Description

The Bahá’í Faith’s sacred teachings anticipate many key discoveries of modern science. Its success has left friends and critics alike scratching their heads.

Enter “luminiferous ether”. Classical physicists once viewed light as ripples in this otherwise undetectable fluid – a mysterious substance thought to fill all space and to transmit light waves in the same mechanical way air transmits sound. The Bahá’í Faith’s authoritative Interpreter, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, wrote and spoke repeatedly of ether. Today’s “new physics”, however, sees the material ether of yesteryear as theoretically impossible.

What may we make of this seeming discrepancy? Devoted Bahá’ís sometimes experience it as a test of faith. Inquirers ask whether it disproves the Bahá’í belief that science and religion must agree. Critics say it exposes as fraudulent the Faith’s claim of infallible revelation. But is the discrepancy even real? Did ‘Abdu’l-Baha make a mistake, or did He – once again – scoop His expert contemporaries?

Here is a fun, fact-packed journey through modern science – from the clockwork cosmos of Newton, through the four-dimensional “spacetime” of Einstein, to the quirky microverse of Heisenberg and Bohr. Tour guide Gary Matthews explains, in simple layman’s language, how ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s comments on ether actually anticipate some of today’s most revolutionary discoveries of relativity and quantum mechanics. Never again will the universe look quite the same!