@BESW - It doesn't seem to be letting me

You caught that my first link was to the wrong chat, right?

Fix'd

Woot!

What'd that just do for you/the room?

'Kay

And what does that do for the overall health/well-being of the room?

Also changing the room's name/subtitle/tags.

It means there's more chance someone's going to be around if those things need to be done.

Removing spam from the room, for example.

'Kaykay

I need to AFK briefly but when I get back I wanted to ask you some questions of a theological nature if you don't mind.

Sure. I'm afking for a bit myself, back in ~ten.

You can start the questions without me.

I was wondering about your faith's stance on...unbelievers? Non-participants? Not sure which would be the appropriate term to use. There are faiths in the world that aren't particularly bothered about people that don't actually participate.

Wicca and Buddhism stand out for taking the stance that if you screw it up you'll just get kicked back to try again; their theology holds that righteousness and enlightenment is possible without their guidance, simply more difficult.

Many of your statements regarding your religion's theology suggests to me that it might be similar.

At the same time what I've gleaned also suggests that it's derived from Judeo-Christian beliefs on some level, which are not terribly known for tolerating outsiders.

So I figured I'd ask

Are you asking about people who consider themselves Bahá'ís but don't follow the laws/participate in the expected conduct, or people who do not consider themselves Bahá'ís at all?

I'm gonna go with "yes"

Since most theologies treat those forms of outsiders similarly

The Bahá'í Faith actually has two different answers, one for each.

With the possible exception of American Protestants, who seem to have a gigantic hate-on for anyone who doesn't identify as Christian no matter how shoddily a claimed Christian follows local theology

Let me collect my thoughts.

[Settles in to listen]

Feel free

I know that in your shoes I'd hate to accidentally misrepresent something

'specially given Permanent Google Search and all

So, yeah, no time pressure

There's a couple points of context that need to be established first.

Simple stuff like the purpose of life.

I remember that in an earlier conversation you'd compared this life on this world to the womb; by developing qualities like mercy, justice, restraint, righteousness we are better prepared for the next world.

Ah, right. Good.

Whereas sloth, cruelty, etc would leave us ill-prepared

So, the Laws of God are guidelines for how to do that.

Sort of "best practices."

Each religion has its own social laws because the best practices for each age are different, but the spiritual laws remain largely unchanged--just expanded on.

Sorta like how some variant on the Golden Rule exists in every culture.

Right.

Since 'don't be a meanyfaced meanhead' is an easy law to lay down

So in a personal sense, people who don't try to follow the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh are at a disadvantage because they're not working with the most up-to-date version of the manual.

But we have no expectation that someone who doesn't believe in Bahá'u'lláh would follow His teachings--that'd be silly, and also very hard because obedience to the Laws isn't easy even with the faith that they're divinely sourced.

But religion isn't just about individual betterment, it's about societal advancement.

Which is why you work to recruit; out of the belief that spreading your teachings will create a better society and thus lead to happier, more whole people?

One of the primary purposes of the Bahá'í Faith is unity, the notion that everyone can and should and eventually will work together in spite of our differences, or rather because of them.

We believe that the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh are the ONLY true and lasting cure for the problems of the world, and it's our duty to help enact the cure and find others who want to help also.

(Which does not necessarily mean becoming a Bahá'í; the social problems of the world can be addressed using Bahá'í principles without being a Bahá'í oneself.)

@BESW By the by, how does one pronounce that?

Roughly "buh-HAH-oo-LAH," but it's Persian.

So I don't claim to be able to pronounce it perfectly.

(Compared to Mašriqu-l-'Aḏkār and Huqúqu'lláh, that one's easy.)

Okay, so if I can state the general stance on people who are not believers: it would be better for them if they became a member of the faith, but it is neither impossible nor even improbable for them to develop desirous traits and advantages in the next world without doing so.

Right. And naturally it's only better for them to become Bahá'ís if they are sincere in their faith.

Which leads us to the other group you mentioned, people who claim or attempt membership but end up really bad at it.

Okay. [cracks knuckles]

Nobody's perfect--that's part of the reason we're here, to get better--so obeying the laws of the Faith is something everyone works at our entire lives.

Most of the time my failings are just between me and God.

[Nod-nods]

For example, say I'm having a drinking problem. I can ask for help from the local institutions, but that's my choice.

(Bahá'ís are forbidden to consume alcohol.)

