If I were offended, I wouldn't engage further.
I think I'm starting to get a clearer picture of what's going on here, the rationale behind your claims, and why there is such a disconnect with my understanding of what science and religion is between that of yours. I'll see if I can't explain as we continue.
Here's where the disconnect comes. Science does not speak of souls. In the case of the Theory of Evolution, it's dealing with biology. So you have religion on the one hand which speaks of God, Spirit, Eternity, the Will of God, human souls, and so forth, and science on the other which speaks of biology and natural processes of the given universe. Modern science does not address things which it cannot measure empirically.
When you say Baha'i "harmonize science and religion", that's actually not true in the sense of accepting modern science and bringing your faith forward to integrate or accept what modern science says. You do not let modern science inform your faith, which is what I consider to be harmonizing faith and reason, science and religion, etc. Instead, the harmonization of science and religion I hear you expressing is one where you take "revelation" from faith, and do science around that. This is what science was before modern science in the 17th century. It's a return, or a preference of "premodern" science instead of modern science that Baha'i embrace. The "harmonization" is simply
a return to reintegrating religion into science as it was prior to the Western Enlightenment.
With that in mind, hearing what you are offering makes more sense why you reject the discoveries of modern science, yet consider yourself embracing science. It's the type of science that you are willing to accept and consider valid science, which is a premodern form of science where you cannot challenge revealed religious truths, where science must
harmonize with faith and
not go against it. This understanding fits what I am seeing.
This of course is nothing modern science looks at, nor frankly should.
And this is where I get this understanding that Baha'i is engaging in a premodern science approach. It's creating a scientific classification system based upon theological concepts. This is very clear here. It's the belief that man first has a soul that makes him a distinct species. In modern science, the classification is based on biology. When I speak of Evolution, when modern science speaks of Evolution, they are speaking of biology. And in that sense, we are classified as an animal species. We are animals. We're unique in the sense we are "human", as opposed to "cat". But we still have animal biology. That is simply an undeniable fact, biologically speaking.
As for the belief in souls which makes us distinct from other animal species, that is of course purely theological speculation and not something science can measure or address. It's also something I personally find a little shortsighted, in the grand scheme of things speaking from a religious belief perspective outside science. We are unique in many ways. Our spiritual depth would be one of those. But that's not what makes us human. As a human, our capacity for many things goes beyond other animals. But then the capacity of many of those animals goes beyond our own capacities! Unique does not necessarily mean "better".
I believe all life has spirit and comes forth from Spirit. Our spiritual depth, such as those who have that, comes not because we have something other life does not, which is Life itself within us, but the abilities of our form as humans to be able to go deeply into that. In this sense, the capacity for our rational minds to "do science", also endows us with the capacity to "do spirituality". All animals have spirit. But humans simply are able, or "gifted" with the ability to go much more deeply into it, as we can with everything else in our lives.
You have spirit through existence itself. The depth you go with that, is in fact a matter of evolution. Think of it like naturally refined pieces of glass, or let's say the human eye. The more refined the eye becomes through evolution, the more clearly and distinctly it can see what is there all the time before the eye came into existence.
It's the exact same thing with spirituality. We aren't "given a soul", as if there were some "soul bank" in heaven where it gets handed out to babies along with a name. That is a very human notion of God, very anthropomorphic and anthropocentric in nature. Instead, Spirit is equally present everywhere, neither more nor less anywhere - like the "wetness" of the waves is the same no matter the shallowness or depth of the sea. Our distinctly "spiritual" lives, are really more a capacity of our form, like the refine lens to focus the light. All we are compared to other animals in this regard is a greater depth in the Ocean itself, not a different ocean. The cat swims in the Ocean at 3 feet deep, and we swim at 8,000 feet deep, or far, far deeper depending on the individual. We're still both animal life forms, however.
This agrees with how I put it, aside from trying to ascribe the "soul" as the agency through which this is done. If it is this "soul", then animals have it as well, as they also discover the reality of things, comprehend difference, penetrate their relatives, such as it is. They just do it on a far less sophisticated level. It's a 3 feet deep reality, as opposed to an 8,000 foot deep reality. But they, like us, also penetrate the world within the range that they're able to based upon the capacities of their form. So if the soul is the agency that allows that to happen, then all lifeforms have this agency as they do the same things we do, to lesser and greater degrees of sophistication.
Think of it in terms of the capacity of an infant versus an adult, if the previous explanation seems hard to follow. Does the "soul" come at a certain level of sophistication, or is there regardless of complexity?
This may be a problem of language here, as well as general conceptual frameworks. By "rational soul" is he assuming our intellect is how we plumb the depths of God? When we speak of the Mystery that is God, to apprehend this one has to actually go beyond, or even before the intellect to "know God".
The intellect sees the world through created models of reality, with words and symbols which represent, or rather create a defined "pattern" of something beyond the intellect. The 'rational mind' then begins to see this pattern it created, and shared with others through language, and considers that to be reality itself. But a knowledge of God will tend to break these models, and in fact we have to either set those aside to see God, or have them smashed for us in order for us to consider reality beyond them!
That's why in this sense I would say the non-human animal, actually may be more in touch with God than humans are! They aren't living in a "conceptual reality", which is what we are doing in our worlds of words and languages. Now that's not to say the cat has more spiritual "depth" than a human is capable of, but it isn't "lost" in a world of words and ideas, such as we are, putting us out of touch with that Essential Reality within all of us. The spiritual depth of the human comes when we go beyond the words and ideas themselves, having first acquired them. This distinction gets a little tricky to explain here, so I'll leave it there and see if any of what I said makes any sense whatsoever to you, and then take it from there.
Okay then. We are not in disagreement. Humans are animals. Just a different, more sophisticated animal. That's what I've been saying all along.
Again though, this intellect is in fact evolved. It is found in earlier animal species, but just simply brought to a whole new level in humans. This is not something "magical", but simply evolved to higher forms of complexity and sophistication.
And again, this too is really more a matter of depth and sophistication (to the point of Simplicity itself, if you prefer). Our capacity for spiritual depth, comes with our evolved capacities for everything else as well.
But again, I want to stress, what I've been talking about here about the soul and the spiritual capacities of humans, is not a bringing of religion into science. Science does not talk about these things. My thoughts on this are based upon my own experience and knowledge of God, and through the insights and depths of other "explorers" of God. None of this is intended to "define" what it is in a scientific sense of the world. It's not science in that way. It's simply a map, a series of patterns drawn out against the Sky with which we attempt to relate ourselves "down here" to what is "above". The actually Reality of it however is simply to "swim" in it.
