Hi Copperbod,
Lets continue this conversation. I'm enjoying your thoughts. Well the expression of God's Revelation being the language of the essence of what it means to be human is a common concept in Baha'i circles. As Carl Sagan put it, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself", and as Abdu'l-Baha put it "There are four kinds of love.......The third is the love of God towards the Self or Identity of God. This is the transfiguration of His Beauty, the reflection of Himself in the mirror of His Creation. This is the reality of love, the Ancient Love, the Eternal Love. Through one ray of this Love all other love exists." This love is expressed through Revelation to the human soul, since it is the human soul which is the "reflection of Himself in the mirror of His Creation".
So, Revelation becomes a mechanism for God to speak to Himself in the mirror of Creation called the human soul.
This allows us to transition a little towards Cartesian duality which I wished to touch on earlier. What Descartes did by extrapolating from Scripture that there is "physical stuff" and "spiritual stuff" was quite a defining point in the natural/supernatural divide which has hindered the marriage of science and religion over recent history.
The Baha'i Writings essentially abrogate this kind of thinking by defining nature as follows:
"All the conditions and perfections that the philosophers attribute to nature are the same as have been attributed to the Primal Will (Logos) in the Holy Scriptures. "
Abdu'l-Baha also goes on to say:
"The deniers ask in their disbelief: ‘Where is that world? For whatsoever hath no actual material existence is sheer imagination.’ But the truth is that the world of existence is a single world, although its stations are manifold in accordance with the manifold realities of things. For instance, the world of mineral, plant, and animal existence is the same world. Despite this, the animal world in relation to the world of the vegetable is a spiritual reality and another world and abode.”
So, it can be concluded that there is no such thing as the supernatural. EVERYTHING is the natural world, and within the context that lightening and thunder were once considered as having spiritual origins, we can extrapolate a lot from these concepts.
Now, in regards to this suggestion:
However, in practice, as you see from your exchanges on HC, they just cannot let go the religious beliefs and habits that promote this tribalism and division.
....I would suggest you consider how many have left Christianity, Judaism and Islam towards atheism. Rational thought does not allow for the human heart to accept supernatural mindsets any more, and so it is natural to leave these age old thoughts behind. I think the Baha'i teachings address this rational discrepancies and enable participation in spiritual practices without foregoing science. Miracles etc are no longer seen as supernatural realities, but rather natural realities which require natural explanations because they all occur in the natural world, just like the supernatural thinking behind thunder once upon a time, which now has a very natural explanation.
These changes in human approaches take time, generations sometimes, and Baha'u'llah predicts that atheism will become the prevailing thinking globally at some stage only for a realisation that at that time that the Baha'i community contributes too much to global welfare to abandon altogether.
Personally, I find it unfathomable to see how any human being can reject the teachings of elimination of all prejudice, universal education, equality of men and women, independent investigation of truth, consultation to guide decision making in all aspects of human affairs, harmony of science and religion, a universal auxiliary language.
One does not need to be a Baha'i to agree with these principles. Although they are not all explicitly taught in all religious Texts, one can easily extrapolate that they shape the highest principles of every major global Faith, which all Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims would aspire to uphold.
Kam
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