Special relativity and the Bahá’í Faith
This long article, “Where is the Special Relativity Train Taking its Scientific and Religious Believers?” examines some challenges to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, taking into particular account the perspective of various religions and how Einstein’s ideas square with the brand of cosmology offered in the scriptures of their faith.
The section on religion is introduced by this paragraph, which echoes a sentiment that I have long held:
When any religious groups or individuals endorse a scientific theory as “proof” of the veracity of their holy books, they are not doing so from a position of strength or authority. Rather, they are inadvertently making the religion subordinate to, and dependent on, the human intellectual constructs instead of on their own claims to prophetic voice speaking from a higher spiritual level.
It’s an important concept in the quest to unify scientific and religious thinking. Our understanding of both science and the theological and cosmological concepts outlined in the Faith are each developing. Ideally their development will be mutually reinforcing, but sometimes you have one holding back the other.
For the section about Bahá’í belief:
Due to the relatively recent context from which Baha’u'llah emerged, the conceptual language he used is more like that of today’s scientists. This founder, understood by his followers to be Maitrya Amitabha Buddha, the fifth after Gautama, takes the stage with a re-conceptualized version of the Buddhist Void. To traditional Buddhists, this void was unborn, unknowable, uncreated and unformed, a profound mystery, and also a Universal Mind.
Expressing a similar idea in more modern words, Baha’u'llah states that universal mind is divine, receiving the light of the mysteries of God. This is specifically “not a power of investigation and of research” as in the typical intellectual work of investigating the “the properties of existences”. Being beyond nature (which is created) the “heavenly intellectual power” embraces and is cognizant of things, and is aware of mysteries and “concealed verities of the Kingdom.”
With that defined as the source of his knowledge, when the great sage of the Baha’i faith states that the universe is of infinite age, and that ether is a spiritual reality similar in nature to the human soul, logically it would seem that his followers are not free to embrace Special Relativity, the Big Bang, the expanding universe, an inert space with no ether, nor any mathematical concept based on Einstein’s version of reality.
However, some Baha’i are attempting to do just that. In an essay titled “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Big Bang” one Dale E. Lehman finds in another of Baha’u'llah’s voluminous statements from prison one that appears to justify his stance. “That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today” For him, this closes the gap between relativity and an eternally-existing universe.
According to Lehman, it’s a matter of viewpoint. If he’s considering God’s eternal sovereignty, the whole of creation has to be eternal. Within a greater creation that has “neither spatial nor temporal limits”, however, a certain part of it must have assumed its present form at a point in time, and therefore its size might also have a limit. He says that Bahá’í cosmology can therefore allow for a singular beginning from which the universe – the one that is visible to us – gradually evolved.
He does admit, though, that others of his faith are prepared to “wait until science catches up with Baha’u'llah.”
April 8th, 2006 at 1:03 am
I should note that while I think that this is an interesting article, there’s a lot of craziness on that site, mostly of the “perpetual-motion machine” type.
April 8th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
I think we’re a long way from having a deep understanding of Baha’u'llah’s cosmology. If the meanings embedded in the Writings are endless, then it will take a lot of work by all of us, including Baha’i scholars, to develop our understanding of this. And it will be an ongoing task. It worries me greatly when Baha’is use scientific theories or hypotheses (often poorly understood) to “prove” the Faith in some way, and even more so when they deny the validity of some aspect of scientific method because it does not appear to them to fit with their understanding of the Writings. For example, I once heard a Baha’i deny that chance or randomness could play a part in the universe, because (he thought) God had planned everything down to the last atom. Now, we could have an interesting discussion about randomness and chance in the universe, but I don’t think we can rule these things out a priori.
My daughter is doing a PhD in astrophysics - her topic is an aspect of star formation. There are new discoveries almost every day in astrophysics, most of which show that the universe is a lot stranger than we had imagined. And even objects that wel all “know” to exist - such a black holes - may not, in fact, exist at all. There is certainly at least one research group that is working on an alternative model in which what we think of as black holes are “dark energy” stars and this new model (which has not yet been widely accepted) could account for the missing matter in the universe.
Anyway, the point is that science is not a set of fixed or absolute “truths”, but an approach to developing knowledge that inevitably involves challenging established theories and models. It’s a shifting field. Before Einstein published his theories of relativity, there were physicists at the end of the 19th century who thought they’d discovered everything that could be known! I’ve even read that Stephen Hawking thought that we were coming to the end of physics. I don’t see how we can ever come to the end of physics or of any other fundamental field of science.
So it is highly risky, philosophically speaking, to tie one’s faith to any one scientific theory.
April 10th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
this post and the comments are very very interesting…it reminded me of this piece from the Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys , I am now reading the Valley of Unity (and which ,for me ,if full of metaphysics without the theoriea nd prrofs which are confusing and conflicting…)
“…Although a brief example hath been given concerning the beginning and ending of the relative world, the world of attributes, yet a second illustration is now added, that the full meaning may be manifest. For instance, let thine Eminence consider his own self; thou art first in relation to thy son, last in relation to thy father. In thine outward appearance, thou tellest of the appearance of power in the realms of divine creation; in thine inward being thou revealest the hidden mysteries which are the divine trust deposited within thee. And thus firstness and lastness, outwardness and inwardness are, in the sense referred to, true of thyself, that in these four states conferred upon thee thou shouldst comprehend the four divine states, and that the nightingale of thine heart on all the branches of the rosetree of existence, whether visible or concealed, should cry out: “He is the first and the last, the Seen and the Hidden….”
These statements are made in the sphere of that which is relative, because of the limitations of men. Otherwise, those personages who in a single step have passed over the world of the relative and the limited, and dwelt on the fair plane of the Absolute, and pitched their tent in the worlds of authority and command—have burned away these relativities with a single spark, and blotted out these words with a drop 28 of dew. And they swim in the sea of the spirit, and soar in the holy air of light. Then what life have words, on such a plane, that “first” and “last” or other than these be seen or mentioned! In this realm, the first is the last itself, and the last is but the first. …”
page 17 The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys, Bahá’u’lláh
April 14th, 2006 at 6:35 am
Despite having a masters degree in physics, I’ve never been bothered by the “ether” quotation. Some Answered Questions is the first work I can think of that mentions ether:
“Reflect that light is the expression of the vibrations of the etheric matter: the nerves of the eye are affected by these vibrations, and sight is produced. The light of the lamp exists through the vibration of the etheric matter; so also does that of the sun, but what a difference between the light of the sun and that of the stars or the lamp!”
But reference to “ether” is not made here from the standpoint of a holy man proclaiming the truth of a scientific concept. Rather, He explains the state of science (rather well, I might add), and goes on to use the relative intensity and energy of sun light compared to lamp light — both of which interact with animal eyes in the same fashion — as an analogy for a spiritual concept. Understanding the spiritual concept is what matters here, not the state of science 100 years after the above was uttered.
Though this is admittedly but one sample from the many science-referencing quotations from the Central Figures, it seems to me that the majority of such statements are intended to construct a semblance of a picture of spiritual reality — that is, they are not intended to absolutely accurately describe physical reality.
April 14th, 2006 at 6:45 am
Abdu’l-Baha and “Ether”
An interesting little discussion on the intersection of science and religion has unfolded in Special relativity and the Baháí Faith. In references in Some Answered Questions and elsewhere, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá speaks of “ether,” a con…