{"title":"Even as the Waves of One Sea","authors":"Whitney White Kazemipour","doi":"10.31581/jbs-33.3.535(2023)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-33.3.535(2023)","url":null,"abstract":"A 1922 letter from Shoghi Effendi implies cultural dynamics which support Bahá’í consultation’s desired but precarious “clash of differing opinions.” First, it implicitly establishes the expectation that a swell of apparent disagreement will likely precede an emergent collective understanding, and that it is not, instead, a sign of failure. Second, it sets an ethos which accommodates errors, fostering growth and broad participation. Third, the prayer to open Assembly meetings that is included in the letter may generate a moral mood and motivation, orienting participants to build a unity within diversity strong enough to contain the possible tumult of clashing opinions. As these features are internalized by and motivate consultors, they can support the group’s ability to achieve the volatile but effective and transformative clash of differing opinions while protecting the unity of the group.","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":" 41","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140211349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Collaborative Exploration of the Harmony of Science and Religion","authors":"Michael Sabet","doi":"10.31581/jbs-33.3.547(2023)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-33.3.547(2023)","url":null,"abstract":"The papers in these two issues are the fruit of a collaborative process dating back more than four years, in which a number of friends have studied, consulted, written, and reflected together on the theme of the harmony of science and religion. This editorial provides an opportunity to share reflections on both this theme itself, and the process by which these papers came about. We turn first to the theme, a perennial topic of reflection and study for many Bahá’ís, and situate the three papers in this issue in the context of the broad discourse on the harmony of science and religion.","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":" 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140211575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kind of Truth","authors":"Tami Haaland","doi":"10.31581/jbs-33.3.542(2023)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-33.3.542(2023)","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":" 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140219366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Becoming Attuned to Reality","authors":"Todd Smith","doi":"10.31581/jbs-33.3.519(2023)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-33.3.519(2023)","url":null,"abstract":"What is entailed in accurately reading reality? The main thesis of this paper is that the learning mode of action, reflection, consultation, and study encourages investigators to attend to at least six “interplays” which, together, work to facilitate collaborative readings that are progressively attuned to reality. Owing to these interplays, this mode of learning in action helps to weed out disabling or harmful presuppositions and corresponding ideas, making it possible to discover and retain enabling or beneficial ones. By doing so, it resolves the longstanding problem of how to conceptualize objectivity and cultivate it in the search for truth.","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":" 36","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140218163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Morning with Cows","authors":"Kat Dunlap","doi":"10.31581/jbs-33.3.545(2023)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-33.3.545(2023)","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":" 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140218542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reason to Remain","authors":"Kat Dunlap","doi":"10.31581/jbs-33.3.546(2023)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-33.3.546(2023)","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":" 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140216194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revelation as Scientific in its Method","authors":"Stephen R. Friberg","doi":"10.31581/jbs-33.3.533(2023)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-33.3.533(2023)","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is an exploration of Shoghi Effendi’s statement that Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation is “scientifi c in its method,” starting from the various ways that scientific methods are implemented and including perspectives from the philosophy of science. We examine the role of diversity in achieving scientific objectivity and escape from bias, and consider how the Bahá’í process of action, reflection, consultation, and study is consistent with modern understandings of the scientific method. Because this form of learning in action can be used by everybody, and because ethical, moral, and spiritual practices are part of its way of doing things, it provides a powerful extension of science and its methods that is available to everyone and allows ready integration of spiritual values into the process.","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":" 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140219327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mind","authors":"G. Filson","doi":"10.31581/jbs-32.3-4.337(2022)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-32.3-4.337(2022)","url":null,"abstract":"This paper correlates Bahá’í concepts of the mind with insights from philosophy. It presents arguments from both sources for a non-reductive understanding of the human mind and argues that, although science can help us advance our understanding of the mind, it is not sufficient in this pursuit, as it cannot capture fully how the human mind experiences reality. The paper reviews the mind’s conceptual way of knowing, explores the implications of language for philosophy of mind, and considers how the pursuit of science and the phenomenon of religion both shed light on the capacities and nature of the mind. After suggesting that the process of learning in which the global Bahá’í community has embarked may serve as a model for engaging the human mind in a collective enterprise for the betterment of the world, it turns back to philosophy to submit that, while many contemporary philosophers persuasively argue that the human mind is not reducible to physical causality, the philosophical resistance to a spiritual dimension of the human mind is excessively limiting. The minds of human beings demonstrate capacities that lie beyond nature, and a conception of the mind as “the power of the human spirit” or “rational soul” can not only be a fruitful way of understanding the mind, but lead to an orientation by human beings in the world, demonstrated through the learning process discussed earlier in the paper, that holds promise for the future of humanity.","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128832071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mizán of Affect in Material v. Metaphysical Models of Human Consciousness","authors":"John S. Hatcher","doi":"10.31581/jbs-32.3-4.473(2022)","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31581/jbs-32.3-4.473(2022)","url":null,"abstract":"From the viewpoint of the description of the human reality in the Bahá’í authoritative texts, the essence of a human being is the soul, a metaphysical reality from which emanate all our distinctively human capacities. Unlike materialist views of the human reality, the Bahá’í teachings assert that our essence—the spiritual “self”—takes its beginning during the process of conception, whereupon it associates with the body so long as the physical temple remains capable of manifesting the reality and powers of the soul. Once the body/brain deceases, the soul dissociates from this relationship and exists and functions and progresses eternally. This hypothesis in no way diminishes the importance of a healthy brain as essential to our physical, intellectual, and spiritual development; indeed, it posits the brain as a transceiver by means of which the self manifests the soul’s condition and development in action, speech, and comportment. Therefore, when the brain becomes dysfunctional, whether through trauma or mental illness, the transparency of the soul’s relation to reality ceases. This paper explores the implications of this relationship for our understanding of emotion and presents a model for understanding the function of emotion as providing us essential feedback on, and guidance for, our lives, feedback whose ultimate purpose is to help us better calibrate our approach to spiritual growth. Given the brain-as-transceiver model, this emotional feedback is reliable only so long as the brain remains transparent in this systematic relationship. The paper suggests ways in which the model could inform approaches to treatment for affective disorders.","PeriodicalId":393019,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Bahá’í Studies","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133537718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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