 Greetings, everyone. Greetings. On behalf of the Association for Baha'i Studies North America, it's my pleasure to extend to you a very warm welcome to this next session of the 2020 virtual conference. We hope you've been enjoying the wide range of offerings so far. Of course, there's more to come and beyond enjoying. Hopefully these sessions are giving rise to some ideas you might have about things you would like to do to engage in the various ABS lines of action or related types of efforts, whether that means initiating conversations or some study or some small collaborative initiatives of some kind. If you want to know more about the direction of ABS and how to get involved, please join the session on Wednesday evening, which there will be presentations and Q&A on that. So I'd now like to introduce you to our presenter for today, Dr. Michael Sabette, speaking to us from Canada. Dr. Sabette is a PhD student in political science at the University of Toronto, where he researches how participation in non-adversarial democratic processes impacts individuals. He is a lawyer by training, having practiced constitutional litigation in Ottawa after clerking at the Supreme Court. He is also the incoming editor of the Association's Journal of Baha'i Studies. As you may know, John Hatcher has served so ably as editor for several years, doing a fabulous job, and has decided to retire from that role. And we are delighted that Michael is taking up that work. The title of Michael's presentation is the utmost loving kindness, discerning a framework for the treatment of animals in the Baha'i writings. As he writes, the question of the proper relationship between humans and animals can easily fall into, quote, the all too common tendencies to delineate sharp dichotomies and engage in intractable debate that obstructs the search for viable solutions, quoting from a House of Justice letter. The Baha'i writings transcend the dichotomy between domination-themed narratives that assign purely instrumental value to the natural world and materialistic narratives that deny any unique status for the human. This presentation will explore certain relational principles in the writings of Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha that can guide our contributions to discourses dealing with animals and the natural world. After the presentation, there will be time for questions. On your app, please scroll down to the bottom and press add comment anytime you wish during the presentation. So, welcome, Michael. Thank you, Martha. And thank you to everyone who's in attendance, who's taking the time to be here. So my name is Michael Sabat. And I'll just share my screen here. Okay, so I hope everyone can now see the presentation. As mentioned, the presentation is called The Upmost Living Kindness. And what I'm hoping to do today is to present the basic outline of a framework for the treatment of animals that, as I understand it, emerges from the Baha'i writings. You know, a full treatment of the topic of the nature of animals as it appears in the writings and all of the ethical implications that follow would take a lot more time than we have today. So my approach is going to be to just take a few steps to eliminate this question. I'll start by sketching out very briefly a couple of influential positions in the broader discourse in society about animals and about nature. And I'm going to highlight aspects of these positions that I think reflect what the Universal House of Justice in its 29th of November 2017 letter on climate change calls the all too common tendencies to delineate sharp dichotomies and engage in intractable debate that obstructs the search for viable solutions. After that, rather than try to do a broad sweep of everything that the Baha'i writings have to say about animals, I'm going to focus on a few quotations that speak to the place we are at in the broader discourse about animals. And I'll also be focusing on a few points in the writings that in my experience receive a bit less attention amongst Baha'is on the subject. So I won't be spending much time on the fairly self explanatory statements from Abdul Baha'i about the human diet. The core of the presentation is exegetical. It's sort of an exploration of the meaning and implication of the writings. But at the end I will discuss some practical implications for our individual and collective lives in the spirit of Baha'u'llah's reminder is not the object of every revelation to affect transformation in the whole character of mankind. A transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions. And then at the end we'll have time for questions. So overall, I hope to show that the Baha'i writings on this issue are not only a useful guide to us in our efforts to improve our characters and behave ever more morally and with greater justice in the world, but that they can also help us make a unique contribution to the discourse about animals and the environment more generally, which of course is a very important discourse in the world today. Now the usual caveat applies here that applies whenever anyone is expressing their understanding of the Baha'i writings. Everything apart from the text of the quotes themselves is going to represent my own understanding. So it may be wrong, it may be incomplete, it may be imbalanced. Like anyone I'm going to be bringing my own biases to the study of the writings. What I hope is that what I have to say is at least interesting enough that you'll think about it, even if only to ultimately disagree. Alright, so let's begin then by looking at two important and contrasting views from Western philosophy that speak to the nature of animals and the question of what we owe to animals. Each of these views derives ethical consequences from a particular ontological view of animals. So in other words, what we think an animal is fundamentally, its nature or its essence, will determine what duties, if any, we owe to the animal. The two views that I'm going to present can't cover the field of philosophical positions on the topic, of course, but I do hope they'll help us see why discussions about animals can easily fall into intractable argument, as the earlier quote suggested. So the first view that I'll present, we could call it an enlightenment rationalist view about the nature of animals. Like a lot of enlightenment thinking, while it adopts rationalist methodology, it owes something of its content to earlier Christian thought. One of the most influential views of animals came from René Descartes. So this is Descartes here. Descartes was a dualist, so he believed that everything in creation was material, except for the human mind, which is non-physical in his view, and is the seat of consciousness. So you can see the connection to religious thinking here. Descartes in a sense tried to provide a rational explanation for the tangible part of the human reality, which in religious language is called the soul. Now the human body, including the brain, to Descartes simply matter, like rocks or plants. And animals, which lack a non-physical mind in his view, are nothing more than automata. So an animal is capable of reacting reflexively to stimuli, but it's not capable