Ethics at heart of economic crisis

I came across this news release which talked about the current economic crisis essentially a crisis of ethics:
http://news.bahai.org/story/722
And in addressing the solution to the crisis, it said:
“Any response to the world economic crisis must address ethics, given that the crisis is ‘fundamentally one of trust and integrity’. Furthermore, the situation requires an ethical response ‘at all levels’ – from individuals, from corporations, and from governments and regulatory entities…”

Coincidently, maybe not so coincident, a couple of month ago, Newsweek also published an article talking about current crisis and came to the same conclusion: "We are suffering from a moral crisis, too, one that may lie at the heart of our problems."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/201935
Again in addressing the solution, it said:
"But very few people acted responsibly, honorably or nobly (the very word sounds odd today). This might sound like a small point, but it is not. No system—capitalism, socialism, whatever—can work without a sense of ethics and values at its core...”

It is worthwhile to make a note that more than 50 years ago, Shoghi Effendi has already pointed out the disease that affected our society today is essentially a lack of spirituality:

“Indeed, the chief reason for the evils now rampant in society is a lack of spirituality. The materialistic civilization of our age has so much absorbed the energy and interest of mankind, that people in general no longer feel the necessity of raising themselves above the forces and conditions of their daily material existence. There is not sufficient demand for things that we should call spiritual to differentiate them from the needs and requirements of our physical existence.

The universal crisis affecting mankind is, therefore, essentially spiritual in its causes. The spirit of the age, taken on the whole, is irreligious. Man's outlook upon life is too crude and materialistic to enable him to elevate himself into the higher realms of the spirit.”

It is utterly useless, in my opinion, to teach any lessens about morality/ethics in which do not take into account of our relationship with God. After all, It is God, and God alone who has the power to change human hearts, as Baha'u'llah has beautifully and powerfully stated more than 100 years ago:

"The vitality of men’s belief in God is dying out in every land; nothing short of His wholesome medicine can ever restore it. The corrosion of ungodliness is eating into the vitals of human society; what else but the Elixir of His potent Revelation can cleanse and revive it? ... The Word of God, alone, can claim the distinction of being endowed with the capacity required for so great and far-reaching a change."

Science and Religion: Nature of the conflict(I)

The current general belief that science and religion are somewhat intrinsically conflicting with each other is rooted, I believe, in the misunderstanding of both religion and science. The impact of this misunderstanding is wide and such that often “people are faced with the unpalatable choice between highly validated scientific theories of limited scope on the one hand, and unsupported metaphysical speculation on the other. Moreover, circumstances have more often than not forced people to make a choice between these extremes and to live their lives accordingly.”

The followings are excerpts from an article “Science of Religion” by Dr. William Hatcher which, I felt, has helped to clear up many misconceptions in the two areas.

A cardinal principle of the Bahá’í Faith is that science and religion must be in agreement and harmony. In view of the conflict and confusion which have long existed on this subject, one might think that this principle would be a great rallying-point, attracting large numbers of scientists and religionists to examine deeply the tenets of the Bahá’í Faith. This has not yet proved to be the case, however.

The situation is, I feel, quite analogous to another age-long conflict, the conflict between established religious orthodoxies. The relevant Bahá’í principle here is the essential oneness of religion. Yet there has not been any marked tendency on the part of established religious authorities to look with favor on this basic Bahá’í teaching. Because each orthodoxy has been adamant in its claim to superiority over other orthodoxies, there has been no common willingness to accede to the “leveling” belief that a de facto unity underlies the various great religious systems. Of course, there is a contradiction between the various rites and rituals, dogmas and creeds to be found in the present form of these religious orthodoxies. What the Bahá’í Faith affirms is that these rites, creeds, and dogmas are largely irrelevant to the fundamental teachings, the essential purpose and meaning of religion. These teachings have, without exception, enjoined such qualities as humility, love, compassion, tolerance. Fanatics can find no sanction for their fanaticism in the recorded teachings of their founder.

I have chosen the conflict between orthodoxies as an analogy to the religion-science conflict because I suspect that it is closer than either religionists or scientists would like to admit. Orthodox religionists would dislike the analogy because they have been forced to admit the value of science after an initial resistance, and the idea that they may one day be forced to capitulate in a similar manner before the pervasive value of another religion which they initially misjudged—this would be painful. Scientists would resist the analogy in that it tends to compare science to the dogma of a religious orthodoxy, a comparison which they would regard as invidious. For if anyone is “winning” the so-called religion-science conflict, it is clearly science. Yet, it is not a novel observation that scientists are increasingly assuming the function and role played by priests in earlier societies. They are the initiated, those who explain the great mysteries to the unwashed masses.

