Ursus Maximus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dr. Maneck quoted me and then remarked:
""">Divine Providence will not allow our community, with its present
> conception of infallibility, to grow further in numbers and//or
> influence,until we correct this problem, I believe.
Is that prophecy infallible? ;-}"""
Dear Dr. Susan Maneck,
Of all people, you aimed that, not -so-funny barb at the wrong person.
I of all people am a doubter, especially about my own thoughts and
beliefs.
I do try to find reasons for things.
My reasoning about this is as such:
The revelation of Baha'u'llah is different than all previous
Dispensations, and one reason is because, for the first time, the
entire origins of our Faith, including the Life of our Founder,
happened in historical times and under the scrutiny of contemporaneous
written documentation.
Thus, while the origins of all previous Dispensations were cloaked, to
some extent, in superstitious events, and the growth of their
communities actually relied on, to some extent, these superstitious
exaggerations in order to impress people, Baha'u'llah's mission
occurred, for the first time in religious history, in the full light
of day and can not therefore, rely on superstition for effective
promulgation.
Baha'u'llah Himself explains this in the Book of Certitude. As He
elaborates in that Book, all Divine Inspiration is essentially
spiritual and thus can sometimes only be explained with symbolism,
depending on the capabilities of the people of the time ot comprehend.
Thus Jesus Christ promised to return again in the clouds, visible to
all people simultaneously. Baha'u'llah explained that this (and not
only this!) was symbolism.
Now, Baha'u'llah, in expounding His most expansive Revelation, often
(not always! see the Kitab i Aqdas on the 1000 year minimum time for
Return for example) uses symbolic and hyperbolic language.
But if we, as His community, try to put forth some of His symbolism or
hyperbolic language as a cause for belief in superstitious ideas, then
we are, in my opinion, violating the spirit of how this Revelation
must be presented and accepted by humanity in this new day and age.
And, from a practical point of view, if we do try to promote physical
supernaturalism in order to promote His Revelation, people will see
through us immediately and quite easily. Please think about this.
Not once, to my knowledge, did Baha'u'llah, nor any of the other
Central Figures, violate natural law, such as the laws of physics,
biology or any science.
For instance, Baha'u''llah did not speak nor understand languages that
He did not learn naturally. Despite the coming universality of the
English language, for instance, He did not write any of His Writings
in English.
He did not levitate, avoid the natural passing from this physical
world, nor perform any other magic tricks.
From reading His Writings, it is apparent that He relied on hearing
news of events form other people just like anyone else. He did not
foretell who was going to betray Him and who was not going to do so.
He did not foresee that He would be poisoned, and He did not magically
avoid the natural physical consequences of being so poisoned.
Now, I am sure that some will argue that He could have done any of
these things, and literally anything else He so desired, regardless of
violating physical laws. But the fact is, He didn't do so and the
record is public for all to see.
In a few instances that I have read, Baha'u'llah did intimate that He
could have violated physical law if He had so desired, just as God
could, conceivably violate any physical laws if He so desired.
But the effect is the same, I humbly believe, whether a Manifestation
could violate physical laws, but never does, or simply couldn't. After
all, the few instances that I have read in the Writings of Baha'u'llah
where He intimates that He could have violated physical laws if He had
so desired, are just as reasonably considered as uses of the kind of
hyperbolic and symbolic language He uses so often, to indicate the
spiritual magnitude of the events and concepts He is Writing about.
I believe that all Manifestations have not violated physical law. But
in the case of Baha'u'llah, we have His life on record.Ursus (Ron),
Right up to this point, you have said nothing with which I would quibble. It is all reasonable, logical and firmly based in the nature of the writings.
To bring this back to your quote from my previous post, Dr. Maneck, I
believe that if we promote a belief in literal infallibility, this is
the kind of thing we can't get away with in this Dispensation. First,
because, in my humble opinion, it violates the essential message of
Baha'u'llah; and Secondly, as a practical matter, it will expose us as
believing in something that is demonstrably false. You can't build a
strong house on a foundation of quicksand.