of either thought or suffering. The cries of an animal and apparent pain were to Descartes simply the screeches of a malfunctioning machine. So this view denied that there are any more limits on how a human might treat an animal. This Enlightenment view reached a greater level of sophistication with Emmanuel Kant. Kant is probably the philosopher who first comes to mind when we think about ends and means. We may also associate him with the idea of the categorical imperative. This is essentially Kant belief that our behavior should be governed by universal rules that are discoverable by reason. Rules that you can apply in any situation. So one formulation of Kant's categorical imperative is that you must never act in a way that treats a human, whether yourself or someone else, or their means to an end. A human is always an end unto themselves. So let's see how this works out in practice. Suppose a random human being will take Sir Anthony Hopkins for no reason in particular, is hungry. The question arises, can he ethically kill and eat an animal? How about a human? Well, eating the animal is fine according to Kant, but no matter how much he wants to, Anthony should not eat a human because that would be treating the other human as a mere means to satisfy his own ends. Now, animals for Kant are essentially things because they lack reason. So they certainly can be mere means to our ends. That's permissible. He does, however, say there is one reason to be kind to animals. It's a purely instrumental reason, and it's instrumental to our duties to other humans. As Kant says, animal to animals becomes so in his dealings with men. And we'll come back to that idea later when we look at the high writings. Okay, so that's one view of animals, the view that the animal is a mere means to human ends and does not owed any moral duties, either because it lacks an immortal soul or because it lacks reason in the Enlightenment view. A different view emerges from the ethics of utilitarianism. One of the most influential applications of utilitarianism to the question of how we treat animals comes from the Australian philosopher Peter Singer. So a quick review of utilitarianism. In contrast to Kant's categorical imperative, in a utilitarian framework it's the consequences of any given action that determine whether it is ethical or not. Crudely speaking, utilitarianism holds that the net amount of pain and pleasure created by an action have to be weighed. If pleasure outweighs pain, the action is good. Different strands of utilitarianism have variations on this formula, but as a general rule that will serve our purposes. So Singer essentially argues that there's no basis for discriminating between species when it comes to weighing their pain and pleasure. Such discrimination would be in his words speciesism. So an animal's interests in avoiding pain and suffering have to be weighed in our decisions about how to treat them. This view imposes definite limits on how we are permitted to treat animals. In many circumstances I can't ethically kill indeed an animal in this view because the animal's pain will outweigh any benefit I might drive from eating it. Singer uses this argument mostly against factory farming which he argues and not without reason imposes a life of suffering on the animal quite apart from its ultimate death. It should be noted there is a distinct position which we can call an animal rights argument which says that all or at least some animals should have absolute rights that cannot be violated like a human being. In that case utilitarian calculus wouldn't enter into the matter. I'm not going to get into the animal rights position because in practice the consequences of the two views will often overlap. Now it should also be noted that some utilitarian thinkers do distinguish more clearly between animals and humans. John Stuart Mill for instance wrote that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. In other words for Mill there was something about the human being that makes his or her pain and pleasure of a different order than that of an animal. But for Singer this distinction is fundamentally untenable. And arguing from a materialist ontological framework as shown in this table Singer basically says that all the distinctions we draw between the human and other animals are arbitrary. And without a spiritual perspective there is an unreasonable hypothesis. When we look at complex animals like great apes for instance they do seem to have some version however rudimentary of most of the faculties that humans display. And as an aside it's my view this isn't from a systematic review of utilitarianism but as I see utilitarianism is usually going to trend towards a materialist outlook if only because material or physical pain and pleasure to quantify are much easier to quantify than spiritual good. So a material framework just becomes sort of a default in utilitarianism. So it should be said that the two positions that I've outlined might look a little bit like caricatures. After all most people are not utilitarians in practice. And on the other hand very few people I think would say that we owe absolutely no duty to be kind to any animal. But these two views caricatures though they may be do end up being influential because I think they feed into our human tendency or maybe it's just our society's tendency to think in dichotomies. Oh for instance if I'm a person who believes that humans are truly unique in creation whether due to reason or soul I may be inclined to believe in a soft version of Kant's ideas about animals. I might think yeah we should be nice to animals I guess but what does it really matter. They don't have a soul or they can't think like us so it's not a big deal what happens to them. Now for the other group which is the group that thinks that humans aren't particularly special they will often come to this conclusion based on a conscious or unconscious materialistic view of reality. And this I think comes with its own pitfalls. Okay so this group might find a kind of utilitarianism attractive because it seems fair. Or as Baha'is might say it actually appeals to their innate spiritual faculty of justice which is a faculty that exists whether or not somebody believes in the spiritual. But my concern is that ethical claims based on materialist ontological premises are always going to be a little bit fragile because it's hard to ground them in any objective moral framework. And that's why here I've got a dashed arrow leading from the ontological premises to the ethical principles because I think as I say I think it is a bit of a fragile connection. I don't have time to discuss this point in detail but I'm happy to elaborate on it during the questions if it's of interest. For now I'll just note in this connection the quote from Abdul Baha'i where he says self-love is needed into the very clay of man and it is not possible that without any hope of a substantial reward he should neglect his own present material good. This I think is at the root of why materialist outlook on life will be a shaky basis often for specific ethical consequences. As I say I'm happy to discuss that further in the questions if it's of interest. Okay