautious of sweeping generalizations (positive or negative): These obscure ambiguities and differences within either religion.

  Facing frankly areas of disagreement: Have a thick skin and don't get insulted too easily.

  Avoiding selective use of scripture, tradition, and history when discussing issues: An example is citing only those passages in the Qur'an that talk about violence and comparing them to only those passages in the Bible that talk about love and peace, or vice versa.

p03pr

Parliament of Religions, II

By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 17, 11 Mulk, 164 BE

Surfing the Net I came across some insightful comments made last September by Australian Catholic theologian Frank Brennan in defense of religion. Stranded in a hospital bed, a friend gave him a copy of "The God Delusion" and a few other volumes put out by anti-theists. In response, he writes,

"Dawkins claims that moderation in faith fosters fanaticism: even mild and moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes. Dawkins' take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism, as though that were some kind of perversion of real, decent religion.

"The same argument would not be put for scientific inquiry.

"Imagine a call to ban all scientific inquiry because those who engage in responsible scientific inquiry may be providing the opportunity for fanatics to harness science for their own purposes. Dawkins and his ilk think religious belief of any kind is meaningless, infantile and demeaning, so nothing is lost by agitating in the most illiberal way for the suppression of all religion and not just religious extremism which causes harm to others." <http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=2955>

This is an important response. I have seen others extend this to government. Anti-theists contend that religion is nothing but toxic waste because for thousands of years violence has been fomented by one sect against another. The defenders of faith reply: imagine a taxpayer refusing to pay taxes because hundreds of years ago governments sanctioned public cat burnings for the amusement of the rabble. The fact is that modern governments have not done such things for quite a while, so it is silly to hold them to account for the way things were. They contend that whatever the excesses in older religions and scriptures, that was then and this is now -- we have to judge any organization by what it stands for now, not by what it did centuries ago.

Brennan is on stable ground with this counterattack, but then he goes on to write that religion offers a way of making sense of the human dilemma that nothing else can.

"... Regardless of the knowledge provided us by the telescope and microscope, every person, every generation and every culture has to make existential sense of the abyss which will always lie beyond the reach of the telescope and the microscope."

 This is fair, but it surely does not go far enough. I am not completely satisfied. Surely we do not need religion to get an existential sense of well-being. That can be done alone, without organization. Surely we should expect more of religion than that.

I once heard a comment by a non-religious person that goes to the heart of this. A Christian had just gone on and on about how Jesus had gone to such trouble to see to it that even the smallest details in her life were blessed. The non-Christian responded: "My, what great concern your God has for trivialities, especially when so much is wrong with the big picture, what with millions of people starving and living hopeless lives and all..." This lukewarm objection I think religionists should take more seriously than a thousand calumnies by anti-theists. It goes to the heart of the matter. Baha'u'llah certainly seems to think so,

"O people of God. Do not busy yourselves in your own concerns; let your thoughts be fixed upon that which will rehabilitate the fortunes of mankind and sanctify the hearts and souls of men." (Gleanings, 93)

Such rehabilitation and sanctification is a far more worthy goal for religious expression than mere existential consolation. Faith is meant to be much more than a program of personal self-improvement, however worthwhile that may be. Compare religion, for instance, with the music industry.

From what I hear, the American public spends over a billion dollars yearly on musical entertainment. Presumably this expenditure is not wasted; the time and funds must be a kind of investment. If we see to it that there is music in our lives, that must be worth something or so many would not do it. When we buy a song or go to a concert we express our taste, we vote for a certain style. Each kind of musical production is dedicated to more than sounds, it stands for values. The good we get from our preoccupation with music must be fed back into the economy in reduced suicide rates, improved productivity in the workplace, fewer accidents, and so forth.

But even if music does not, it is completely supported by music lovers anyway, so this question is moot. My point is that the music industry pays its own way. It does not have the tax-free status that religion does. The anti-theists have a perfectly valid argument in this respect: government has an implicit contract with religion; it does not tax religious endowments because it gets far more in return than it gives. A religious population is more stable, coherent, obedient and tractable than an irreligious rabble. However as soon as you start getting religiously motivated people flying airliners into buildings, or openly fomenting hatred of one group for another, that contract is broken. Government has the right to ask, "Are we getting our money's worth by continuing to give tax-free status to these groups?"

That is as far as the debate has gone in the public forum, unfortunately.

In the Master's travels through Europe and America, He offered several counterbalancing principles which mediate and resolve this heated question.

The first step to religious harmony would be a standing parliament of religions where official representatives of all the world's faiths would come together to resolve their differences once and for all. They would not come together for more contention but to apply the following general principles.

Oneness of religion. This principle dictates that religious expression is a common heritage of the human race. Religious groups have a sacred duty to go beyond reluctantly acknowledging this common feature of all humans. They have a duty to actively uphold the fact that religion is basic to our humanity, no matter what culture we come from or what land we live in.

Religion is a Remedy. Like anything else except the Supreme Being Himself, faith is an appliance. Its worth is conditional upon the context, and if it ceases to do good the most religious act is to withdraw it, indeed to reject or, at best, reform it.

Religion is a Cause of Love. If a group spreads hatred or even a sense of false pride or superiority, it betrays the spirit of faith. It breaks the implicit contract between religion and government and should have its tax-free status revoked, at the very least.

The anti-theists are correct that religious leaders are mollycoddled.

If a minister or rabbi or mullah spouts hatred for others he or she should be subject to laws against libel, slander, spreading hate literature, and conspiracy to commit hate crimes, just the same as any private individual is. If there were a religious parliament, such laws would be supported by their faith's highest representatives on the international level.

Religion is a mighty bulwark, or do not go around flushing babies out with the bathwater. Once religions have ironed out their differences it will be possible for all children to benefit from the best of religious teaching. Teachers will be able to teach faith without advocating for one sect over another. The common, non-parochial aspects of religion will be agreed upon, indisputable and unchallengeable. A world curriculum would teach this to the next generation from an early age, thus ending the ignorance about the basics of faith that is pandemic among even the most educated in the West.

As long ago as Voltaire this question was being asked: why do religions fight with one another while members of the varied scientific "denominations," such as biologists, physicists, mathematicians, manage to get along so peacefully? There is only one thing that will ever offer a satisfactory answer to that question, and that is a standing parliament of religions. Passive recognition is not enough, all faiths have to get out of their hospital beds, as it were, and put this into reality.

As my favorite science teacher and environmental advocate put it, "With six million amazingly varied people, we may not share the same faith, but we do share the same planet." <http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=kOjCcL1PN_Y> Myself, I believe that we share far more than physical background; we share a spiritual background too. It is increasingly clear that the only way religion will become part of the solution rather than the problem is to follow these principles assiduously.