But if I'm regularly making the community look bad in public--like getting sloppy drunk at a bar every Friday--then the Local Spiritual Assembly is going to make sure I get help.

Since as a visible representative of the faith your actions reflect on the community and the works it's trying to do?

Right.

If my public struggles with the law persist, I may lose some of my administrative privileges, like the ability to serve on institutions, until I get it straightened out.

Excuse me while I bro fist your entire religion for having Standards.

But none of that could possibly get me kicked out of the Faith.

@BESW Well, yeah. Screwing up - or faking real belief - is between you and the guy in charge. It's not man's place to judge your relationship with God

The only way I could get "excommunicated" is if I knowingly and repeatedly and drastically defy the administrative order which was explicitly created and defined by the central Figures of the Faith.

@BESW I don't suppose you have an example of this happening and why?

Because again, the Bahá'í Faith is about unity, and one of the truly unique things about this religion is that the Founder of the Faith Himself told us exactly who has what administrative/interpretive rights and privileges.

It's a major thing because this keeps the Faith from schisming into multiple sects and cults.

(This is different from someone deciding not to be a Bahá'í anymore.)

It's called "breaking the Covenant," and let me think of an example.

We don't really pay a lot of attention to the handful of times it's happened; ignoring them is the best practice there.

Take your time. I'm just trying to understand further, y'know?

I understand, and I appreciate it.

There are four general categories of Covenant-breaking: the most common is a challenge of leadership.

On occasion someone will stand up and claim to have special knowledge or to have re-interpreted a passage of the Writings which shows that person has administrative/leadership rights which they do not actually have claim to.

For example, when the first Guardian of the Faith Shoghi Effendi passed away, the position of the Guardian (as clearly defined by the Last Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Who had the authority to define it given to Him directly by Bahá'u'lláh in writing) became vacant.

The Guardianship was supposed to pass to the heir of the previous Guardian, or to another person in the Guardian's family if the Guardian explicitly left that instruction in his will.

But Shoghi Effendi died suddenly and very young, with no children and no will.

A small handful of people claimed that he had personally told them that they were his spiritual heir and thus they claimed the position of the Guardianship.

Without explicit written evidence of that appointment, their claims were not valid. Those who persisted in making the claims were eventually declared Covenant-breakers.

[Nod-nods]

(The majority of Covenant-breakers were members of Bahá'u'lláh's own family, who had a very hard time recognising their brother/nephew/uncle as a Divine Manifestation of God. His own half-brother spent decades trying to undermine His authority.)

(And even once poisoned Bahá'u'lláh.)

Sounds like brotherly love to me >.>

Sects created by Covenant-breakers are always cults of personalty, and when the original person who created the schism dies (or gets bored, which has happened) they split again and again until they just sort of fade away.

But this is one reason I always make sure to link to the official Bahá'í website when people ask about the Faith, because it's relatively easy on the Internet to stumble across Weird Stuff put out by Covenant-breakers.

Alright. So we've got apostates as the first category. The other three?

Opponents of the divinely-ordained administration who do not put forth an alternative for leadership.

That'd be...theologically speaking those'd just be straight-up heretics?

Usually they just want to do their own thing, picking and choosing the laws and teachings they obey or not, and when this comes into direct opposition with the need for obedience to the administration... they may become Covenant-breakers.

There may also be accusations that the administration is corrupt or self-serving or whatever.

So that's the second category: dissidence.

The third category is disobedience, which can rise from dissidence but doesn't always. Most commonly--and very sadly--it's a Bahá'í who has trouble with the command that we are not supposed to associate with Covenant-breakers. If they persist in doing so, they run the risk of becoming a Covenant-breaker themselves.

And then there are apostates who attack the Faith. This is different from someone who leaves the Faith but does not attack it.

In any of these cases, the local and national institutions go to great lengths to be sure the person involved knows the implications of what they're saying/doing and tries to see if there's some problem which can be resolved.

@BESW I can imagine. The existence of the conflict in the first place is damaging to the faith's image of unity.

Indeed.

Whereas the gesture of reaching out to them is positive to that image and also probably the right thing to do anyway.

...I did not intend to sound as coldly realpolitik as I just did.

My apologies

Heh. The practical aspects of the issue are not ignored.

In places where a group of Covenant-breakers are particularly vocal and public, the Bahá'ís keep quiet and reduce their own presence, because that's better than getting into conflict with them. It always dies down on its own eventually.