so I think it should be clear that between these two positions about animals singers utilitarianism and the Descartesian and Kantian view on the other hand there is something of an intractable argument because they're based on radically different premises. Either the human and the animal are so similar that they should be treated the same or they're so different that they can be treated differently and the trouble is that within a solely scientific and empirical framework there's going to be ample evidence that you could point to to support either position so the advocates of each position will have no problem reinforcing their pre-existing view based on whatever bias they bring to the question and that's not a knock on them because everyone we all do this all the time of course in our lives. So let's now turn to the Bahá'í writings and see if they might be able to help us resolve the tension between the previous two positions. What we'll see is that the writings acknowledge validity in both a categorical sort of Kantian perspective but also in the utilitarian perspective when it comes to animals and the writings do this by infusing both of these views with a spiritual dimension. So a good place to begin is the Katabíac Das where we find that Bahá'u'lláh does permit hunting but he counsels that you quote hunt not to excess. He later also makes this interesting statement burda not an animal with more than it can bear we truly have prohibited such treatment through a most binding interdiction in the book. Be the embodiments of justice and fairness in its all creation. So to my ear this language sounds very strong a binding interdiction. Now to a Middle Eastern audience in the 19th century the most obvious application of this passage would be to literal beasts of burden. However we know that Bahá'u'lláh's writings are intended to guide humanity for at least 1,000 years and already in much of the world the practice of using animals to carry burdens has vanished. So it begs the question are there other kinds of burdens that might be met? How do we impose all kinds of burdens on animals? We impose physical burdens emotional burdens, mental burdens and we inflict them on animals either deliberately or often through negligence. There's a large body of research on the emotional life of a broad range of in particular mammals we don't have the time to get into the research but those of us with pets can probably test to the fact that some animals at least are capable not merely a physical sensation but of emotion including pain. So this broader reading of the nature of the binding intradiction on overburdening an animal finds support in my view in the Guardian's description of the Katabiaq das and God passes by. When referencing this passage he explains that it quote condemns cruelty to animals. So in this passage it seems that the Guardian is giving a very a broad reading to the intended nature of this passage. Okay, now looking outside of the Katabiaq das we find a remarkable mention of the treatment of animals in that portion of the Katabiaq Khan often referred to as the Tablet of the True Seeker. Here, Bahá'u'lláh is telling us the requirements for a True Seeker who was someone who quote determined to take the step of search in the path leading to the knowledge of the ancient of days. I won't read the passage in its entirety it touches on the need to avoid backbiting to seek companionship with the righteous. The bolded portion at the end reads he should show kindness to animals how much more unto his fellow man to him who's endowed the power of utterance. Now we know that the station of a Seeker is not something that we ever graduate from. Indeed, the inclusion in this passage of the prohibition on backbiting and all these other qualities show that these are hallmarks of spiritual life things that were called to do during our entire existence on this planet. So on my reading kindness to animals is no different it's something that is a lifelong requirement for those seeking to follow Bahá'u'lláh. Okay, so I think these passages are certainly suggestive but what we don't yet have are either specific as to what's the kind treatment of animals looks like or the reasoning behind the importance of treating animals well. Abdul Bahá'u'lláh can help us see the answer to both of these questions. First let's consider a passage where the master directly addresses the question of kindness to animals. It's a bit lengthy so it will be displayed over a few slides. All the bolded parts in any of the quotations are just my own emphasis. So briefly it is not only their fellow human beings that the beloved of God must treat with mercy and compassion rather must they show forth the utmost loving kindness to every living creature and indeed you do worse to harm an animal for man hath a language he can lodge a complaint to he can cry out and moan if injured he can have recourse to the authorities and these will protect him from his aggressor but the hapless beast is mute able neither to express its hurt nor take its case to the authorities. If a man inflict a thousand ills upon a beast it can neither ward him off with speech nor hail him into court for in all physical respects where the animal spirit is concerned the self-same feelings are shared by animal and man. Man hath not grasped this truth however and he believeth that physical sensations are confined to human beings. Note the, this may be a reference to that Descartesian view again that animals can't feel. Wherefore is he unjust to the animals and cruel and yet in truth what difference is there when it comes to physical sensations the feelings are one and the same whether you inflict pain on man or on beast there is no difference here whatever. Therefore it is essential that you show forth the utmost consideration to the animal and that you be even kinder to him than to your fellow man train your children from their earliest days to be infinitely tender and loving to animals. If an animal be sick let the children try to heal it if it be hungry let them feed it if thirsty let them quench its thirst if weary let them see that it rests. So the language here is quite clear and quite strong in my view. We must show the utmost loving kindness to every living creature. So kindness beyond which we cannot go essentially. The reason given is that animals feel pain in just the same way that we do. So again this is contrary to that enlightenment view that would at least for Descartes deny that animals feel anything. I'd like to just touch on the last part of this quotation. It's discussed when Baha'is think about the education of children. And it is I think a great benefit to a child's development for the child to learn to be kind to animals but the injunction shouldn't be thought of in purely instrumental terms. The context here makes it clear that the animal deserves to be treated kindly for its own sake and not simply as a means to train children to be kind. This is quite distinct from Kant who as we saw believed that we should be kind to animals and humans. Clearly Abdul Baha'i does not see the animal as a mere means to human ends. Now discussions about ends and means can sometimes build false