Anyone who has had the opportunity to work in a scientific field knows how often serious scientific achievement is embellished with a liberal amount of sham and wordplay. If these are not rituals designed to charm the masses (or one's Dean or the National Science Foundation) they come uncomfortably close to it.

Of course, a scientist would object that all of this is not true science. This, he would say, is the concession which the true seeker after scientific truth must make to the ultra-pragmatic world-at-large. The many exigencies of life in the political and social market place force the scientist, as an individual, into compromises, subtle and not so subtle, with the basic principles of scientific inquiry. But, one might contend, this does not compromise science itself, for anyone can plainly see that its principles are pure and lead to excellent results when applied correctly.

Does not all this sound strangely like the well-worn apology for the failures of religious institutions? “Our institution is divine,” we are told, “but you must not judge it by the 'human element' within it or by the corruption of individual exponents who may be weak and unredeemed.”

The point is that both science and religion are human, social activities. As such, they cannot claim to be purer or more exalted than their ultimate influence on society. This does not mean that such activities do not draw on invisible sources of inspiration and power to produce their effect. It means only that the evidence for the existence of such hidden well-springs of creativity can only be measured by the ultimate, realizable effect which these activities or institutions do indeed produce.

(To be continued…)

"Science and Religion:Nature of the Conflict(VIII)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the Conflict(VII)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the Conflict(VI)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the Conflict(V)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the conflict(IV)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the conflict(III)"
Science and Religion: Nature of the conflict(II)

Ref.: Original paper by Dr. William Hatcher

Our Nonrandom Universe

In science, if something is caused by chance, we say that something happened randomly. The word “random” to me possesses such a magic power that anything happened in the world if we don’t know how it happened, we attribute it to random chance.

Yet randomness can be easily calculated out using simple math. It was told by mathematicians that the randomness of large, complex numbers, generally speaking, is not provable. There, any process involving as many billions of creatures for as many billions of years as is the case in earthly evolution as liable to be influenced by something besides blind chance. Of course we have all heard the old suggestion that if enough billions of chimpanzees were somehow set to typing manuscripts for enough billions of years, chance alone would ultimately enable them to write all the great works of literature. But it is easy to show the absurdity of the notion, for, if there are 50 possible letters, numbers or punctuation marks that might be put in any of the 65 spaces in the average line of the average book, a chimp would have one chance in 50 of getting the first one right. Then, for each of the 50 possible symbols, there would be 50 different possibilities for the second space, giving him one chance in 50 times 50 or 50^2 of getting both spaces right. Thus his chance of getting all of the first three spaces right would be one in 50^3 , and of getting all 65 spaces right: one in 50^65.

But 50^65 works out to be equal to 10^110. If we suppose that chimpanzees type out one letter per second, and we know there are less than 10^8 seconds in a year. It would take a billion chimpanzees for 10^84 billion years to type out just one line of book in right order. To compare, it only took about 600 million years (less than one billion) for a single cell organism to evolve into a current form of human being. 10^110 is an unimaginably big number. In fact it demonstrates conclusively, I’d say, that not even one line of any book or speech can originate purely by chance in this finite universe. There just isn’t space or time enough. So something else has to be behind things, somehow guiding them. And that, one might say, is a kind of mathematical proof of divinity – depending of course on your definition.

Ref.: "The Seven Mysteries of Life" by Guy Murchie

What does science ultimately show us?

The topic about science and religion has always been my favorite. I love science/logic by training, and I love religion because initially it answers many life related questions for me. But it is when these two seemingly contradicting worldviews are combined that everything starts to make sense to me.

Dr. William Hatcher wrote quite a lot assays about science and religion and I love his works very much. Many of passages from his articles are just too good to keep to myself that I'd like to share some of them here with you one at a time:

"Science seems to have gradually reduced the possible domain of God's existence to a vanishing point. Physics has removed God from nature, and psychology has removed Him from the human heart.

Again, further analysis reveals such an attitude as a misconception. For science has revealed to man not only “facts” and “things” but also a fascinating world of energy and unseen forces. Consider, for example, the view of matter and the material world which physics soberly presents to us for our consideration as the rational explanation for natural phenomena. The astonishing diversity of matter which we daily encounter is really due, we are told, only to different combination of a small number of basic elements. Moreover, these elemental substances are themselves just different configurations of certain basic elementary particles which, in themselves, have no individuality. Furthermore, these basic particles are really just relatively stable forms of energy, and each of them is convertible, under suitable conditions, into energy. Thus all the stuff of everyday experience is ultimately just different configurations of energy.