Hmm. How do you handle accusations of corruption in the leadership, though? It's surely a possibility, it can't just be ignored. Right?

Well, there is no single person in any leadership position (not since the position of the Guardianship fell vacant in the 1950s), it's always groups.

And while the nature of the administrative order makes it difficult for any one person in the group to achieve ascendant influence over the others, there are also safeguards in place for kicking someone out.

[Nods thoughtfully]

You folks really seem to have all the angles covered. It's almost heartwarming to see.

We believe that our administrative structure is not only divinely inspired and protected, but that it can and should serve as inspiration for the governments of nations.

@BESW Oof, and now we hit the phrase Gareth doesn't like.

"divinely inspired"?

Divinely protected.

Ah.

You dealt with mainland Protestants lately?

Nope.

First, hit your knees and give prayer in thanks.

Next, understand that it has become a very popular and widespread bit of theology in the USA that certain versions of the Bible - as well as other documents - are 'divinely protected' and must never be changed, and that these documents have chosen interpreters who guide you in using them

One of these documents is supposed to be the Constitution

...ahuh.

Which is like...guys, changing that document is built in

It's part of the process

Yeah, this isn't anything like that.

But they put it on the same level as the King James Bible, which...ugh. Speaking as a historian I think there might be more Christianity in local Satanic cults than in that piece of political propoganda

'Abdu'l-Bahá said some nice things about the American government when He visited, but that wasn't among them.

@BESW By all means, explain what you mean. The last ten years of my life have thoroughly poisoned the idea of divinely protected anything.

It'd be nice to get a shot of hope for humanity.

Hmm.

No time pressure, as I've said. Collect your thoughts.

Well, there's a lot of directions we could go.

I mean, I suppose I could ask if what you mean is that the divinely inspired system is designed to protect against corruption?

As opposed to ongoing deific intervention?

Well, it does have a lot of very practical safeguards.

Like not having candidates or campaigning as part of its elections.

(Explaining Deism to my Baptist father-in-law: "Most of our founding fathers believed that when God said, "Let there be light," it's because he was looking for his car keys.")

Moreover, it is firmly rooted in faith and responsibility; one of its strengths is that its participants treat it like Serious Business.

Heh.

But we do also believe that it is protected by God.

Exactly what that means is unclear to us.

(Divine mystery is mysterious!)

If we participate in the system with faith and sincerity, it will not fail us.

Mmm. How much temerity do you mind me displaying here? I don't want to stray into anything too offensive or contentious, but I've got...deeper questions.

This can't be said of mortally-created systems, because they don't have that protection.

@Lord_Gareth I may not be able to answer them well, but shoot.

(At some point I'm just going to tell you to go read 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Last Will and Testament, and then give you some of Shoghi Effendi's clarifying essays.)

@BESW Well, the one on my mind is how your faith handles the question of theodicy. Since you haven't said anything to the contrary I've assumed that your vision of God retains the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-merciful, all-present, and infinitely just attributes that most Judeo-Christian faiths assign him.

Yup!

I don't think I need to familiarize you with the common arguments that He's gotta ditch at least some of those

Heh. God's essence is unknowable and unfathomable and seriously brain-poppingly illogical.

@BESW You are aware that this answer, though common, is the one that makes Him come off as a cheap-thrills sadist?

There are Bahá'í defences against some of the various arguments for God's sadism.

The thing is, He operates on a level of logic where we can't follow. He's got pieces of the puzzle we don't.

I admit, I hadn't expected the answer you gave. From the sound of things what I'd expected to hear is that 'infinitely just' got dragged out back and shot in favor of mercy, mostly because those are the attributes that are hardest to reconcile. Each denies the other.

Justice demands punishment, but mercy is the abdication of punishment.

God contains both.

Mm. Never an answer I've been terribly satisfied with but I'm asking about general beliefs, not looking to open a general debate.

So thanks for clarifying that for me.

So yeah, ultimately there are rebuttals to some specific arguments that I could dig up if you wanted, but in the end it boils down to "and we have faith."

I had a philosophy-major friend in college who loved to have those talks with me, but at some point I'd have to just go "and if we take this thing on faith, the rest follows."

The first place I'd look for specifics is Some Answered Questions. It's not logically rigorous in the "philosophy 101" sense, but it does a good job of treating a lot of interesting and contentious subjects.

