PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION RESEARCH (NAMAH-I HIKMAT)
Year:2016 | Volume:13 | Issue:2 (26)|Papers Count:11

Relying on the applicability of principles of Transcendent Philosophy for reconstructing religious beliefs, Aqa Ali Mudarres has tried to give a new explanation of “bodily resurrection”. He does this by appealing to the purely Sadraian philosophical principles as well as his method in which he begins by agreeing with popular beliefs and ends with a departure from them. Appealing to some Sadraian ontological principles as “substantial motion” as well as his principles of self-knowledge, Mudarres explains bodily resurrection to be the return of the mundane body to the soul in resurrection. Thus, neither does he assume that the mundane body is the destination of the soul, nor he asserts, as Sadra does, that the soul itself is subject to resurrection. Ashtiani have raised many objections against Mudarres’s theory, which include the continuance of the relation between body and soul after death, the continuance of substantial motion after detachment of the soul, tendency to the Ash’arite theories and the very objections which can be raised against the Ash’arite theory of bodily resurrection. Reviewing the Sadraian principles and the dispute between Mudarres and Ashtiani represents the dynamism of Sadraian philosophy during the centuries.

According to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, it is essential for the prophets to be infallible after the beginning of their prophetic mission. Yet he doesn’t authorize chastity before mission for the prophets and believes that although prophets do not commit sins intentionally, they may do unintentionally. In his view, the extent of prophets’ innocence includes four domains of belief, propagation and mission, laws and judgments as well as actions and behaviors. On the basis of some foundations such as determinism implied by innocence and some reasons such as appealing to obviousness and also some pieces of evidence from Qur’an such as Q72: 23, Al-Razi has tried to prove prophets’ innocence. In this regard, he has also replied to some doubts such as the one proposed due to Q21: 87.

The problem of evil is one of the most important topics in philosophy of religion. This article, based on original texts, analyses the frequency interpretation of probabilistic argument from evil and review some of its main critiques. This analysis based on the application of Bayes’ Theorem by Wesley Salmon. He uses the mathematical Probability to show that the possibility of the existence of God, based on the Bayes’ theorem is little. He called his method as "empirical atheism". In this kind of atheism, the denial of the possible intelligent agentsand their role in the creation of the world is the main reason to reject an omnipotent and omniscience god. Bruce Reichenbach and Nancy Cartwright are among those who reject the Wesley Salmon’s ideas. Their critique includes the rejection of Salmon’s Probabilistic method and its atheistic results as well.

The question of the “meaning of life” has always studied by philosophers like John Hick and led them to make an explanation regarding their philosophical bases about it. John Hick mentions “the meaning of life” in his work based on the concepts he borrows from Wittgenstein and Kantand states that the meaning of life depends on an interrelation between the human and the world. Thus, he inevitably talks about the world as a place in which the human experiences his life and then he relates the explanation of the world to the cosmic optimism. He, then, thinks that the cosmic optimism depends on religious beliefs. Therefore, he makes a turn from the question of “the meaning of life” to the question of “the world’s nature” and then, from the “world’s nature” to “the religious features which give us better judgments about the world”. The article is going to explain his point of view about the meaning of life regarding his ideas about critical realism and then, is going to consider the results and notes about it such as being allocated merely to Abrahamic religions, being not general and being no implication between cosmic optimism and religious belief.

Intellectual autonomy indicates how human being can preserve her epistemic agency and intellectually manage and regulate herself. This epistemic value is commonly proposed against intellectual heteronomy according to which the believer is not capable of applying her epistemic agency because of internal or external impediments. Since the early modern era, some philosophers and intellectuals have supposed, implicitly or explicitly, that religious belief violates intellectual autonomy. However, the responsibilist version of virtue epistemology shows that autonomy, as an intellectual virtue, is not epistemic self-reliance and independence from the other but prescribes a way to regulate one’s epistemic agency in intellectual interactions with the other. On this basis, a conscientious autonomous believer is capable of knowing and managing the variety of her epistemic relations with others. Intellectual autonomy in this sense is compatible with believing and maintaining religious beliefs. Religious belief can be autonomous if the believer (i) find the other’s role in her beliefs as imparting knowledge, critic, model, adherent, and authority and (ii) regulate, conscientiously and equipped with intellectual virtues, the way in which the other participates in them.