dichotomies. I think what we see here is a holistic or harmonious understanding of ethics and ontology. In the sense that what is ethical is not just good for the one who receives the ethical treatment but also good for the one who performs the action because a good action is one aligned so this is a level of harmony between ethics and ontology that I think is not easily attainable without a spiritual framework. Let's see if we can compare the Baha'i framework as it's emerging so far with the Kantian and utilitarian frameworks already reviewed. Interesting to note that Abdul Baha'i does adopt something that sounds a little bit like that utilitarian litmus test when arguing that the animal has to be treated kindly because it can feel pain. The Baha'u'llah stresses that the human is owed more kindness than the animal because the human is endowed with the power of utterance and this seems more aligned with the Kantian legacy which makes the treatment of humans as ends a categorical imperative based on their capacity to reason which is connected to utterance. Here I'd like to briefly mention an insight that I owe to Nader Saidi who explains in his book, Gate of the Heart that in the Bob's writings we see a harmonization in his ethical writings between utilitarianism and a Kantian style of ethics. According to Saidi in the Bob's writings, a true utilitarian calculation becomes one that takes into account spiritual as well as material consequences of actions and so it becomes in Saidi's words inseparable from the universal imperatives of the type advanced by Kant. I think we see the same things happening in the writings of Baha'u'llah and animals when we take them as a whole. Also this last point here in the slide just to note I'll be returning to the point that every created thing has rights that relates to another insight from Nader Saidi's work on the Bob's so that will come a bit later in the presentation. Okay so I think that the high standard for the ethical treatment of animals that's emerging so far can help us bridge the gap between the Kantian or traditional western view and the utilitarian and animal rights positions because the Baha'i view is able to recognize something unique about humans without using this as a justification for denying any duties owed to animals. And as I touched on before I think the Baha'i perspective also provides a more solid and reliable foundation for kindness towards animals than the utilitarian view does because Baha'i ethical principles are believed by those who follow them to be rooted in divine law or at least in our understanding at this moment in time of divine law and divine law is conceived of as an objective reality so these aren't simply rules that we have decided to adopt because they make sense to us or because they suit us for the moment we believe that they are objective they stand outside of ourselves and are fundamental in the way that universe operates. Now I'd like to highlight something that you may have noticed it's an interesting tension between the passage from Baha'u'llah and the tablet of the true seeker and the passage we just looked at from Abdul Baha'u so the master says that we must be even kinder to the animal than to our fellow humans Baha'u'llah says that we must show kindness to animals how much more unto our fellow humans not only this but the justification for each point seems to be in some way the same Baha'u'llah notes that humans are endowed with utterance whereas for Abdul Baha'u'llah it's the animal's inability to speak and to plead its case that makes it more deserving of kindness which contrary to Descartes and Kant makes our own human uniqueness as reasoning communicative beings a reason to be particularly caring towards animals not to deny that we have obligations to them so what might we make of this apparent inconsistency there are a number of ways we could try to resolve it I'm just to one is the principle that where a statement from Baha'u'llah seems to be at odds with the statement from the master we should defer to the statement from Abdul Baha'u because as the authorized interpreter of his father's words he knows what Baha'u'llah means and we don't however in this case I don't think we actually need to resort to this hermeneutical principle instead I think what's happening with the tension between these two statements is that it's a creative tension it's not indicative of any contradiction so consider that the virtues that were meant to develop in this life such as kindness are dynamic they're not static in other words we can never reach their maximum we are ideally never to rest on our current level of kindness and say that's it I've reached my capacity for kindness I've maxed out we don't know what our capacity is so when we take these two statements together I think they can help us put a virtuous cycle into effect as we bring ourselves to account each day so perhaps I'm somebody who finds it very easy to be kind to animals and I don't get along well with people ok so for me it's Baha'u'llah's quote that makes a claim on me and asks me to grow I'm kind to animals that's wonderful now be even more kind to humans and if I ever manage to achieve this thing that Baha'u'llah is asking me to do then I can look to Abdul Baha's point and see that my work is not done now it's incumbent on me to learn how to be even kinder to animals than my newfound level of kindness to humans and so on the cycle can continue for as long as I live each precept acting in turn as the next rung on the ladder of kindness and I think also there may be a recognition here out of God's mercy that people are different some of us find being kind to animals easy and there's a quote for them if they find it hard to be kind to people and some of us don't really relate to animals maybe we didn't grow up with them we don't much like them and we're more inclined to be kind to humans so for us we have a quote from Abdul Baha to guide us so now I'm going to turn in the presentation away from these quotations that explicitly speak to the treatment of animals and look at another quotation from Abdul Baha that while it doesn't take the animal as its central theme it is very revealing as to what the animal truly is and that has a lot of implications for our treatment of it so this is from the tablets of the divine plan considergi no matter how much man gains in wealth riches and opulence in this world he will not become as independent as a cow for these fattened cows roam freely over the vast table land all the prairies and meadows are theirs for grazing and all the springs and rivers are theirs for drinking no matter how much they graze the fields will not be exhausted it is evident that they have earned these material bounties with the utmost facility still more ideal than this is the life of a bird a bird on the summit of a mountain on the high waving branches is built for itself a nest more beautiful than the palaces of kings the air is in the utmost purity the water cool and clear as crystal panorama charming and enchanting in such glorious surroundings the expenses numbered days all the harvests of the plane are his possessions having earned all this wealth without the least labor