@BESW Which I can understand. Past a certain point of the argument conflicting paradigms make further discussion...difficult.

SAQ is the collected transcripts of dinner conversations with 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Who was explicitly authorised by Bahá'u'lláh to interpret/explain His teachings.

They were written down by a Western pilgrim based on the translations to English being provided by 'Abdu'l-Bahá's interpreter, and later the notes were translated back to Him for His approval. So they're generally accurate but probably not exactly how He said it.

Pilgrims would ask Him questions about a variety of topics, and He'd answer them, and SAQ is a collection of some of those answers.

Thank you. And thanks for being available to answer these when they come up.

I've spent a lifetime trying to understand what brings people to have faith, an attribute I seem singularly incapable of displaying.

You're welcome, it's my pleasure.

You've been much more tolerant of my pestering than most people

Which is amazing considering, y'know, missionaries

Having these kinds of conversations is a skill I'm constantly working on improving; it's kind of a crucial part of my religious duties.

@BESW You would think the missionaries would say the same thing

No comment.

Instead I've managed to drive out Mormon and Witness alike by asking them to explain their faith to me

Which is like

Bro

Why are you doing this job if you're not going to do it?

My dad used to say "Come on in, I'll listen to you for an hour if you listen to me for an hour."

This is how I learned that one reason they travel in pairs is so one can drag the other away if he gets too interested.

Ahahaha, oh man.

The Protestant obsession with 'corruption' has always struck me as deeply ironic. Do they feel that their faith is so fragile that it needs constant protection? Shouldn't it be able to stand on its own?

I am told (although I have not seen a source for it so I can't be sure of its truth) that when He was visiting the West 'Abdu'l-Bahá said that Mormons will make great Bahá'ís because they understand the need for the community to be as one, and Catholics will make great Bahá'ís because they understand the role of history in creating a common community.

I've mentioned the community-building training that I'm involved in, right?

@BESW Thou has failed to communicate this thing to me

Two books of the eight-book sequence spend a great deal of their time on developing the skills to naturally have conversations on spiritual topics.

@Lord_Gareth Oh. It comes out of the Ruhí Institute in Colombia, and it's being used world-wide. It builds on the idea I mentioned above that you don't have to be Bahá'í in order to use His teachings to make the world a better place.

...I have been brought up on a /tg/ thread.

This disturbs me.

boards.4chan.org/tg/thread/31605508#p31609637

It focuses on local communities, giving the local population the skills and support to help children build their character, help youth learn to make good decisions and be of service to their communities, and generally get the whole community thinking in terms of spirituality and service to others.

The course of books is very practical, giving skills and understandings that you can enact immediately, and it's based on the idea that personal improvement and service to others are two sides of the same coin and that everyone can walk that path together.

@Lord_Gareth "Traditional games" should be about Go, and Mancala, and Nine Men's Morris.

@BESW It's as opposed to vidja

I figured, but still.

@BESW This is a very good idea.

It's very exciting to be part of!

Back in the 70s/80s the Universal House of Justice asked Bahá'ís to come up with local and national training campaigns, but a lot of them were very specifically tailored to the needs of the areas. In the 90s the Ruhí Institute's programs started going global because they were working everywhere.

Guam's been working with it for almost 20 years now, but it's only in the last couple years that it's really taken off and started expanding rapidly.

(For reasons which seem to have more to do with potential than current ability, I'm the coordinator for the training program itself on the island; I collect the statistics and make sure everyone's got the support and accompaniment and resources they need. Each other major activity--childrens' classes, junior youth groups, etc--has its own coordinator too.)

One of the very cool things about it is that I frequently have no idea which of the people I'm working with are Bahá'ís. It just doesn't really matter; they think the Bahá'í-inspired activities are worth dedicating themselves to, and that's what's important.

@BESW That is pretty badass. Despite or perhaps because of the unending fountain of hate, ideas like mercy, restraint, forgiveness, justice, and kindness are important to me. I just kinda wish that the local faiths that claim to espouse them did a better job. Or, you know, the job at all.

I look at it like this: in order for the new ways of doing things to become common, the old ways which aren't useful anymore have to get exposed as no longer sufficient, and rooted out. Luckily there are a lot of people doing the rooting-out for us, if only by clinging to the outmoded traditions so ferociously that it's increasingly hard to ignore how useless that way of looking at things and doing things really is.