And, as you know, Dr, Maneck, I think the evidence is incontrovertible
that we are not growing in numbers rapidly any more, for say the last
25 or 30 years or so. In the USA, for which I see numbers of new
declarants in the American Baha'i each month, it is my understanding,
based on simple actuarial math, that our natural rate of growth is
negative;I agree with this as well. Though I do not think it is negative growth, its hard to measure the level of activity in individuals and interpolate that to the group. I see the faith growing in many ways other than raw numbers in the United States. It grows in familiarity. It grows in reputation. It grows in recognition. All these factors will spur in the fullness of time a growth in numbers.that is, the 100 or so new declarants we get each month is
far below the natural rate of death for a community our size. And that
doesn't even take into account the unknown number of people who leave
the Faith each year for reasons other than death. Of course, if enough
people of the Faith immigrate to the USA from the Middle East each
year, that could still change our numbers, but this is not a picture
of a dynamic growth rate.
Worldwide, I do not have many hard numbers to go on. But based on what
I do know, and the silence from our Institutions on this matter, I
believe we are probably shrinking worldwide in numbers also. At any
rate, we are not growing very rapidly, of that I am certain.The growth rate in South America, Africa, India are all very healthy - India has seen a growth rate of +100,000 a year since the Temple opened. Granted the Indians do not use declaration cards to rigidly measure those new numbers, but people who have gone to India report much what the Indian NSA reports as far as cultural effect of the faith. Robert Stockman did an interesting study on this several years back.
Anecdotes about explosive growth in a particular country, region or
city do not change this. We obviously do not publicize the countries
where we are declining, and the cities where we are shrinking and the
many local spiritual assemblies that must be dissolved every year.
Even in a stable situation, there are local variations above and below
the mean; and sure, these variations can be used to present a false
sense of optimism.
And so I believe that what I see as the aggressive stance in our
community of promoting a belief in literal infallibility, and the
silence from our Institutions to deflate that erroneous belief, could
be and probably is, a leading cause for a serious decline in our
growth rate.
Worse yet, we as a community are definanty promoting a falsehood about
this very growth rate. I see and hear it regularly and therefore I say
with absolute certainty that we are actively promoting a statement
that we are the fastest growth religion on earth. I believe there is
no evidence to support this and a lot of evidence that it is false.
For starters, the Mormon church was founded essentially the same time
as the Baha'i Faith, and there are more Mormons in the world than
Baha'is. I know, Dr. Maneck, that you refute my statement about this
by saying that Mormons don't count! Your basis for this astonishing
statement is that Mormonism is not an "independent religion".I think it is obvious to anyone who looks for it that the Mormon church is shrinking rapidly. More and more wards and stakes are consolidating and more ward churches are empty every week. There problems in this area dwarf our problems in this area - whether you consider the Mormons independent or not.
Do you realize how incredible and misleading this sounds to any
seeker, not to mention irrelavant?
Meanwhile, there are plenty of other religious groups growing a lot
faster than the Bahai Faith. Any intelligent seeker who hears our
common assertion that we are the fastest growing religion will look
around and see that it is false.
When they also hear about our community's common belief in literal
infallibility, and see that it can easily be proved wrong by any
unbiased observer, will they still join?
We can try to keep such embarrassing facts hidden until they are
already within our ranks and committed, but is deceit and dishonesty
the correct way to try to grow our Faith?
Our record of growth in recent decades speaks for itself. Whatever we
are doing, it isn't working well. I think the unchecked promotion of
literal infallibility is one big reason why.
I could be wrong.
So could we all, Ron, since independently we have no claim to ismat at all. I see an advantage to thinking in terms of immaculacy when we speak of infallibility. Or at least using the second meaning to make clear what we mean by "infallibility". That those who exercise ismat can not - in the long run - do us any harm because their decisions will cause no lasting harm. That makes "infallibility" more attractive as a tenet of faith - to me at least.
Regards,Scott
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