hence no matter how much man may advance in this world he shall not attain to the station of this bird thus it becomes evident that in the matters of this world however much man may strive and work to the point of death he will be unable to earn the abundance the freedom and the independent life of a small bird this proves that established is the fact that man is not created for the life of this ephemeral world nay rather is he created for the environment of infinite perfections for the attainment the sublimity of the world of humanity to be drawn nigh unto the divine threshold and to sit on the throne of everlasting sovereignty now the context of this quote is important it's found in the tablets of the divine plan and in these tablets Abdu'l-Bahá was writing to the North American Baha'i community urging it to urging individuals in that community to do amongst other things the act of pioneering this meant giving up their lives of material prosperity north America being a place of relative wealth at the time compared to most of the rest of the world and to undertake the often difficult uncomfortable work of the pioneer Abdu'l-Baha' identified that attachment to material comfort is going to be one of the great barriers that these Baha'is will have to overcome if they are going to pioneer and so in this passage he explains a simple truth about material comfort it's not really for us we can pursue it we can make it the focus of our lives but as he says no matter how hard we work we will be unable to earn the abundance, the freedom and the independent life of a small bird and the implication is that as he says man is not created for the life of this ephemeral world our true home is the world of the spirit and this makes sense if we consider that our material bodies die after a time and our souls continue to those worlds of the spirit but there's a clear following principle here the animal is created for the ephemeral material world as we know from some passages that we don't have time to explore in depth in this talk the individual animal does not have an immortal soul that survives death each animal in my understanding is something like a wave rolling out of the ocean a specific manifestation of the underlying attribute of God represented by that animal once the individual wave recedes the animating animal spirit of that individual disappears there's no rational soul that continues outside of this world since we have such a rational soul this world is only a womb for us it's not our true home and it's certainly not our paradise but it is the animal's paradise it's the only paradise that each individual feeling animal each embodied expression of an attribute of God will ever know and that this world intended to be a true paradise for the animal is reflected in the beautiful scenes that Abdul Baha paints of the pleasant lives of the cows and the birds we may also recall the prayer in which he says that the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field receive their meat each day from thee so now think of how many clean pure habitats have been to a greater or lesser degree destroyed by humans and think of how many animals have been removed from their habitats and placed in conditions and these activities are often done by humans in their pursuit of the things of this world attracting resources to build up material civilization so in the very same activities we might be depriving ourselves of the spiritual focus that should animate our lives and also depriving the poor animal of the only paradise it can never know I'll just add a final note on the same theme so in his exploration of the Bob's writings in The Gate of the Heart Nader Saidi highlights the principle of perfection found in the Bob's writings which is to quote Saidi the duty of all human beings to exert their utmost efforts to realize the potentialities of all things in the world so this involves on the one hand making our own handiwork those things that we create as perfect as possible so that they reflect to the utmost degree the perfection with which God has made his handiwork on the other hand this also includes a specific injunction to preserve the purity of the environment Saidi translates a particular passage from Bayan the Persian Bayan nothing is more beloved before God than to keep water in a state of the utmost purity to such an extent that if a believer should become aware that the glass of water he holds in his hand has passed through the impure parts of the earth he would be grieved Nader Saidi explains that the implication here is that all the lakes, rivers and seas through which water may have passed must be kept clean this is a human duty so not only must we try to perfect the things that we make but we must also as much as possible avoid contaminating nature which God has made perfect the Bob explains that created things are owed this duty to be perfected so once anything appears in its highest degree of perfection it has attained its paradise so it's very interesting to think about the implications of this ethical attitude towards all of creation in light of what Abdul Bahasa says about the ideal life of animals a description that makes it clear that the natural state is the paradise of the animal similarly the Bob's universal imperative as discussed by Saidi is this be thou for God and for his creatures even as God hath been for God himself and for his creatures so this implies treating all things the way that God treats them or in Kantian terms treating them as ends but of course this is much more expansive than Kant who as Saidi points out applies his categorical imperative to humans only this concept of the perfection of created things I think has enormous implications for how we treat animals I'm thinking for instance of the environmental impact of large-scale animal agriculture in terms of carbon emissions deforestation, water usage pollution running off into waterways and resulting dead zones and perhaps most topically the transmission of novel viruses to humans so-called zoonotic viruses and now these are all important topics to humanity's future as a whole let alone their importance to the animals while I don't have time to discuss them today if they're if this is of interest it could be discussed during the questions of course I'll also be putting my email up at the end if anyone wants to extend the conversation by email I'm very happy to do that okay so now quickly let's yes the attribution so let's quickly consider what practical implications this view of the writings might have so just as the interpretations of the writings have all been my own the implications I draw are also entirely my own I'm essentially going to be addressing this practical question by explaining how I've tried to put these principles into effect in my own life so you're absolutely welcome to completely disagree with the entire presentation that's fantastic as long as it's provoked some thought I think that's I'm very happy with that so in my view the ethical standard that we're called to adopt towards animals seems fairly clear to treat them with the utmost love and kindness there are exceptions in the writings for dangerous animals for instance that's in