PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION RESEARCH (NAMAH-I HIKMAT)
Year:2017 | Volume:14 | Issue:2 (28) |Papers Count:12

The belief in discernibility of the meaning of life is the idea that the meaning of life exists and can be discovered. Although Tabatabaie has not explicitly addressed the issue, there are pieces of evidence which imply that he believes in discerniblility of the meaning of life. Tabatabaie believes that action, subject, and the purpose exist as a unified existence. The purpose is a higher stage in the hierarchy of ontology. The purpose of human life is the result of divine guidance, and requires the unity of the divine action. Analysis of this evidence shows that Tabatabaie believes in ontological realism, rationalism, teleology and the capability of human beings in finding the truth in their life which reveal his view about the discernibility. So Tabatabaie’s theory about the meaning of life is a kind of objectivist theories and is far from subjectivism.

"Religious language" seeks to detect and explain the nature of the language used in the religious statements. This detection helps us to understand the main aim or the real meaning of religious beliefs stated in the form of the human language. Based on his own theological attitudes and mystical findings, Al-Ghazali has expressed different views on this issue, considering the different levels of public perception. Hence, he sometimes deems it to be necessary to avoid the allegorical interpretation. However, he sometimes remarks upon the necessity of rejecting the literal meaning and sometimes, by discussing the "spirit of meaning", which he propounded himself, without denying the literal meaning, he takes into consideration the real essence of meaning, regardless of the features of its instances. However, his thought on this issue, also involves equivocation, and his journey into the semantics of divine attributes ends with his belief that its core will not be understandable to anyone, and its meanings will not be grasped by human understanding.

As William James, C. D. Broad attempted to approach the religious belief with an empirical view. Religious experiences, on his view, have epistemological value and they can be regarded as an evidence for the existence of God. Broad may be regarded among the first thinkers who attempt to argue for the existence of God on the basis of religious experience. His attempt followed by some philosophers such as Richard Swinburne, C. F. Davis and William Alston who discussed the religious experience from an epistemological point of view. Although Broad’s paper on “The Argument from Religious Experience” issued long time ago, it still seems that his argument in the paper is noteworthy. Considering the views from the defenders of the epistemic value of the religious experience and their responses to the critics, we can reform and strengthen the argument for the epistemological value of these experiences offered by C. D. Broad.

Epistemology of Testimony is one of the new branches of epistemology which seeks to cope with issues like the nature of testimony, its acceptability, and its relation to other sources of knowledge. This debate was also important for some Muslim theologians especially Qadi Abd al-Jabbar, who was one of the most important Mu’tazilite theologians. He believes that testimony is a way of reaching knowledge and responds to the doubts raised by some Islamic sects that reject testimony as a source of knowledge. He also believes -like Plantinga and some new philosophers in epistemology- that in transmission of knowledge, the main thing that transfers is the belief of the speaker and its properties. He also asserts that testimony is as reliable as other sources of knowledge and is not reducible to them. He has used his epistemic concepts about testimony as a foundation for proving some other religious beliefs such as occurrence of miracles.

The conflict between divine foreknowledge and human free will is a major controversy within theology and philosophy of religion. Needless to say, the proper notion of time and its relation to God is essential for coping with this conflict. Based on this notion, there are three solutions to the conflict including “indeterminacy of the future”, “unknowability of future free acts”, and “Timelessness of divine knowledge”. In this paper, I shall begin by evaluation of the first two theories and show how they cannot settle the conflict. I shall, then, assess the third theory and show that it is the most successful one. Besides, the theories of some Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, Anselm and Boethius are explained in light of the thoughts of Islamic philosophers, especially Qazi Saeed al-Qumi.

Some biblical exegetes like Peter Kreeft, believe that the main issue of Ecclesiastes is the problem of the meaning of life and absurdity. By an analytic approach, this article seeks to show that the meaning of the meaning of life in Ecclesiastes is the goal of the highest good. Many people choose wisdom, pleasure, wealth and power, duty and religion as the highest good, but Ecclesiastes makes clear that these things alone don' t give meaning to the life and the life without the presence of God is absurd. The highest good is God and being in love with Him. By awareness of the absurdity of mundane aspects of life, one’s intellect becomes silent and by hearing the call of God, his heart truly believes in Him and finally, falls in a loving relationship with Him; so he finds the life meaningful.