Al-Gazali is one of the thinkers who has tried to build a strong foundation for theism. In his theory of belief in God, he introduces four models which pertains to four different classes of people. This models include prophetic, saintlike, theological and the vulgar ones. Al-Gazali believes that the first model which is based on mystical experience is the strongest one. This model is similar to what we call belief in God on the basis of religious experience. Thus, it can be considered as an evidential model which is based on religious experience. Al-Gazali’s theory can be reconstructed in a graded model of belief in god in which the prophets and saints attain the higher grade and others have the lower ones.

The theory of “attribution of existence to essence” is the most important metaphysical foundation used by Avicenna for forming a new philosophical system and transition from Greek philosophy and rethinking two important philosophical issues: “modality” and “causality”. It seems that many components of Avicennian theology is based, whether directly or not, on this theory. For example, Avicenna’s siddiqin argument for the existence of God is the ultimate result of all Avicenna’s deliberations about “attribution of existence to essence”, “modality” and “causality”. This theory has also been used, at times directly and at other times indirectly, for proving God’s oneness and His other attributes. In this article, we will try to show the role the theory of “attribution of existence to essence” plays in Avicenna’s philosophy trough a systematic study. We will also try to review differences between Avicenna’s philosophy and Greek philosophy and the role of the aforementioned theory in these differentiations.

Conducting experiments and investigations, some researchers have tried to prove that mystical and religious experiences can be created through drug injection. W. J. Wainwright distinguishes between theistic and monistic mystical experiences. Assessing research done by Clark, Pahnke-Houston and Masters, he believes that although psychedelic drugs can induce some kind of monistic mystical experience, they cannot produce theistic mystical experiences. There is no significant evidence in the research based on which one can attribute theistic mystical experience to drug injection. Analysis of the research results showed that the drug induced experiences were mainly extroversive and only a small percentage of the experiences were introversive. According to Wainwright, there should be some considerations in scientific explanation of the mystical experiences. First, it seems necessary to pay attention to the object of the experience and to distinguish between different kinds of mystical experiences. This implies that we might not be able to offer a scientific explanation for the object of every experience. Second, one cannot determine the nature of religious and mystical experiences, for such experiences are something internal and thus cannot be measured by external criteria.

There are four main theories concerning the explanation of the relation between "reason and religion" including rationalism, traditionalism, primacy of reason, and primacy of revelation. In this article, after a review of these theories, I shall argue that none of them is satisfactory and thus, we should look for an alternative theory. I suggest that the hermeneutical dialectical approach to the relation between reason and religion can be such a satisfactory theory which avoids the difficulties with the aforementioned theories. I shall explain the theory by means of some philosophical hermeneutical foundations and show how it is rooted in the views of Mulla Sadra and his followers.

As an English analytic philosopher, Stace considers religion to beidentical with mysticism and mys tical experience to be its core. According to him, mystical experiences and thus religious propositions are ineffable. Existence consists of temporal and eternal realms each of which has its special language. While the temporal world is the realm of finite reason, religion belongs to the eternal level that can be perceived only by intuition. Religious language is symbolic. Symbolic proposition is not a report of reality, but its function is to stimulate religious emotions in believers and to bring about religious experience. In this article, I shall begin by explaining Stace’s notions of religion, reason and mysticism. I shall, then, describe Stace’s analysis of the symbolic language of religion with reference to its function, that is, stimulation of experience and religious emotions in believers. Finally, I will explore the epistemological foundations of Stace’s theory of religious language.