And what, we may ask, is energy? We may be successful in describing some of the ways energy works—some of the effects it produces. But when we ask what energy is, we come up against a mystery. And if we are humble enough, we realize that this is the same mystery primitive man intuitively perceived. Our science has served only to render our ultimate ignorance more explicit by showing how truly universal is this mysterious force, for now we see everything as a configuration of this one force.” (of which we understand not!)

Ref.: The William Hatcher Library

The Social Reality

Recently a friend gave me a book as gift: "The Revelation and Social Reality" by Mr. Paul Lample. I was fascinated by some new concepts stated in the book. One of them is the concept of “Social Reality”. All of us probably agree that there is physical reality, and most of us also are aware that there is spiritual reality. Some of us may have tried hard to uncover the mysteries that are hidden in these two realities. But I have never consciously realized there is another reality as the book pointed out: that is the social reality. In fact, as human being, “most of what we perceive to be reality –the world with which we interact every day – is not physical reality at all. It is social reality.” Also it is this social reality that each one of us has the capacity to help to create anew through our actions. While discussing how this is going to come about, the book analyzed the role of religion:

“The purpose of religion, however, is not simply to describe reality but to change human conduct and create a new social reality. Interpretation (of the Scriptures) does not stand on its own. To test the soundness of our understanding we have to strive to apply it in action. As in science, where theory is tested by experimentation, spiritual insights must be tested by their expression in the world. The aim is to give effective material form to spiritual truth. Interpretation creates meaning. But meaning is tested in action, and action shapes reality.”

Faith is conscious knowledge

Abdu’l-Baha said:

"By faith is meant, first, conscious knowledge, and second, the practice of good deeds."

The knowledge in the above quote has puzzled me for a while, I am not sure what knowledge is considered the "knowledge" in the quote, and why Abdu’l-Baha said "conscious knowledge", not simply knowledge in general.

Recently I listened to an audio tape of Dr.William Hatcher which shed some light on my understanding of the above question and I’d like to share with you here.

We talked about visible and invisible realities in a previous note. We have seen that gravity is a convincing argument for invisible reality, because what can be more common place than gravity. Surely people would have realized by now that gravity whose effects are observed by everyone is an immediate proof of invisible reality. So why don’t we observe this then? Because we take it for granted. In other word, gravity is so common place, we depend on it so unconsciously, we assume it so thoroughly that we are unaware of its implication. We are unaware that it is an immediate experience of invisible reality.

It is the same thing with God. God is hidden from us, not by His remoteness, but by His very nearness. What hide God from us is that we depend on Him so thoroughly that we take it for granted. Whatever the degree of stability or permanence we have in our life is due, not to the inherent properties of these things, but to God. There is example given by Abdu’l-Baha in this regard.

Someone once asked Abdu’l-Baha: how it is that one can become immersed in God. Abdu’l-Baha asked how can a straw basket contain water. The person said: no, the straw basket cannot contain water, you put water in straw basket, water just goes through. Abdu'l-Baha answered that suppose you immerse the straw basket in the ocean, then it is full of water.

So we can’t contain God, but we can be contained in God. In fact, we are immersed in ocean, and because we are constantly immersed in ocean, we don’t know what it will like not immersed in ocean. Therefore we succumb to the illusion that we are not immersed in the ocean. So acquiring faith means acquiring the knowledge of our dependency on God. Thus faith is conscious awareness of our dependency on God. The dependency is objective fact. Nothing changes in reality when we become a believer. The only thing that changes is our consciousness of reality. Our awareness of the dependency that is already there.

So to have faith in God doesn’t mean to become dependent on God. This is again a pure materialistic view of faith. This is why materialists often say that believers are weak people. They said you need a crutch of believing God. It’s a defense mechanism against reality. Or it’s opium. Of cause, some form of religions are crutch, some form of religions are defense mechanism against reality. But true religion, true belief in God means becoming aware of a reality that is already there, that reality is our total dependency on God.

Just as Baha'u'llah said:

“There can be no doubt whatever that if for one moment the tide of His mercy and grace were to be withheld from the world, it would completely perish.”

