I think all of religion can be explained without the breaking of natural laws. This doesn't make it any less wonderful. It's sort of like this. Life is an emergent phenomenon. Consciousness is a higher level emergent phenomenon. At a higher level still, spirituality is an emergent phenomenon.
The fact is, you can explain life and consciousness using the laws of science. You can do the same with spirituality and religion.
So, I do not believe in what I call "physical miracles"; that is, violations of the scientific laws of the universe (such as gravity).
That does not make spirituality and religion any less wonderful. Far from it. Just as life and consciousness are wonderful, even after we learn how they operate scientifically, we see them as emergent phenomena with significances and meaning beyond their mechanistic roots. While we may understand their mechanisms, we are in awe of their emergent actuality.
So we can see the hand of God move within human society, but He moves through humans and within natural law.
Our language is the result and expression of our consciousness, but there is no corresponding language yet for spirituality and religion. These are emergent phenomena of a whole other level. So we have no language in which to express our spirituality, other than metaphor, symbols, myth and hyperbole.
Humanity has evolved with a sense of spirituality, and it needs to be expressed in a social and cultural form, an external religion. The existing, older religions, while certainly containing the inner spiritual core so necessary to mankind, carry too much historical baggage now of warfare and bloodshed, intolerance and backwardness.
Baha'u'llah founded the Baha'i Faith as a renewed expression of that same eternal inner spiritual religion contained in the previous dispensations, but with the intent also that it be in harmony with science, reason and logic. He intended for the Baha'i Faith to unify the world.
If we take too literal an understanding of the metaphors and symbols used by Baha'u'llah and our other Central Figures, we lose the potency of its intended role of uniting the world and harmonizing science and religion.
Is it possible that this is one of the reasons why the Baha'i Faith today is so small in numbers and has stopped growing? Almost 200 years after the birth of Baha'u'llah, the Baha'i Faith is professed by less than .1% of the world's population, less than .01% of the USA population, and about .001% of the European population. In the USA, the number of new declarents is declining every year and is less than the actuarial replacement rate; in plain words, the number of Baha'is in the USA is declining at an increasingly rapid rate. Both the Christian and Islamic Faiths grew much faster in their early years, proportionally speaking. By the year 64 AD, Christianity was widely enough known to be blamed by Nero for the burning of Rome. By 300 AD, between 5% and 10% of the population of the Roman Empire were Christians. By 350 AD, the Roman Empire was Christian. In our own age, the Mormon church, founded at the same time as the Baha'i Faith, is larger in numbers and is still growing.
The early Christian Church had a radical message of love and universal human dignity. The Islamic Faith had an equally compelling message of monotheism and social equity. I believe the Baha'i Faith can have an equally compelling message (for our day and age) of Unity; unity of religions and unity of mental world views, healing the rift between science and religion.
In short, I believe that we are still failing to see the true scope of the revolutionary change that is necessary. I believe that we are doing ourselves a dis-service by emphasizing Entry by Troops, prophecy, and doctrinal uniformity. I believe we should be emphasizing the radical uniformity of the inner core of the world's spiritual traditions; the Baha'i Faith's capability to encompass all of that within a legitimate and authoritative historical tradition, without sacrificing anything core to the world's religions; the newfound capability of experiencing true spirituality without abandoning or short-circuiting science, reason and logic; and the possibility of using our powerful science and technology to build a new civilization that cherishes and encourages spirituality without superstition.
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