'Role of Religion in Todays Society' a Talk by Tom Price

Tom Price delivers a talk titled ‘The Role of Religion in Today’s Society’ at the Hornsby Baha’i Centre of Learning in Sydney, Australia on 3rd Jan, 2015.

You can also listen to this talk on the Baha’i Blog Soundcloud page here:

Special thanks to Qi-Jie of Nonagon Productions for helping Baha’i Blog capture the talk, and to Bobby Azami of Fiona+Bobby Photography for the photo.

Happy listening!

[lilybassiri]

The Baby and the bath water exampld was just priceless. Thank you Tom.🙏🙏🙏🙏

[mycoherentlife.]

Absolutely perfect! Every word was well thought of and used in the right context. Loved it!

[alexnuno]

Beautiful. Inspiring. Thanks for posting.

[natangomes]

Hey. I'm a Christian from Germany. Recently I became friends with an Iranian guy who is Baha'i. Now I got interested and watched this video. I took some notes and want to ask some questions about the 7 principles.
1 Relevance for the presence
I completly agree and find Christianity being as relevant to our modern day as it has ever been, since our human condition in sin has never changed and only in the death and ressurection of Jesus we find forgiveness for that. I don't see the same relevance in Baha'i faith.

2 Harmony with science
Since science deals with the measurable, physical realm and religion deals with the methaphysical, spiritual realm I don't understand how those two have to relate. Of course, if religeous writings make scientific claims they can be dealt with accordingly, but I don't see any of the stories in the bible making scientific claims. No human was there at the creation, why do people think that it is a scientific account? I don't see it that way. Also, I found it interesting that it has to be in harmony with science but not with philosophy, which would be much closer in terms of nature.

3 Source of unity
Since we will talk about truth later I'll leave the part about the truth claim for later. I absolutely agree that a true religion has to produce unity, but I would be really carefull in setting this as a measure point for "the true religion". In the bible Jesus says this interesting sentence " I did not come to bring peace, but to bring the sword. And father will rise against his son and the son against his father and the mother will rise against her daugther..." and so on. The point is, if someone commits himself to a cause he will be different to those who oppose the cause. Baha'i themselves experienced exactly what Jesus meant when they got persecuted in Iran. To unite means to seperate from that what seperates you. Some people do that and some chose, not to. My hope is that one day all men will unite and see the truth in Jesus (again, we talk about truth later), but those who don't chose to follow God, God will not force them, neither should the followers of God.

4 Purity of the teaching
I do and don't agree with this point. Yes, the religion has to be firmly and completly founded on the basis God set. But I also believe that there is a tradition to religion which is very important. For young religions like the Baha'i faith there is not so much of a tradition to build on. For Christianity on the other hand it is crucial, that the teachers and priests study and understand, where our traditions come from. Without them we would start all over again with the discussion if Jesus was God or man. We wouldn't have the New Testament, and ultimatively we couldn't accept the Bible in the first place since it was written by men, not dictated by God as in Islam. The Bible is a collection of stories and writings people wrote down. Over time, humans with the help of God destiled those which are the most important and coherent. By the way, I also found it interesting that none of these points is "the true religion must be coherent", but I guess that's implied.

5 Truth is relative
Talking about truth is difficult since it seems like everyone makes up his own definition of truth. I agree that from different perspectives, truth can be different. However one thing doesn't change and that is if someone makes a truthclaim he has to say others are false. In saying, the true religion has to support relative truth, who says that the claim of relative truth is more true than the claim of absolute truth? Relative truth rules itself out. What Tom was really talking about here was a critique on people qho believe have figured everything out. If a prophet says he got the revelation from God we will test and see if that is true or not by looking at what God has revealed before. Now if God has revealed to Jesus that he is the son of God and to Mohammed Allah has no sons, one of them must be true and one false.

6 True religion affects the actions
A claim that goes throught the entire bible, faith without works is dead. Still, the best argument against Christianity is the Christians. We are sinners, but no Christian should ever claim to be more. Only Jesus is perfect, we only strive to be like Him.

7 It has to naturally unite all religions
Is that not just a claim the Baha'i faith has in it's agenda? I don't know of any other religion that would say everyone is right.