[2] It had been discussed without the specific wording a decade earlier via a compilation Anton Haddad put together with Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl along with their own perspective - a subject that was subsequently taken up by American Bahá'ís.
[a] Nader Saiedi, adjunct professor at UCLA,[8] notes Bahá'u'lláh criticized a pursuit of pseudoscience which claimed that "…numerous esoteric sciences is required to understand the mysteries of the sacred Word.
[1]'Abdu'l-Bahá anonymously published The Secret of Divine Civilization in 1875 in Iran, noting how the country had declined among the nations "as a result of poor education, bad governance, ignorance of scientific advances, rejection of innovation, and the atrophy of the life of the mind.
In one form or another its promptings are a daily influence in the lives of most people on earth and, as events around the world today dramatically show, the longings it awakens are both inextinguishable and incalculably potent.
[18][19] and further: Future generations … will find almost incomprehensible the circumstance that, in an age paying tribute to an egalitarian philosophy and related democratic principles, development planning should view the masses of humanity as essentially recipients of benefits from aid and training.
Despite acknowledgment of participation as a principle, the scope of the decision making left to most of the world’s population is at best secondary, limited to a range of choices formulated by agencies inaccessible to them and determined by goals that are often irreconcilable with their perceptions of reality.
"[20] and university professor Sabet Behrooz[22] called "…a brilliant statement … (showing) the necessity of harmony between science and religion …(which) must be the guiding light and the organizing principle of our endeavors in integrative studies of the Bahá'í Faith.
Karlberg and Smith underscore and summarize the work of Alan Chalmers and Peter Godfrey-Smith who had published university press texts, in relation to the Bahá'í Faith on a number of points.
"[36] From it Warburg sees a "clear stance in the dilemma between academic freedom and acceptance of religious premises" and the issues of where "possible conflict with doctrines that can be tested empirically" can occur.
He stated that "An integrative approach to understanding the implications of the Bahá'í teachings, however, follows developmental processes that begin as primarily internal and evolve in a direction of externalization and fusion with other branches of knowledge.
Generally speaking, absolutist positions and authoritarian attitudes expressed by the gatekeepers of knowledge in both science and religion have obscured people's clarity of vision and hindered the union of these two essential entities of human life.
[51] In Brazil again in 2001 a program of action was initiated, seminars were held and a group formed to develop analysis of the system[52] published a book and simultaneously application in some local community "Centers of Learning" and one as a pilot project,[53] but to advance the group needed to approach the work with some values: "To set out on a new path requires courage—not an arrogant disposition that demands swift and radical action, but one that is tempered with humility and wisdom.
"[53] Sociologist Michael McMullen found that Bahá'í converts in the United States appreciated the teaching of a harmony between science and religion as resolving their sense of these.
[61] Two articles by Keven Brown and Eberhard von Kitzing,[62] jointly published under the title Evolution and Bahá'í Belief (2001), stand out as the only book-length review of the issue by Bahá'ís during the period, and has been well received.
Gary Matthews wrote, ...the apparent contradiction is nothing more than a question of semantics: perhaps ʻAbdu'l-Bahá is merely dating man's beginning as a distinct species from the soul's first appearance, to emphasize that we do not derive our higher spiritual nature from our animal forebears.
"[65] This understanding was included in the Foreword to the 2014 printing of Some Answered Questions, stating: ...[ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's] concern is not with the mechanisms of evolution but with the philosophical, social, and spiritual implications of the new theory.
[69] In the forward of Some Answered Questions a similar point is raised: "A careful review of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s statements in this volume and in other sources suggests that His concern is not with the mechanisms of evolution but with the philosophical, social, and spiritual implications of the new theory.
"[70] In 2023, Bryan Donaldson published On the Originality of Species, attempting to address the issue from the point of view of new research in evolutionary biology that could plausibly support the idea of "independent and parallel growth of many categories of plants and animals out of a network of gene-sharing unicellular roots.