---
title: "Baháʼí views on science"
chunk: 4/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baháʼí_views_on_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:45.616367+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Applications ==
Others have addressed the work of a relationship between science and religion in practical expressions of development. Matthew Weinberg and Arbab, Boicu and Zabihi-Maghaddam, reviewed cases of a social engagement in locally meaningful progress that included a cooperative engagement between religion and science in particular processes.
The influence of the Bahá'í teaching on science and religion was visible in the practice of the religion dating back to the 1870s in the face of a perception of a lot of superstition of Iranian society and taking a stance towards education, science, and technology. Scholars Filip Boicu and Siyamak Zabihi-Maghaddam underscored the Bahá'í view on education directly related to this teaching of the religion which led to some early Bahá'í schools in Iran. Boicu and Zabihi-Maghaddam, recalling the Bahá'í experience in Iran on early schooling which had been extended about education of girls, followed developments of three models of education - Anisa, FUNDAEC, and the Core Curriculum - all of which had direct applications of the teaching and only being distinguished on the application between the individual alone, the individual in a society, and the last one being of all people in the whole of society and a global community.
In the early 20th century, as the Bahá'í Faith was expanding in the United States, the Bahá'í community viewed the issue of race according to another Bahá'í principle – the oneness of humanity – which had been expressed earlier but was further substantiated by 1912 during `Abdu'l-Bahá's talks to American audiences. The idea of interracial unity was counter to views of the majority of scientists of the coming decades and for a time in government policies, which endorsed eugenics as legal steps against Indigenous Americans, people of African descent, and generally People of Color, and other practices according to white-society standards, and similarly in other countries such as when the religion was banned in Germany under the Nazis. However, the American Bahá'í community did not respond by denigrating the scholarly thought of the day, but rather by supporting the then-minority view of scholars who opposed scientific racism. Marion Carpenter, a notable early American Bahá'í youth, is quoted in 1925 saying “Not religion or science, but religion and science, the combination of faith and reason, is the teaching of Bahá’u’lláh to the world today.” The American scientist Herbert Miller defended interracial unity at a Bahá'í-sponsored World Unity Conference in 1926 in Cleveland.
Project analyst Matthew Weinberg outlined socioeconomic development cases using the non-profit ISGP - the Institute for Studies for Global Prosperity, "a non-profit organization working in collaboration with the Baha’i International Community", in India, Uganda, and Brazil. In India stakeholders in a project developed an engagement of religion and science anchored in community of practice was seen as a majority point of view of the participants in the conference and the Indian National Spiritual Assembly established an office - the "Secretariat for the Promotion of the Discourse on Science, Religion, and Development" in 2001. They had successive meetings in 2004 and 2007 and ongoing. In Uganda work reached a point in 2001 working with IGSP that Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni encouraged the work of nurturing social unity "by championing the equality of women and men, alleviating poverty, and overcoming entrenched patterns of corruption." Again materialistic approaches were seen as failing alone. In Brazil again in 2001 a program of action was initiated, seminars were held and a group formed to develop analysis of the system published a book and simultaneously application in some local community "Centers of Learning" and one as a pilot project, but to advance the group needed to approach the work with some values: "To set out on a new path requires courage—not an arrogant disposition that demands swift and radical action, but one that is tempered with humility and wisdom. It requires an environment where the dynamics of individual and collective transformation are fully considered; where it is realized that growth and change are organic, that they are gradual and slow, and that they involve constant action, evaluation, and study; and where it is understood that, in pursuing such transformation, one is faced with an ongoing tension between absorbing setbacks and gaining new ground."

== Influence ==
Sociologist Michael McMullen found that Bahá'í converts in the United States appreciated the teaching of a harmony between science and religion as resolving their sense of these. They had been disillusioned with traditional organized religion but found that the Bahá'í Faith's use of science to inform religion "makes sense and provides meaning in a globalized world", and appreciated that the Bahá'í Faith had an evolutionary perspective on revelation via the teaching of progressive revelation. Post-doctoral scholar in Ottoman Studies and faculty at the Wilmette Institute, Necati Alkan documented the case of Muslim intellectual Abdullah Cevdet (1869–1932) in looking at the influence of the Bahá'í Faith and the teaching of the harmony of science and religion specifically as a model of reform but which was not accepted by the Turkish Muslim community.

== Baháʼí views on evolution ==

ʻAbdu'l-Bahá discussed evolution, including making claims that appear to contradict the modern doctrine of common descent for all earthly life. For example, in Some Answered Questions he said: 