Talk:Infallibility (Bahá'í)

There may be more Attributes that are apropos. This is a start. jmswtlk 16:16, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

merge

This should be a section under the Bahá'í teachings page. If there is enough content then it might deserve a new page. Creating a page for every little detail of the teachings will make too many pages or give an imbalanced impression of what is important to Baha'is. Cuñado - Talk 20:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I would actually put it in Manifestation of God -- Jeff3000 21:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

This page could grow, if tied in with, and jointly evolved with, Baha'i Faith and Independent Investigation of the Truth (I hope to have the intitial draft (see related sandbox) done this month).

My interest right now is to get a clear reading on what is encyclopedic (suitable for this wiki site) and is not non-encyclopedic (ought to be pushed out to another site). jmswtlk 00:00, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Review of Style

I think the article right now is not very encyclopedic and can be generally deleted or changed. Since I didn't create it I thought I'd mention a few things instead of editing.

The intro needs to outline very directly what the article is about. Answer the what/when/why/where kind of things. Like:

The Baha'i Faith has specific teachings on the infallibility of its central figures, and a lesser degree of infallibility applies to current institutions of the Faith."

Going off onto strange mystical meanings and referencing several unheard-of and somewhat vague theories does not have much of a place in the article. Try discussing the facts. Baha'u'llah mentioned the "Most Great Infallibility", so provide some references for that, and as a critical analysis provide what areas people might have issue with, or in other words, did he say anything that might have been wrong? Obviously the science article could be linked there. Does the Most Great Infallibility apply to other manifestations or books of previous dispensations? What exactly does it entail? Don't be so flowery and just be direct. And of course reference things from other books or from source Writings as much as is reasonable.

Then of course mention the seceding levels of infallibility held by Abdu'l Baha, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice. Make prominent that the Baha'is believe in a current and ongoing source of infallible guidance, which is something that is important to mention. Cuñado - Talk 07:23, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Cuñado, I hear you, I think, although I'm not sure that I agree with ‘mystical’ (was that pejorative?) and would prefer to use ‘metaphysical’ for several reasons. Let’s say that the latter is more amenable to being applied to the ‘public’ face of science (my earlier note – Faith and Science). On the other hand, the former is more limited to the private which is not necessarily delusional (again, look at my remarks about intuition – Independent Investigation of the Truth (IIOT) – under JMSwtlk).

I assumed that on ‘wiki’ there would be a joint editing. The page was blank; I attempted my take; expected that others might add, subtract, modify, etc.; evidently, it didn’t pass muster. Do you want to give it a try? Perhaps, at that time, we could extract the outline that would form a ‘stub’ which I see as being more apropos than merge.

But, let me explain that I was trying to establish some links beyond the normal take on this subject. I mentioned that this is related to IIOT. The world’s intellects basically have all agreed that ‘uncertainty’ is the norm (many examples of this across the board). The subject of chaos (dynamical systems and others) is a respected field.

The whole concept of Infallibility is foreign to the modern mind. Yet, there are people who almost go this far in their description of ‘darwinist’ processes.

I used ‘knowing’ and ‘being/power’ in the context of the Most Great Infallibility since they are (can be) intuitively appealing, I believe. As well, due to my work with the ‘artificial’ I see these as archetypical to us and what we do.

I hoped to motivate thinking about what it means to have this Attribute. By the way, any critical view on the encyclopedic page of this has to toe a line to not be problematic (to the writer : -). There is no ‘error’ or ‘misstep’ (by definition) of any type. As well, it very much leads to wondering what ‘axiomatic’ nuggets are in the sea of the Writings.

By the way, I’ve spent the past 15 years reviewing mathematics and the basis for the modern views with the whole notion of looking at why we (that is, the mainstream) think like we do. In a note, the Universal House of Justice suggested looking at things through His eyes (which doesn’t detract from IIOT). One way to do this for the individual might be studying of the Writings.

Now, I’m not sure about how the Master’s and Guardian’s attribute differed though I saw reference to this on the Baha’i Faith and Science page.

However, there is the operational infallibility that rests on the Universal House of Justice. Forgive me if I wonder about whether at some point in the future (given that those ‘axioms’ are extracted and utilized), there might be actual applicability for this in firming the foundation of a worldview. Now, having said that, please be reminded that the ‘worldview’ could be partly augmented via ‘artificial’ means.

You may argue that these considerations might be beyond the encyclopedic. If that’s true, then they ought to move elsewhere. But, there is an awful lot of details about history in the pages. What’s wrong with using a few paragraphs to look forward?

JMSwtlk, the thing is I don't understand your style at all. I've tried to look over the edits you've made in the past in other article starts, and I don't understand the way you build up the articles. They don't seem very logical to me, and thus I can't help with them. -- Jeff3000

Jeff3000, Thanks for being honest. Let's start over with an outline and related issues. Then, perhaps we can get the article expanded to be appropriate for ‘wiki’ status. As well, I’ll do a similar setup with the IIOT page (see link below).

As an aside, what we’re seeing here is why people fall back to mathematics and other operational modes in order to make progress. One of those ‘modes’ is strongly computational, albeit even that type of stricture does not guarantee much. jmswtlk 17:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Outline

This is my order. Please alter as you see fit. Thanks.

My only hope is that the subject gets the proper respect and acknowledgement. Of course, I’m showing my particular worldview in regard to IIOT. jmswtlk 17:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Tie to discussion about Life on other Planets

I've been reading this discussion page concerning life on planets and see reference to concepts that I tried to develop on this page. For instance, there was reference to 'falsifiability' in regard to a small likelihood that a sample across all known planets (if it were feasible to anyone human) would show that this statement ("Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute." (Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 163)) was verifiable (type of true). On the other hand, there were discussions about the meaning of 'creature' which did reference the levels of spirit. This is one type of discussion example. There would be others that are more mundane (for example, from computer modeling of complicated systems – there are many others).

From where I sit, a Baha'i Philosophy of Science has not been defined, however it may be that such a thing is on the list of accomplishments that not only would be doable but that it is necessary and that it would have an 'operational' impact. jmswtlk 18:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Hello JMSwtlk, it may be possible to do such a thing, but it has to be done carefully so that it is not (or appear as) original work, since that is not what Wikipedia is supposed to be. Mostly, it should reference the writings, or what other people have published about the writings. -- Jeff3000 18:18, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Right. You'll notice in the discussion that we hit a wall when there were no references in the Baha'i writings to that particular situation. All we can do on wikipedia is reference what Baha'is believe or do, or repeat verifiable facts about history and social action. Writing an article about some unexplored philosophy will most likely be deleted. And I would support deleting such an article. Cuñado - Talk 21:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Again

I put a set of 'Reminders (NPOV, no original research, verifiability)' on my organizing page. This will help dampen the enthusiasm about the greatness of the 'wiki' experience.

Now, may we start over with this (and related) complicated subject? jmswtlk 14:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Epistemology, Ontology

These two topics, from a Baha'i viewpoint, very much ought to be their own pages and would support Faith and Science discussions. Yahyay19 00:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Style

This article doesn't read like an article at all. Vkasdg 07:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Start over

I propose that we start this again. Either via blank page (I've done this already) or delete. Yahyay19 19:38, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I redirected the page. As mentioned above, the subject can be expanded on in Baha'i teachings or Manifestation of God. Cuñado - Talk 00:55, 30 April 2006 (UTC)