Intelligent Design (ID) is an attempt to defend the idea that the order of nature bears marks of its Creator. This image of the concept has a historical root in ancient Greek philosophy. ID argues that science and theology support each other, when they are rightly understood. Under the influence of investigations of modern sciences–especially biology and cosmology- ID became the most serious battle in contemporary debates between theists and atheists. In this article, after an introduction for describing ID in general, Sober’s view point on the subject is described and criticized. Sober’s main claim is that ID isnot testable and so should be rejected from scientific enterprise. In this article, we show that (1) his notion of testability is not complete and (2) ID can satisfy the testability criterion with some considerations. Sober's critics mainly underlie his notion of designer (divine) intervention in nature. The first response of this article is not only a deductive proof for ID, but also a critique of methodological naturalism.

Philosophical study of human being can be undertaken both ontologically and epistemologically. By analyzing religious texts about anthropological issues, al-Razi has reflected upon the situation of human knowledge. He has addressed multiple topics in human epistemology in his works. Some of his views on human epistemology are as follows: (1) Despite their limitations, human faculties are capable of gaining knowledge; (2) Human knowledge can be both theoretical and practical; (3) Non-epistemic factors such as virtue and sin has influence on human knowledge; (4) With respect to their level of knowledge, human beings can be categorized as incomplete, complete and perfect complement (al-kamil al-mukammil); God's saints knowledge is complete and that of the prophets is perfect complement so that their task is to guide incomplete persons towards perfection; (5) It is necessary for incomplete persons to have epistemic trust in the prophets. In this article, by using a descriptive and analytic method we shall show that, according to al-Razi, though human beings are capable of gaining knowledge, they have to trust in the prophets epistemologically to achieve the true knowledge.

This article deals with the New Atheism as one of the most important antireligious currents in the present day. It came to the surface of public opinion during the first decade of this century. Its spokesmen, in the first place by popularizing the natural sciences, and then by leaning on a naturalistic world view, and finally under the pretext of terrorist attacks and the behavior of some religious fundamentalists and religious extremist currents, launched a strong attack against religion and religious beliefs. With the same approach, they are emphasizing on the conflict between science and religion, and see the theory of evolution and its most important component, natural selection, enough to explain everything. In contrast, according to the theologies of Abrahamic religions, we can insist on the compatibility of science and religion. So we can find that these religions not only insist on the importance of the reason and intellectual thinking, but also use the achievements of the reason in natural sciences and scientific theories.

Mir Damad’s view about the divine will can be divided into three sections: semantics, ontology and interpretation of the hadiths which imply that the will is an attribute of act. First, he defines God’s will as His knowledge of all beings and tries to differentiate between God’s and human’s will. Secondly, he proves that will is one of the essence attributes of God and not an attribute of act. Based on this, he criticizes the Kulayni’s theory which implies that the divine will is an attribute of act. Finally, according to Mir Damad, both hadith and philosophical argument have the same meaning about the God’s will. That is, God has this attribute in his essence, therefore he wants to create the world. On the other hand, all the creations are the God’s will in the level of action. Based on this, will has two meanings: will as the essence and will as the action according to which, we have to interpret the attribute of will in Shia hadith.

Divine command theory is hitherto faced with some problems such as Euthyphro problem and moral arbitrariness. Robert Merrihew Adams tries to defend this theory by proposing a new form of it. He expresses that this theory can explain only moral obligation not moral goodness. First, using semantic method, he analyzes the meaning of moral obligation. Then, he tries to understand the nature of moral obligation by determining the best candidate which can play the semantic role of it. From his view, interpersonal and social property of moral obligation is its most important semantic feature. The best candidate for this role is divine commands, because they have some special properties. For example, if you violate them you are guilty and they also have objectivity. Following Kripke-Putnam theory, Adams asserts that the relation between divine command and rightness/wrongness of action is like the relation between water and H2O. Accordingly, moral wrongness is identified with love God commands and it has metaphysical necessity in result.

Craig believes that theological fatalistic argument, which aims at mocking human freedom, faces two major problems. On the one hand, in the argument, there is a confusion of necessitas consequentis and necessitas consequentiae in the concept of “within one’s power”. On the other hand, the argument neglects the difference between “changing the past” and “counterfactual effect. Besides critically assessing theological fatalism, Craig suggests a proof for human freedom which can be categorized as a Molinistic argument in virtue of appealing to the notion of middle knowledge. According to Craig, we do not need to make philosophical argument for the middle knowledge. Nevertheless, there are many theological argument in support of the idea. For instance, divine providence and foreknowledge are two theological concepts which can be best explained by appealing to the notion of middle knowledge. It seems, however, that Craig’s appeal to the notion of middle knowledge for proving human freedom faces some problems. Alongside the critiques provided by Thomists regarding the middle knowledge (e.g. the lack of object for this kind of knowledge and passivity of divine knowledge), it seems that Craig’s notion of human freedom is not compatible with middle knowledge.