a passage that I haven't quoted I don't encounter any dangerous animals in urban Toronto so this hasn't as yet been directly applicable to me so given that it is not kind to hurt an animal I don't hurt animals directly I also avoid knowingly hurting them indirectly so in practical terms I don't eat animal products I don't buy new clothing items made from animals things of this nature I've lived this way for about five years now interestingly living this way has in my experience had a bit of a simplifying effect on my life that's been really nice as someone who resents the amount of superfluous trivial choices that consumer culture continually thrusts on us it's kind of nice when you're shopping for food and clothing if you can just rule out large swathes of the products and avoid looking at them entirely but simplicity is also I think very appealing to me when it comes to spirituality in the following sense if we think about the prohibition on theft or the prohibition on consuming alcohol these are very nice and simple that doesn't mean they're easy maybe I'm somebody who really enjoys stealing and I really struggle to break the habit of theft but at least I know whether I'm obeying the law or not so by avoiding knowing participation and actions that may have caused pain to animals I similarly have a very easy time bringing myself to account each day at least in this one area of the Bahá'í teachings now it has to be said I can't let the standard perfectly if I use electricity for instance as I'm doing right now to this presentation part of it is probably coming from fossil fuels and the extraction and the burning of those fossil fuels can hurt ecosystems and alter the climate in a way that has cumulative devastating effects for many ecosystems so for me it's a standard of doing the best that I can and it's also important to note that the Bahá'í view as I understand it is not an absolutist one and one way to understand this I think is through the principle of sacrifice Bahá'í's often think of the concept of sacrifice in a way that it's explained by Abdul-Bahá as giving up that which is lower for that which is higher and we know that the spiritual advancement of the human soul and of human society are both very high purposes the highest purposes to which we're called in this life so if an animal's life is sacrificed to those ends that's entirely appropriate if on the other hand an animal's life or its comfort is taken away for an unworthy purpose then this isn't appropriate in my view because again the animal as a feeling creation of God is an end unto itself it can only be made a means to a higher end if that makes sense so an example that I find helpful to think about in terms of diet the consensus of nutritional experts such as the American Dietetics Association is that animal products are not necessary for human health so there's a paper from 2009 for instance it states this very clearly Abdul-Bahá of course has pointed this out over a century ago writing in various places that our physiology including our teeth are evidence that meat is not an intended part of our diet and also stating that in the future our food will consist of fruit and brains and not that said there may be circumstances where consuming animal products for food may be necessary to serve a higher goal one consideration may be practical so I'm in the privileged position of being able to make the choice not to eat animal products because I live in a place where there are abundant plant foods that I can afford that may not be the case for everyone and they certainly no human should starve themselves in order to not harm an animal there may also be some specific cases where meat is medically necessary, Abdul-Bahá touches on this point so if I learned that I had a medical condition that required me to eat animals to preserve my health I would do it because the death of the animal would be to the end of my continued life and not end as a finality but end as it means and I hope that that life would be centered on the continual attempt to advance my own soul and on efforts to advance human civilization however humbly on the other hand the fact that I might enjoy the taste of meat is not for me was not a sufficient reason when I changed my diet to justify the death of the animal that provided the meat so we can think of other examples along these lines there are many quotations and entire concepts that I didn't have time to address today but I'd like to wrap up so we can get to your questions and we'll end with a story that I think is very interesting and it may help us understand why there's such clear language about the need to be kind to animals but for the most part this is not framed in terms of laws in the Baha'i writings so the story is one told by Abul-Kazen who was Baha'u'llah's gardener and he told the story to Mae Maxwell and other western pilgrims so this is taken from her account of the story so one day the gardener tells a swarm of locusts flew into the garden of Rizvon Abul-Kazen ran to Baha'u'llah and begged him to make the locusts leave before they devoured everything on Mae Maxwell's account of Abul-Kazen's story quote the manifestation smiled and said the locusts must be fed let them be so then after a while unable to bear it the gardener returned to Baha'u'llah and begged him again this time Baha'u'llah arose and went to the trees covered in insects again from Maxwell's account he said Abul-Kazen does not want you God protect you and lifting up the hem of his robe he shook it and immediately all the locusts arose in the body and flew away so I find the story quite interesting I don't think the lesson that we should take from it is that we should always allow rampaging locusts to consume our crops at least some of the time human welfare will probably require that we take action to attract our food source from locusts so here's what I do take from the story the first thing that Baha'u'llah tells his gardener is that the locusts should be let alone because they too must eat but because the gardener insists he, the manifestation of God agrees to the human's wish and sends the locusts away and I think that Baha'u'llah's councils are often like that in this dispensation Baha'u'llah doesn't insist but he doesn't insist because as a human collective we're nearly grown up and we've been given a degree of freedom including the freedom to make mistakes and to learn the true path through those mistakes so perhaps the councils that Baha'u'llah gives us about kindness to animals are a bit like this he will tell us what is best but he won't insist and that doesn't mean that the command to be kind to animals is the best choice to live the most animal choice for humanity we've been left free remember the Baha'u'llah counseled his rulers to embrace peace but they refused and he didn't force them now would it have been better for us if they had heeded his councils? we may think so given the consequences of the ways I would encourage everyone who sees beauty and truth in the writings of the Baha'i Faith to take some time to investigate and discover what the teachings about animals say so we can each come to our own understanding. So I'll welcome any questions. I