Re: Any answers to these questions? Religious Literalism???

On Dec 16, 5:56 am, compx2 <com...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Mike3,

You do realize that post is one month shy of eight years old, posted
by Doug McAdam and two or three days ago he backtracked on what he
said in that message right here on these pages.

Now Doug says "All I can say  is the Writings say we cannot know the
essence of anything and so why
even discuss this?"


But this "essence knowing" question is _not_ what this is about, I was
just pulling up an _example_ that happened to be at hand here. See
below.

So your comments are appropriate to that discussion.  To wit: "But it
is said, for example, that God's reality and essence cannot be known
at all. Therefore, even the soul is limited, is it not?"

Everything is limited except God, by definition and logical
implication.  There can be but one Prime Mover, and that is one of His
attributes.  

Of course. But the problem here is that the quote says "It is through
the power of the soul that the mind comprehendeth, imagineth and
exerteth its influence, whilst the soul is a power that is free.
The mind is circumscribed, *the soul limitless*. " (emphasis is mine,
not in the original.) If this is taken literally, then it would
contradict
that idea. And _that_ is what my point here is. If that idea comes
from
real Baha'i scripture, does not this produce some sort of
contradiction
in the scripture, unless perhaps it is not taken literally?

But it does not follow that because He is Prime Mover
that His reality and essence cannot be known.  We cannot know
realities or essences as humans, however, not because He is Prime
Mover.


Where did I say it was because He is the prime mover?

Since your first implication does not follow, so also the second, that
the soul is limited, does not follow either.  It may be true that any
particular human soul is limited, but it is also true, by the same
token, that anything except God, the the Limitless, is limited.  So
singling out a human soul as limited is meaningless since everything
(except God) is limited.


It was only "singled out" because it was an example that was
available.
Surely everything but God is limited, but that was not the point. The
point
has to do with literalism.

--Kent

On Dec 15, 4:21 pm, mike3 <mike4...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi.

I read this post:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.religion.bahai/msg/3441a0582300279...

and had quite a few questions, and it would be nice if maybe the
original poster could respond.

"I have been done this road many times and although many erudite
scholars
present some wonderful propositions to explain away what they see as
problems in certain quotes from the Writings that do not agree with
"their" sciences, such as the Central Figures using allegories and
such,
not one as yet hold up to me when I apply my own reasoning powers and
in
conjunction with what my heart "just knows" from study of the
Writings
and using a balance between faith, intuition and the intellectual
powers. "

But the problem here is it would ***seem*** that you're saying we
should dismiss evidence, and perhaps just as seriously that the only
interpretation we can rely on in these case is LITERAL, and if a
LITERAL interpretation contradicts science, we are to take the
religion... but then you say:

"Unlike most of my peers who seemed to take sides I was
able to integrate both the material and spiritual and come up with a
new
meaning or understanding.  So to me this is one of our big problems
in
the issue of the harmony of science and religion, that of taking sides
or
favoring one over the other instead of viewing them as fundamentally
in
harmony."

But by preferring religion at every corner, is not that taking a side
with it? And is not assuming literalness, fundamentalism? And
fundamentalism can be dangerous (just look at what Christian
fundamentalism has done to the USA, or Islamic fundamentalism to the
Middle East, etc.).

"If the Writings say they are two wings of the bird, or in
harmony and we know this world is but a reflection of the next REAL
world ..."

does this mean that this "next" world is the ONLY other realm of
existence, even though there are quotes that talk about there being
many, many "worlds of God"?

Then comes a quote from the actual religious text:

""It is through the power of the soul that the mind comprehendeth,
imagineth and exerteth its influence, whilst the soul is a power that
is
free.
The mind is circumscribed, the soul limitless.
....whereas the soul is ever endowed with full strength."  Baha'i
World
Faith p. 337-8"

But it is said, for example, that God's reality and essence cannot be
known at all. Therefore, even the soul is limited, is it not? (Is not
omniscience only a property of God?) How does one go about this...?
(Again, this evidences the problem with a straight-up, literal
interpretation of religion. Obviously the answer must lie in some
interpretation that is less than literal.)

">From my own 20 years of in depth study of all her works I find
myself
having no problems in the issue of the harmony of science and
religion.
There are quotes in the Writings that to me "appear" to not agree
with
discoveries in science.  At the same time I know that science if
continually self-correcting and what was once believed in certitude
by
science and philosophers to be true has now been replaced or
supplanted
by new evidence.  We used to have a saying in our philosophy class
that
"absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.".  In other words
there
may be still hidden facts and information that will come to light in
the
future that will overturn our present assertions or end frustrations
we
now have of not being able to reconcile certain things.  At one time
the
educated of the day believed and logically proved by their physical
perceptions the earth was flat and the sun circled it.  "

However, so could our interpretations of those quotes be in error as
well. We do not KNOW what and how literally something is to be
taken... that is also subject to correction. Even if religious
revelations are "infallible", our _understanding_ of them surely is
not.

"We certainly do not want to fall victim today of this same condition
of
over-relying on our logical powers when we are not yet spiritually
mature
and thus heaping upon mankind further ignorance of spiritual
realities."

But isn't _over_-relying on _any_thing, at _any_ time and _any_ level
of development, bad? After all, a Baha'i principle is moderation.

And also, must it be an extraordinarily long time before we (hell,
just one individual even) could have this level of "spiritual
maturity"? And would it be a good thing to try as hard as we can to
make things get there, resorting to every tool and devoting every last
second of our lives and ever droplet of all our energy towards making
it happen?

Does this mean it would be *bad* for a scholar at this time, or any
time before say 1,000 Years from 1863 AD (2863 AD), to try and
incorporate religion and science, together, to perform discoveries?
But if so, then how can we ever reach such a state without doing
something "bad" (as someone has to do it to make that time when it is
actually done come about, somebody has to work in that direction in
order for it to come about)?

"To me there is no question of disharmony.  True science and true
religion
are in harmony.  However we must be careful and not mistake our
religion
as the inerrant representation of the Baha'i Revelation.  Religion is
what we understand and apply of Revelation and as such is organic and
constantly developing as individuals develop.  Likewise true science
if
organic and constantly developing and therefore we must not become
too
dogmatic in that sense either."

One example I'd bring up here is evolution. Some quotes in, say, the
Baha'i writings, seem to contradict scientific theories of evolution.
However, there is also many decades of _evidence_ to suggest some sort
of evolution. The part of evolution being contradicted seems to be
common descent, and yet there is a great heap of evidence to suggest
this to be the case. It is entirely _possible_, although extremely
_unlikely_, that an evidence could come up to say that was all wrong,
and that instead man (at least his PHYSICAL form, as that is the sum-
total of all that evolutionary theory addresses -- no more! It does
not address, say, any spiritual part of man.). just miraculously
"poofed" into existence. But _without_ such evidence, why not go along
with the evidence you _do_ have, but just not make this belief
_dogma_? (After all, in real science you should'nt have dogmas
anyway!) And you also don't know how the quotes are to be taken,
either. For example, how do we know they were referring to the
physical part of man, which is the domain of evolutionary theory? As
if they are not, the entire point is moot: because evolutionary theory
_only_ deals with the physical part, it can't contradict anything
about nonphysical realities when doesn't state anything about them.
How can something that is silent on a matter possibly say something to
contradict when, by definition, it doesn't say anything at all?
Dogmatism is to be abhorred in both science and in religion.


.

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