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I seemed to surprise my atheist friend, Ari, by acknowledging that one of my “heroes of the evolution” is 20th-century atheist scholar Bertrand Russell. How could a Baha’i have such respect for an atheist?
Well, Russell remarked in one of his essays on the way we prejudice our intake of information: “Everyone knows that to read an author simply in order to refute him is not the way to understand him.…”
To put it another way: “Looking at anything from the outside with the intent of critiquing it is different from trying to understand it or simply extract information about it.” — Me.
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All I am asking of you, I told Ari, or of anyone who reads scripture, is that they read it as they would any document from which they wanted to extract information and meaning and come to an understanding of the ideas being presented without pre-judging it. The Baha’i teachings spell this out by naming it as their initial principle:
The first is the independent investigation of truth; for blind imitation of the past will stunt the mind. But once every soul inquireth into truth, society will be freed from the darkness of continually repeating the past.
Context with the culture in which the scripture was revealed or composed can be a help or a hindrance, depending on what you do with it. Using that context to get a clearer view of where the audience for the message was in terms of technology, culture, worldview, or education can be illuminating; using it to throw shade, not so much.
I previously quoted Baha’u’llah as saying essentially the same thing that Bertrand Russell observed decades later about seeking to understand reality. Here is a larger part of that passage, which contains a concept that became crucial to my own investigation of the Baha’i Faith.
O My brother! When a true seeker determineth to take the step of search in the path leading unto the knowledge of the Ancient of Days, he must, before all else, cleanse his heart, which is the seat of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God, from the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge… He must so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away from the truth.
This was something I eventually took much to heart; when I first encountered it, I was predisposed to view the Baha’i Faith as Ari did — a cult of dubious intent and value. Once I investigated, however, and began to understand what Baha’u’llah was saying, I brought the same approach to my reading of the Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada, Qur’an, Bible, and the scriptures of the Baha’i Faith, as I tried to do in my reading of Oliver Sacks, or Stephen Hawking, or Bertrand Russell, for that matter.
So, when I read the Gospel to understand what it was saying, I did so, not from the viewpoint of a true believer, but as someone seeking to comprehend its message. Further, I read it with the expectation that the information would make sense in context with its intent and purpose, but not necessarily with the way it had been presented in countless Sunday sermons. In other words, I tried not to filter the information through any “predigested theological assumptions” — in a word: prejudices.
If the information is from a single source (Christ or Muhammad or Baha’u’llah, for example), I look at how its parts fit together and how it fits with knowledge from other sources. I ask searching questions as I read and try to digest what I read. For example:
- Does what Baha’u’llah prescribes for the individual jibe with what he prescribes for the body politic of a nation or global society?
- Given that he teaches the essential unity of religion, is Baha’i scripture in accord with what earlier faiths taught?
- Did his words match his deeds?
- If he prescribes a behavior, does it have beneficial effects for me, for the people close to me, for my community, for the world?
- How accurate are his predictions about human nature, or future events, or whatever other facet of his Faith I’m examining?
Once upon a time, as Ari supposed, I did view scripture through a filter of “predigested theological assumptions.” If a parent or a pastor explained something to me and I studied the related passages of scripture, I tried my best to understand, not the scripture itself, but how it supported the doctrine they described … up to a point.
I realized that by accepting others’ understandings and interpretations, I was stifling my own.
So I scrapped that approach a long time ago when I came to the realization that using it could do no more than simply buttress possibly erroneous ideas. It was through reading the material in the spirit of Bertrand Russell’s and Baha’u’llah’s assertions that I was able to extract useful and, to me, life-changing information. By asking the questions above and others, I measured what I found.
RELATED: Becoming Myself: the Independent Investigation of Truth
At this point I explained to Ari that I was amused by the way conversations with anti-theists about religion disintegrated rather quickly into a psychoanalysis of my “pathology” in an attempt to explain why I believe what I believe. I’ve been accused of escamoting (i.e., dodging) by denying I believed something I actually did not believe, putting my rational faculty on hold, and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological framework in which a prisoner or victim grows to identify with and even love their abuser.
There was no benefit to this approach because it ultimately shifted the focus from ideas to personalities and effectively ignored the ideas.
I asked Ari: Do you think you might try to follow your own advice and not make assumptions based on preconceived expectations? For example, you are convinced I believe the planet is 6000 years or so old — and when I tell you I do not, you tell me I am dodging the issue. My understanding of the age of the Earth (and the Universe) is underpinned by both science and faith — since Baha’is believe in the truth of both. Baha’u’llah himself noted that:
The learned men that have fixed at several thousand years the life of this earth, have failed, throughout the long period of their observation, to consider either the number or the age of the other planets. Consider, moreover, the manifold divergencies that have resulted from the theories propounded by these men. Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute.
Here, I suggested that Ari and I turn our dialogue to how humans can acquire both knowledge and faith.
Maya Bohnhoff is a Baha’i and a New York Times bestselling author of science fiction, fantasy and alternate history. She has authored over a dozen novels, and her short fiction has appeared in genre magazines, including Analog, Interzone and Amazing Stories, and in anthologies and story collections, including I Loved Thy...
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It's always interesting, informative, challenging and fun to have an atheist friend. In my case it was like "Oh you Catholics, let go and just live, do what you want to." I did a few times over the years, but always came back. Something was missing, a deeper awareness, more to life, appreciated only with some meditation, opening, asking for forgiveness for wrongs I had done and glossed over, closing me to growth. Admitting or confessing I needed to make some changes. And looking at how Jesus and Buddha lived. And later ...getting to know more about Bahai has opened me more to a wider reality. Jim Lein