have my email address here in case we run out of time and I think it'll also be posted on the screen. These are a couple of questions that have often come up before so I've just put them here in case that's abuse. I'll leave them up for just a couple of seconds and then I'll stop sharing my screen. Thank you, Michael. Thank you so very much. I, for illuminating aspects of the Baha'i teachings which I venture to say many of us have never thought about very deeply before and especially not in relation to the philosophical perspectives that you offered. It gives, and many other aspects of your presentation because we have so much more depth to these issues than at least many of us have probably thought of before. Thank you so much. Many, some questions coming in here. One is, are you able to comment, this is number two, are you able to comment on the distinction between the term soul and spirit in relation to the distinction between humans and animals that appear in some explanatory sections of some answer questions? It's an excellent question and I hasn't say much on it because it's been a while since I've reviewed those sections and I honestly think anything I might say would be less, much less instructive than going back to the original text. My understanding is that when the writings refer to the soul, this is the same, let me actually quickly look to see, I did have a note on this. There may be one useful thing I can say on the subject. You are allowed to pass by the way, people can go look it up. I should probably pass. So just to note that when the term rational soul and human spirit, these are the same thing in my understanding is what Ababa says in some answer questions, which means that the animal spirit is something else. It is not connected to the idea of a rational soul. But I won't go beyond that. There was a similar question about, someone said they have read that animals do not have a, quote, human soul, but not that they don't have a soul in general. So I guess this is just asking for clarification of what is meant by soul and least of the way you were using the word and the way you've studied in the writing. Yeah, so my understanding is that, so the way I was using soul, the soul would be an individual, some individual aspect of an entity in this world that continues to the spiritual worlds. And that remains in some way individuated. That isn't simply merged or reabsorbed into some greater principle. Whereas for the animal, I think, my understanding is the animal doesn't have soul in that sense in that it reflects spirit or reflects animal spirit, but there is an individual component that goes on to the next world. I don't know that that means that we don't see something that is the equivalent of each distinct type of animal spirit in the next world. Maybe we don't, maybe we do. I'm not sure my sense is we probably do, but that doesn't necessarily mean that each individual animal that has lived in this material world finds an individual expression in the next world. That's my own probably very muddled understanding. So. Again, certainly the new translation of some answer questions is a wonderful source on many of these questions, as the questioner mentioned. Someone asked that before you gave the loco story, someone asked about insects. You also alluded to dangerous animals, but whether you know anything in particular or read anything about that. I haven't seen specific references to insects that come to mind. Well, I think the interesting question might be, does science have research to bring to bear in terms of kind of an insect feel in a meaningful way? I would be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt until there is a conclusive scientific answer. Certainly I haven't seen anything in the writings to suggest that they don't. Also, just on a humorous note, often when I tell people that I don't eat animals, a common response is, oh, well, maybe we should all eat insects because they have a low ecological footprint and a good source of protein. And my response is always to think, well, I suppose, but I don't know that I wanna retrain myself to enjoy the taste of insects when I can already just eat plants. Alrighty. Here's another one. Do you have comments on cloning of animals? Haven't thought about it much. Yeah, I'll pass. Okay. Okay. Someone asks, you may have addressed this partly, but what is your view of the fact consumption of meat is not forbidden in the writings, I assume? They kind of addressed that, but yeah. Yeah, I suppose the two answers that come to mind are one, a prohibition simply wouldn't work. There will be circumstances where consumption of meat is required for human survival. Some of those reasons might be because of structural features about human society that we can change and move past, but there may always be contingencies that arise where meat is required. There's also that medical exemption, it's not an exemption because it's not a rule, but that Abel Bahá mentioned, sometimes meat can be helpful for certain situations. And then a larger point, I think relates to the story of Abel Kazem, that there are some things that are so detrimental, I suppose, to human spiritual and societal advancement that they are bright lines in terms of law. They're sort of, if we're walking a path, there are some very clear signposts, guardrails if you will, where we just can't do these things or we'll go off the cliff. And then there are other things that take us off the path potentially, but that we're free to figure that out for ourselves. All right, thank you so much. This is something someone asks you to please comment. It seems to me that if the physical world, quote, belongs to the animals, we have an obligation to care for it, as our obligation and kindness to animals. That when we pollute the environment, the water, the air, our own, for our own pleasure and advancement, we are stealing the natural world from animals. Please comment. And maybe this is tied to the kind of the question behind all this is how does this affect how Baha'is engage in discourse on conservation and protecting the environment and all of that. Yeah, I think there's definitely something to this idea. There's a way to overstate that point, I think, in so far as we know that this world does also belong to us and we're encouraged to enjoy it in a healthy, in a way that's healthy for us in a spiritual sense. But when we take the writings as a whole, I do think that this passage from Abdul Baha'in's similar ones do suggest that, well, we can enjoy this world and that's fine and we're entitled to do that. It is more, in some sense, it is more truly the world of the animal. So I think there's merit to this idea that to the extent that we can shift our mindset from power gives us the right to exploit, to power gives us the duty to preserve and to be a custodian of nature, then I think that will be, I mean, certainly better for the other inhabitants of this planet, but I think also healthier for us. And interestingly, I mean, this dominion-based narrative that came up in the Enlightenment, it had its roots in a particular version of a Christian story about the relationship of the human to the natural world. But