Armed with

“Armed with the power of Thy name nothing can ever hurt me, and with Thy love in my heart all the world's afflictions can in no wise alarm me.”-- Baha'u'llah

http://vimeo.com/2228238
This video is one of my very favorites. For whatever the reason, it touched me deeply. It has almost become my daily regenerating source. Whenever I listened to it, I felt immersed in that all encompassing love generated from the words and melody and a deepest longing arising from my heart to become nearer to our source from which we came and to which we shall return. What else do I need if I have “Thy love in my heart” and what could I ever fear if I am “armed with the power of Thy name”.

Why did God create human being and what is the purpose of life?

A friend asked this question a few days ago. It’s a big question, let’s discuss it together. I know I don’t have all the answers for it. I will just write out what I understand so far.

Simply put, God created human beings out His love. And we are created to know God and to love God through loving each other.

This is the short version of the answer. Let’s elaborate a little more.

To understand the purpose of life, we first have to know the definition of human reality.

There may be many versions of the definition of human being. Here is the one I learned and also the one seems making sense to me:

“Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He…chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him -- a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.... Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty.”

So human beings and only human beings are endowed with this unique capacity to reflect all the attributes (virtues) of God. The development of this capacity not only constitutes the purpose of our own existence, but also is the purpose of the whole universe.

Yet, this development is not automatic.

“All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition.”

Effort is required from us in our development. Yet God didn’t just create us, throw us in this wilderness and let us do our own job. In order to help us to develop, God not only has formulated this physical world in a way that is best suitable for our development, but also has periodically sent His messengers in different ages and to different places to guide us. The only thing that we are required to do is to recognize God’s messenger for our time and follow the instructions He brought to us.

Simple, isn’t it? Really, it’s not that much if only the physical world does not present to us these many temptations!

Can a person be a good person and not follow a religion?

This question was raised by Tyree in his comment on the last note. I am going to try my best to answer it and hope others will jump in to help to make the answer more complete.

I'd say Yes, a person can be a good person and not follow any religion, to a degree at least. Being a good person means to build worthwhile relationship with other human beings. We can't say we are good while living completely alone. It is in our interaction with others we show our goodness.

But it turns out that human beings are needful creatures. We are not self-sufficient. We have physical needs, we have emotional needs and we also have intellectual needs, etc. And because of this, no human relationship is completely free of self interests. In any human relationship, we need something from another part, another part needs something from us. So human relationship is a consuming relationship. Ultimately, at some point, every one betrays (means we fail to supply what others expect from us or we don't get what we need from others). Man is not perfect, this is human condition. Eventfully, we become either exhausted, or discouraged or disappointed and we can't sustain our relationship with others any more. So we cease to be a good person. This is really a pitiful condition. We can not renounce our craving for true relationship, nor can we achieve it because we are imperfect. Most of us endure this with greatest possible dignity, others creates for themselves substitutes to true relationship.

Is there any solution for this? Yes. This is where God comes into the picture. God by definition is self-sufficient and the Sustainer of everything in existence. The relationship with God is the only relationship that one side of the relationship has no self interest. As Baha’u’llah has said: “The one true God… hath wished nothing for Himself. The allegiance of mankind profiteth Him not, neither doth its perversity harm Him.” It is in our vertical relationship with God we receive energy so that we can sustain our horizontal relationship with other human beings and continue to be good without being exhausted.

What is Religion?

I have some friends who grew up , like me, in China and not believing in any religions themselves, but have certain concepts about religion based on current general practices of religions in society. Religion in most Chinese intellects’ mind is equivalent to superstition or some kind of ideology that caused more harm than benefit in history. That’s why I felt necessary here to discuss the topic: “What really is Religion?”

First, religion is not ideology.

Here is a definition by Dr. William Hatcher: “Ideology is any philosophies or any beliefs which hold that certain ideas/ideals (doctrines) are superior to human beings.”

We all agree that there are good ideas and bad ideas; there are true ideas and false ideas, etc. But we are not talking about the value of ideas. We are taking about second order of belief about ideas, that is a belief that some set of ideas are superior to human being. Once we accept such philosophy, therefore it becomes permissible to sacrifice human being for the propagation of those ideas. That was exactly what happened in history that human beings turned religion into ideology. That’s why some felt justified to kill each other in the name of religion. We human have turned religion into something that is contrary to the purpose of true religion.

Then what is Religion?

Shoghi Effendi said:

“[T]he core of religious faith is that mystical feeling which unites man with God.”

Simply put, true religion is a relationship. More particularly, true religion is the establishment of a certain kind of relationship between God and us and between ourselves based on the relationship with God. In the absence of our relationship with God, we cannot build true relationship with other human beings.