Not that I'm bitter about being accused of being a 'moral cancer' after having to explain to the freaking Baptist minister I'm talking to that waterboarding and other forms of torture are wrong and non-Christian

No bitterness there

Heh.

I have honestly never really encountered that kind of thing head-on.

@BESW You know that hitting your knees in thankful prayer thing you did earlier?

Upgrade that to sacrificing a bull

Even in South Carolina where I went to college, it was more the racism thing than the religious thing that I ran into.

That is every day of my life

Every. Single. Day. The accusations range from being 'lost' to being 'un-American' to full-blown treason and Satan-worship. There are people in this town who know I'm an atheist that will take their kids to the other side of the street rather than go near me.

I do have some lovely stories from friends, like the time a Christian teaching team showed up on the island of Saipan at the same as a Bahá'í teaching team.

It's in the news, it's on the internet, it's in pamphlets that get put on my car or pushed other my door.

After being accused of "not being a real religion" because we "didn't have any miracles," my friend told them about the martyrdom of the Báb, and they were never bothered again.

(Also the local Catholic priest took "our side" because we always visited and told him what we were doing, and the other Christian denominations didn't.)

Common courtesy...

Yeah. Not to belittle your struggles or anything, but...

Oh, I know.

It's kinda hard lacking religion in mainland America. I have unfortunately been cast as this age's villain.

Which is just about the most insulting thing

Guam, for all that it's really really traditionally Catholic, is also a kind of melting pot for all sorts of cultures and religions. Absolute intolerance is almost impossible.

@BESW Be grateful. Be...be very grateful, my friend. Believe it or not I used to be a patriot.

I've had talks with people from the mainland who have almost the exact opposite experience, though: bringing up spiritual topics of any kind gets them viewed as rabid fundamentalists.

America is big. Are you in the Bible Belt? I can't remember.

@BESW Location, location, location.

@BESW Kansas. So yes.

I grew up in Michigan, which was the tail-end of Bible Belt territory

In both locations I deal with the ironic yet frightening occurrence of one person saying atheists need to be shot and the rest of the group agreeing.

Which is like, dude, did you read your holy book lately?

My mom lived in Michigan until she was nine, and I've visited a few times--there's actually a big Bahá'í school up there](louhelen.org).

Coo'!

Personally one of my favorite parts about Michigan is the sheer existence of Hell, Michigan

heheh.

There's a town that was dealt a bad hand and went, "Screw it, we're gonna embrace this so hard we'll come out the other side as an international attraction!"

My mom grew up in Ypsilanti.

I didn't grow up too far from Ypsi

Adrian, MI is my home and native land.

I'm poking the Internet for Bahá'ís in Kansas.

@MC_Hambone Hail unto thee. Pull up some booze and join the conversation.

Local community websites are usually kinda sparse, if they exist at all.

There's definitely a presence in Kansas City.

That's 3+ hours from me and not...*really* a Kansas city

KC is in 2 states and 6 counties, and it's the Crossroads of America

It doesn't really belong to the states it's in

Fair enough.

It just sorta happens to be there.

And sadly KCMO (KC, Missouri) is home to the International House of Prayer, the world's biggest gun cult

So I hope your fellows know how to duck and return fire

Because IHOP is legitimately terrifying

The Wichita community looks active... yeah, if you wanted to you could probably hunt down some Bahá'ís relatively near you.

I generally find that the phone book or the US contact page is the best way to find a local community.

@BESW Man that'd be an interesting conversation. "Hey, I'm not joining up but a fellow of yours in Guam sent me to pick up some copies of your holy texts so I can study your faith."

@Lord_Gareth I've had others do exactly that.

@BESW You have a remarkable tolerance for odd happenings in your life.

Heheh.

I guess?

(For what it's worth, just about all of the Bahá'í sacred texts which are translated into English are available for free online and can be ordered from major bookstores.)

...I'm remembering when I showed up to the Bahá'í community by my college. They were a tiny little group that hadn't really gotten into the Ruhí stuff yet. I think I was the first Bahá'í in their town for generations who hadn't been born into it.

They were lovely and welcoming, but had no idea what to do with me.

@BESW I can imagine.

Later I went to a state-wide convention and it was very different.

Every community's at a different point on the path.

@Lord_Gareth So, did I manage to answer your questions before I went tangential?

@BESW All the ones I have for now!

Yey!