there's also strong language in going as far back as Genesis, that suggests that the proper relationship between the human and the natural world is one of custodianship and not one of exploitation. And so in terms of applying that to discourse spaces, have you, I'm sure you've thought about that as well. Yeah, I mean, my sense is that there can be a tendency amongst some of the louder voices in the animal rights movement to preach to the choir a little bit by incorporating into their arguments, premises that many people are just not prepared to accept. So going beyond saying the animal suffers and that is not, it's not just for the animal to suffer for our enjoyment, going beyond that to saying, there's no difference between an animal suffering and a human suffering because we're all just animals and that's all we are, full stop. That's not an intuitive understanding of creation of the way the world works for still most people of the world, I think, who do have some sense of a spiritual reality to the human being. So I think that the high writings give us this unique opportunity to acknowledge both sides, to say, to create a bridge there and to say this point about suffering is absolutely valid. And it's not negated by the fact that the human has a unique spiritual status. So there can hopefully be a way by harmonizing these two points to bring sides together in the discourse. Martha, can I touch on the, yeah, I do see a question here that was asked, how about the logic that if humans eat animals, animals are elevated to the human spirit, i.e. they will become part of us. And as we eat vegetables, we'll be part of us and vegetables are elevated by two levels. And then soil is elevated to vegetation. So this is an interesting point. There was a letter, I haven't seen the original, I don't know if we have it, but somebody wrote to Abdul Baha, expressing surprise that hunting was permitted in the Katabiyak Das. So my sense is that this person was saying, killing animals is cruel, why is this permitted? Abdul Baha's response is quite interesting. If I'm recalling the letter correctly, one of the points he makes is that on some level, the death of some type of animal life is inevitable in our day-to-day life. There's no way to avoid certain types of killing, frankly, of insects, very small creatures. And then that point he makes is this, that there's no great injustice from the point of view of the matter of which each of these kingdoms is composed because it actually elevates. So if mineral matter is absorbed into the vegetable, that's good, it's reached a higher kingdom. The animal eats the vegetable, that's great. That matter is reached a higher kingdom. And then if the human eats the animal similarly, all this matter has been elevated to its highest possible kingdom in the material world. He is speaking on my reading of this passage and everyone can of course come to their own conclusions. He is speaking from the point of view of matter. So it is a very interesting philosophical point. As the Guardian always reminds us, it's important to take the writings as much as we can because they're huge and we are finite. Try to take them as a whole. Viewed as a whole, I don't see that that principle negates the very clear language about the ethical duties owed to animals, not in terms of the matter they're composed of, but they're them as individual entities, which has been the focus of this presentation. So yeah, so I think that a harmonious reading of those would say maybe that also goes to the fact of why is there no absolute prohibition on eating animals because it is not a categorical sin if we wanna use that language because there will be circumstances where it's appropriate. And when we're doing it for the right reasons, for instance, there's nothing else for me to eat and I need to survive so I can continue my spiritual progress and continue to serve humanity, then that animal is in a sense achieving something great. It is going towards a very high purpose and that is a good thing. But that will not, of course, often be the case certainly in my circumstances, it's not often the case that I'm left with an alternative but to eat animals to survive. Great, we might have time for one last question. Asking for a comment, it's about compassion for animals and people. As someone who has lived with animals, I found an intuitive connection with them. We both seem able to communicate with each other. I'm very attentive to them and to what I perceive as their feelings of happiness, pain and fear. Perhaps that isn't the experience for all people but for me it has produced increased compassion for them and subsequently for other people to have any comment. I love that. I think that comment almost stands for itself. I don't feel the need to add much. I'm gonna use it though to raise another point that it sparks in my mind. The writings are replete with animal imagery. The nightingale of paradise, the royal falcon on the arm of the almighty, the lions roaring in the thickets. I think it's important for humans to spend some time and also there's a lot of natural imagery, the ocean, the mountain. It's important for humans to spend time in nature for a myriad of reasons. But one of them I think is to really understand when Bahá'u'lláh talks about the ocean of his writings, how we looked at an ocean and just spent time sitting by an ocean and trying to internalize the power of an ocean. And if we haven't done that, if we just have sort of an abstract idea that an ocean is a lot of water, do we really, are we able really to grasp what he's trying to communicate? Abdu'l-Bahá makes the point that anything spiritual, anything non-sensible, sensible in a sense of related sensory experience has to be conveyed to us in sensory terms. It's the only way in our physical embodiment that we have to understand things. And so I think the imagery that is used in the writings is chosen very, very carefully. And I think the same thing goes for spending time with animals. We're facing, I think it's, scientists call it the sixth grade extinction. We're in the middle of an extinction event on this planet. The previous five have all been caused by natural phenomena, meteorites, volcanic eruptions. This one's being caused by human activity. And I think it would be such a shame if in 200 years, a child picks up the tablet of Ahmad for the first time and wonders what a nightingale is because there's no such thing left on the planet. I think that would be great loss. And I think that we've been given these images in the writings because they are the best images for us to understand a spiritual truth. And that's, so all that bit rambling, but all that to say, I think associating with animals, spending time with them, spending time in nature. I think these are very, very good things. Great. Well, with that dire warning in mind, and also with the invitation to go spend time in nature, the closest body of water or forest or our dog, spiritual experiences we can have even while we're distancing. So thank you again so much, Michael, and thank you for everyone who joined us tonight on behalf of Association of Ohio Studies, and please enjoy the rest of the conference. Take care.