Vahid Mehrabi’s blog is worth a read. He has a thoughtful approach to linking the Baha’i teachings to the current world situation.
A good example is this post, challenging the received view that “All religion does is cause wars”:
Some say ?all religion does is cause wars. If you have no religion then there will be no wars?
Well lets have a look at the scale of human suffering caused by religion and caused by non religious activity. There are many more than I have listed below but these are pretty major conflicts and are quite dominant in our history.
Vahid then goes on to review some of the evidence on each side of the balance sheet (religion vs atheism) and shows that plenty of atrocities have been committed in the name of atheism or to enforce atheistic ideas.
That prompts me to wonder about the role of ideas in motivating political action. Politicians who are trying to convince an electorate spent a lot of time trying to find the “big idea” that will attract both their core supporters and the as-yet unconvinced to vote for them. In the case of odious parties like the BNP the trick is to dress up their core idea in such a way as to keep within the law, as happened in the recent acquittal of BNP leader Nick Griffin, to fool the floating voter and to keep their core supporters happy. In the case of the main parliamentary parties, the trick is to find an idea or ideas that is or are sufficiently attractive to enough voters to win a majority in parliament, while keeping their long-term supporters voting for them.
So what about religious ideas? They seem to have a particularly powerful hold on people, perhaps because those who hold such ideas believe them to have come from God or other transcendent authority. Oddly, similar things can be heard from atheists and humanists, such as Richard Dawkins, for whom the transcendent authority is human reason. Is Dawkins hoping to become a transcendent authority himself? (No, no, no! What a frivolous thought! Reason, not Dawkins, is the master!)
Actually, reason is very important in the Baha’i view. The Baha’i writings utterly condemn an unreasoned approach to religion as mere superstition. We have the power of reason and we should use it to examine reality for ourselves, not relying on tradition, on what our parents told us, on what our neighbours believe, on what we read in the papers, see on telly, or read on blogs!
Ideas are powerful and we tend to underestimate their power to shape our societies, our politics, our lives. I’m increasingly hearing the word “narrative” used to describe what politicians and religious leaders do – they give us a narrative. A narrative is a story, but, crucially, embedded within the story are ideas. The narrative is a way of contextualizing and conveying the ideas – but it is, in the end, the ideas that make the difference.
Oh, by the way, do read this entry in Ruth Gledhill’s blog. She has her usual thoughtful look at current events in light of religious ideas.
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