On Agnostics, Atheists, Secular Influences in the Society and Proofs of the Existence of God: Syllabus Notes

There is something wonderful in reading someone else's notes. There can be recognition. We can fill in the blanks. Or we can contemplate subjects that go beyond what we are familiar with. Exploring the net I came across syllabus notes for a course that was offered in 2000 in South Africa on "Relating the Baha'i Faith to Some Contemporary Issues." The compiler and teacher was Farzin Aghdasi. He is a current Baha'i Continental Board of Counselors member, I believe. Below are the notes, sketchy as they are, for Week 8 of the course. They read like poetry. But first, a picture to offer in juxtaposition, gleaned from a 2001 issue of Europhysics News, available on line. I was looking for a picture of Stonehenge. I came across the following instead, a grouping of telescopes on a ridgetop in Chile that have a slightly Stonehenge look about them, especially with the sun peeping up from the horizon. On another ridgetop in Chile the Baha'i House of Worship for the South American continent is being built.

Early man’s awareness of spiritual forces

Evidence of the ancient link between societies and the Divine

The role of religion in birth and growth of civilizations: Arnold Toyenbee’s “A Study of Civilization”

Religion and fear: has fear been the origin of religion?

Worship of natural forces, multiple gods, idolatry and the dawn of monotheism

Influence of Jewish prophets on Greek thought

Reasoning on knowledge and ethics in Hellenic civilization

Testimony of Baha’u’llah in favour of early philosophers

Early Christian thinkers, and reasonable grounds for theology

Classical proofs of the existence of God: a priori and a posteriori arguments

Two kinds of a posteriori arguments: demonstrative and persuasive

Teleological (design) arguments by Stoics

The cosmological arguments by Plato: the first Cause, the contingency argument,

Moral argument by Kant

The Ontological argument by Anselm

Meaning of proof as a valid formal argument proceeding from an acknowledged and true premise

Rational theistic belief without proofs

Early attacks of science on religious beliefs and dogmas

Social impacts of scientific theories

God of science as the absentee landlord vs. the Baha’i conception of an ever-present and personal God

Meaning and purpose can be read in the actions of a human body only if the mind is presumed to be present. How can we then accept the presence of meaning and purpose in nature if we deny the existence of the Universal Mind?

Impacts of Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Freud and Marx

Atheism in the 20th century

The problem of evil: If God exists why does he permit so much wickedness, and so much sufering by the innocent?

Abdu’l-Baha on proofs of the existence of God

Baha’i epistemology: Abdu’l-Baha in Some Answered Questions describes the four methods of acquiring knowledge as the senses, reasoning, traditions and inspiration.

Should God fit within the confines of our “logical reasoning”?

God of the gaps in knowledge: appeals to the Divine intervention whenever our knowledge of natural world fails to explain a certain phenomenon

The perception of the indwelling spirit.

Baha’i Teachings on God, its similarities and differences with other religions

Rejecting certain perceptions of God is not the same as rejecting God

Why God is unknowable: man’s limitations and differences in station

Farzin Aghdasi, "RELATING THE BAHA’I FAITH TO SOME CONTEMPORARY ISSUES: Notes for a Structured Course"