Furthermore, true religion is the cause of love and unity. This is the essence of religion. Anything that is not productive of love and unity is not religion no matter what it calls itself.

Let’s use gravity as example here again. Gravity in its essence is an attractive force. So if we observe two things in the world are pushed apart, we may not know what pushed them apart, but at least we know for sure it isn’t gravity that pushed them apart.

In the same way, the essence of religion is an attractive force. Religion only creates love and unity. Therefore, whenever we see animosity/disunity among people which is the opposite of love and unity, we know one thing for sure that it isn’t religion that caused the disunity or hatred, because religion can’t do it any more than gravity can push things apart.

It is also said: Religion is science of the love of God.

This note is getting too long. I will discuss how to establish true relationship (or the purpose of life) in the next note.

(Parts of this note are taking from an audio tape by Dr William Hatcher)

Visible/Invisible Reality and its implication

The notion is that the objective reality is divided into two parts: visible and invisible.
The experience of invisible reality (at least part of it) turned out to be quite common, and it’s so common that we take it for granted and not aware of its implication.

Dr. William Hatcher explained this very clearly in his article: “A scientific proof of the existence of God”. I took parts of it and compiled them here:

An invisible world is a portion of objective reality external to human subjectivity but inaccessible to human observation. In other words, there are forces and entities we cannot observe directly but which exist objectively, that is, independently of any human perception.

Let us look at a very simple example. Suppose we hold a small object like a pencil between our thumb and forefinger and then release it. We observe that it falls to the floor and we say that the force of gravity causes it to fall. But let us look again. Do we actually see any downward force acting upon the pencil, some thing pulling or pushing it? Clearly not. We do not observe the force of gravity at all. Rather we deduce the existence of some unseen force (called gravity) acting upon unsupported objects in order to explain their otherwise inexplicable downward movement.
…
This example of the downward falling of unsupported objects has shown much more than the simple existence of invisible or unobservable forces or entities. It has shown that observable effects can well have unobservable causes and that there are instances of observable behavior that cannot be explained observably. In more philosophical language, we have shown that the visible world is not self-sufficient, that it does not contain a 'sufficient reason' for itself: the phenomena of visible reality are produced by (or arise from) invisible reality.

Let us illustrate this truth with a simple analogy. Imagine that we are standing on the shore of an immense ocean. The ocean and its hidden depths represent the immensity of invisible reality. Occasionally a fish jumps out of the ocean into the air and then returns to the ocean. The brief moment during which the fish is out of the water represents a phenomenon of visible reality.

This analogy expresses very well the view of physical reality that derives from modern physics (in particular from quantum theory): the perceived macro-objects of visible reality consist of billions upon billions of little energy packets called elementary particles in relative but temporary equilibrium states and in continual motion. These particles arise from invisible reality (pure energy) and, whenever their equilibrium states are destroyed, they return to invisible reality.

The Concept of Rise and Fall of Civilization

This is an outline of what I learned about civilization from a class by Dr. Sabet.

First of all, civilization is a human phenomenon. There is no civilization in animal kingdom. Since our spiritual nature distinguishes us from animals, so it follows that civilization is basically an extension of human spirit.

Here are some characteristics about civilization:

1. Is a social phenomenon, in the sense that civilization doesn’t exist in isolation, outside of history or social relationships. It cannot exist with one individual on an island. It requires relationships.
2. Is not static. It is a dynamic, moving and changing phenomenon.
3. Can’t be reduced to its functioning components or parts. It is a combination, synthesis or integration of all processes, forces and social institutions.
4. Is progressive or has a direction.

Civilization rise and fall, disintegration and integration occur. The question has been asked in history, sociology and social science: Is there a correlation between behavior and civilization? If such correlation exists, then the dynamics of the declining of civilization can be the main source of identifying diseases of immoral behaviors.

Here is a model proposed for the formation of civilization (see the diagram with three concentric circles below).



According to the model, a civilization starts with a set of moral values as its core. When people begin to believe in these core moral values and try to translate them into their daily life, then the society will see a pattern of behaviors slowly taking shape. In turn, this totality of behaviors will guide us on how to construct our material development and environmental usage.

When the core of the model becomes corrupted, then there is an impact on behaviors. There is, furthermore, an impact on nature and the environment.

To end this note, I’d like to include a paragraph from the same book “Revelation and Social Reality”:

…Every Manifestation of God has infused the earth with a spirit that disrupts the old order, transforms individuals, and ultimately results in the unfoldment of a new civilization.