Not a Bar - Handling Sensitive Subjects Much Better Than a Bar

Oh, you may find this interesting in light of the Constitution thing--although the laws revealed by Bahá'u'lláh are binding and can't be changed, the Universal House of Justice has the authority to pass and repeal its own laws as needed to adapt to the changing needs of the world.

Thus far it has not needed to do so.

@BESW I can assume that this has the clause 'until or unless another prophet is revealed to us' somewhere in there, considering the theology involved?

Naturally.

It's very clear that Bahá'u'lláh is not the final Messenger that God will send, but it's also explicit that we won't be seeing a new one for at least a thousand years.

(Well, about 840 years now, but who's counting? It says "at least" for a reason.)

@BESW That'll be potentially awkward as the appropriate time draws near, given humanity's propensity to grasp at even the tiniest straw of power.

@Lord_Gareth It'll be interesting to see if humanity has advanced to the point that the next Messenger will be treated differently than the previous ones.

@BESW Especially since if you're around to see it then you've officially become some manner of cyber-lich!

Hee.

(We are told that even after we've passed on to the next life we'll be able to look back on this one and--if our intentions are pure--assist those still living here.)

@BESW Would you, or would you not, go for cyber-lichdom? :p

I would not. Eventually my software wouldn't be supported anymore and my hardware wouldn't be compatible with any of the new data storage devices.

@BESW ....This is the best objection to cybernetic immortality that I have ever heard.

Imagine the contemporary trials of the cyber-lich who installed himself using XP in 2002.

Or the poor fool who downloaded himself onto ZIP drives.

@Lord_Gareth Well, I could get into how I don't think it would work because of the nature of the relationship between soul and body and the Bahá'í teachings on the evolution of humanity...

@BESW Whereas I'd argue that since you are, at best, prolonging the inevitable it's not that big a deal.

Entropy always wins.

Actually I don't think it'd work at all.

@BESW Be a bit of a theological shocker if it did, then?

Indeed.

Though admittedly it's based on my own extrapolation of the teachings on the soul, which are necessarily couched in mystic metaphor.

@BESW Many have had trouble defining the soul in light of our expanded knowledge about the brain.

For the longest time people defined the soul as the source of intellect, personality, feelings.

Now we know where those things come from and the mental space for what 'soul' means has kinda narrowed.

The soul is the eternal non-physical bit of us that continues after physical death; the brain is a purely physical construct, and the mind is the mystic fusion of the two.

Basically the eternal self, the soul, is attracted to the mortal self, the body, because the human body has physical properties which make it the right vessel for the soul. Exactly what those properties are is unspecified, but probably are related to the properties of the brain and the physical features which make our bodies useful tools for gaining spiritual qualities.

Take the brain out of the body and put it in a machine, and I don't know if the soul would stick around.

Points for having the best explanation of that I've come across yet.

Most of the time this discussion ends with the other person either telling me, very condescendingly, that I need to have faith

Ooooor

Me getting punched right in the face

Some Answered Questions has a whole section on the nature of man, evolution, the soul, the difference between rational and spiritual understanding, and so forth.

Whoever walks into this room next and decides to catch up on the backlog is going to have a lot of heartwarming evidence of faith done right intercut with me being a bitter cur to get through

Heheh.

Oh, and "having faith" isn't a one-time deal. It's a lifelong process, a thing that needs to be nurtured and tended.

@Emracool Of course not! Glad you enjoyed it.

(And if you have any topics you'd like to discuss, I'd of course be happy to.)

And how is Riven doing for you, now that you've discovered the Secret Door?

Ah, yes. Look around for a steam pipe that gives it power, and follow that.

You won't be able to follow it directly, of course. That'd be too easy.

It will probably take a lot of walking.

The spinning metal half-domes?

You'll get the opportunity to examine them more closely.

Oh, the plate that you can send down into the darkness? The reason I didn't recognise you describing it at first is that although it may once have been Atrus's experiment, it has a different purpose now.

(EVERYTHING has a purpose: whether it is part of a puzzle or not, manipulable or not, the islands are filled with things that have reasons for existing.)

Or just go poke it.

Hint: at one point in the poking process you have to just walk away and leave it for a while.

Walk away, come back.

Anyway, I gotta go. ttfn

Back! ...I hate rush hour traffic...

linked because, why not: ttbook.org/book/3-minute-futures-michelle-clay (seriously creepy warning, highly recommend listening to it rather than reading it though)