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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baháʼí views on science | 5/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baháʼí_views_on_science | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:04:33.477017+00:00 | kb-cron |
...from the beginning of man's existence on this planet until he assumed his present shape, form, and condition, a long time must have elapsed, and he must have traversed many stages before reaching his present condition. But from the beginning of his existence man has been a distinct species. His teachings were widely interpreted as a kind of parallel evolution, in which humans had a separate line of descent to some primitive form, separate from animals. But the emphasis on the harmony of science and religion and the success of the modern evolutionary paradigm resulted in at least 19 books and articles from 16 authors over the period of 1990 to 2009 trying to address how Bahá'ís should view evolution in light of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's statements, the majority of which took universal common ancestry as fact and attempted to reconcile with a new interpretation of the statements. Two articles by Keven Brown and Eberhard von Kitzing, jointly published under the title Evolution and Bahá'í Belief (2001), stand out as the only book-length review of the issue by Bahá'ís during the period, and has been well received. The new understanding viewed the apparent meaning of parallel evolution as an unfortunate misunderstanding that should be carefully studied and interpreted in terms that make sense today. Gary Matthews wrote,
...the apparent contradiction is nothing more than a question of semantics: perhaps ʻAbdu'l-Bahá is merely dating man's beginning as a distinct species from the soul's first appearance, to emphasize that we do not derive our higher spiritual nature from our animal forebears." This understanding was included in the Foreword to the 2014 printing of Some Answered Questions, stating:
...[ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's] concern is not with the mechanisms of evolution but with the philosophical, social, and spiritual implications of the new theory. His use of the term "species", for example, evokes the concept of eternal or permanent archetypes, which is not how the term is defined in contemporary biology. For Bahá'ís, the science of evolution is accepted..." Not all Bahá'ís were convinced of the argument that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's statements are in complete alignment with modern evolutionary theory. Salman Oskooi wrote his 2009 thesis on the subject and was unconvinced by the various authors trying to reconcile the issue with modern science, writing that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's statements have an "apparent discord with science", "appear uninterpretable in any sense but their apparent meaning", and the apparent meaning is that "humans have been distinct from other beings since the time of some primitive stage of our evolution." Oskooi concluded that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was fallible on scientific matters, but that the issue does not contradict the fundamental premise of the faith. Also in 2009, Ian Kluge wrote that, "There is no question that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's views on human evolution are in conflict with current scientific thought", but he concluded that religion cannot "uncritically agree with science on all its pronouncements at all times" due to the changing nature of science itself. In 2023, Bryan Donaldson published On the Originality of Species, attempting to address the issue from the point of view of new research in evolutionary biology that could plausibly support the idea of "independent and parallel growth of many categories of plants and animals out of a network of gene-sharing unicellular roots." Donaldson points to a variety of trends in evolutionary thought since the late 1990s, concluding that,
...it is no longer necessary to conclude that the concept of independent or 'parallel' descent is incompatible with science. In fact, the trend of discovery has clearly been in the direction of agreement... This new understanding appears to me to have only been possible since about 2015.
== See also == Dialectic
== Notes ==
== Citations ==
== References ==
== Further reading == Filson, Gerald. Mind: ‘the Power of the Human Spirit'. Journal of Bahá’í Studies, vol. 32, no. 3-4, July 2023, pp. 9-53. Phelps, Steven (2022). "Ch. 17: The harmony of science and religion". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 211–216. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2.