Philosophy of religion
Year:2016 | Volume:12 | Issue:4 |Papers Count:9

The emergence of religious phenomena, namely "The Synods" in the history of Christianity, was entirely or mainly meant to oppose innovations and to create a relative unity in early Christian society; especially that the Christian early centuries experienced variety of nations and ethnicities and hence, variety of tendencies, religious sects and pseudo-religious sects. The study and analysis of the bases and causes of formation the first synod in Christian history-“The Council of Nicaea”- is counted as one of the greatest topics and courses in Christian history and theology. The Council of Nicaea, both, intended to resolve the basis debates and arguments in Christian beliefs and prepared the ground for further developments in this tradition. Protecting religious and political unity of Eastern Roman Empire in the fourth century, although taking stands about ideas of Arius (256-336) and announcing them as innovatory were only one of the purposes of The Council of Nicaea, yet it was one of the greatest of them, in a way that after publication of the Declaration of Athanasius and the clear stance of council against Arius, the Arianism movement left its impacts on Christian history as an important event. In this article, whilst we study the ideas of Arius- especially his ideas about the essence of Trinity’s second person- we also analyze the reaction of other influential movements in that time especially the official viewpoint of the Eastern Orthodox Church and through this we talk about the surrounding and further developments of this movement.

The dual nature of human existence and having both physical and spiritual aspects are accepted by religious scholars and divine philosophers. Despite the disagreement on the way that soul was created, Muslim philosophers have agreed about “the creation of soul and not being presiding over body.” While Avicenna has proved this idea through two arguments in his book al- Shifa, Mulla Sadra has brought different arguments in favor of this idea. He accepted some of them and rejected others. On the other hand, many textual proofs imply that soul was created before body. This article study and analyze the idea of “synchrony of creation of soul and body” on which most Muslim philosophers agree. With regard to evaluation of philosophers' arguments who believe the thought and for criticism of their argument, the author shows that the conflict between intellect and implication of quotation is just a claimed conflict.

In this article the rationality of theism is studied in three important works of Plantinga; the three works in which the author, while responding to the critiques, presents his viewpoints. In this article, Plantinga's line of argumentation in these books is sought and then, his views are explained and analyzed. Hence, first his analogical argument is studied and criticized and then it will be discussed that there is incoherence in his critiques of the evidentialism and foundationalism. At the end, it will be also mentioned that his idea that the belief in God needs no evidence is a kind of Fideism.

This research is a new attempt to study the effect of evolution theory on empirical ethics. In contemporary period the evolutionary ethics is placed in three branches: descriptive, prescriptive and meta-ethics. The descriptive evolutionary ethics tries to modify human’s ethical beliefs in the evolutionary perspective and is more successful in this field than the other two branches. Despite the descriptive evolutionary ethics, the prescriptive evolutionary ethics and meta-ethics deal with normative ethics. In this article, by studying the three branches of evolutionary ethics and separation of empirical ethics from ethics in its normative sense, we believe that despite accepting the biological effects on ethics, there are serious challenges to descriptive evolutionary ethics and it seems that this theory cannot survive the potential competitor theories, such as the independent moral thinking. On the other hand, this theory is in a very serious conflict with the principles of religious morality.

Immortality of beings is an indisputable teaching of the Quran mentioned in many verses. The verse “Every soul shall taste of death” (3/185) explains the components of the doctrine and deserves to be relied on and referred to in Quranic eschatology. To explain the theory exactly, it is necessary to answer the questions like: “what is the nature of death?”, “What is the scope of death?”, “What can be the subject of death?” and “What is the death process?” based on this verse and the related verses. The Quranic exegeses from Farqayn (the two major sects of Islam) show that the exegetes do not have the same interpretation and understanding from the teaching. They differ due to the influence of their different philosophical, anthropological, and literal presumptions, as well as their exegetical method. Answering the aforementioned questions, the author of this article believes that approaches like believing in nothingness as an explanation of the nature of death, non-application of the soul to God and its exclusiveness to human being for the analysis of the scope of death, its belonging only to human body and the silence of the Quran on the subject of death process are acceptable viewpoints.

The function of religion is the effect and development that religion has in human society. Religion has two important functions in individual sphere. First, increasing knowledge, Avicenna believes that only prophets can become receptacle of truths without been trained. Second, soothing, Avicenna believes that right beliefs are the causes of health. The most important social function of religion is legislation. Avicenna believes that religion is necessary for legislation and organizing the society. Another social function of religion is building solidarity and unity in society. Avicenna forbids what leads to weakening the biggest base of civilization. From other scholars’ point of view, some functions of religion are exclusive and there is no scientific, philosophical or mystical alternative to them.

Perhaps, “Monotheism” and “its truth” can be regarded as the most controversial topics in the area of theology, philosophy and theoretical mysticism. Meanwhile, there are lots of different views and disagreements between theologians, philosophers and mystics, to which many works are dedicated. Theologians and Peripatetic philosophers accepted the separation (Beynoonat) between the Creator and Creature. Ishraqi thinkers believe in some kinds of unity that include multiplicity. Following Fahlavyoon, Mulla Sadra, the founder of “Transcendental Wisdom” (al-Hekmat al-Muta’aliyah), propounded the gradational unity and afterward influenced by mystics, a kind of personal unity of existence (al-Wahdat al-Shakhsi). Mystics also regard the personal unity of existence as the most accurate opinion. One of the contemporary thinkers, Allamah Mohammad Taqi Jafari, has discussed this subject sporadically in his works, and apparently has tried to oppose the idea of personal unity of existence. In this article, we bring up and review his points of view as well as reconstructing his perspective on the "relation between the Creator and creature." We concluded that Allamah Jafari's views should be considered in two aspects. He criticizes the "Unity of existence" with a pantheist view in the first stage, while in the second he accepts the personal unity of existence.

Regarding Mulla Sadra’s philosophical method, various opinions are proposed from Sadra researchers, each of which deals with a part of Sadra’s philosophical method or even takes a path that is entirely different from and even in some cases opposite to Sadra’s method and the explanations of commentators on al-Hikat al-Muta’aliyah. His four methodological principles, i.e. purposeful combination of three resources of knowledge: the Qur'an, philosophy and mysticism in one direction, using the abovementioned resources in the state of collection and judgment, systematic and pluralistic usage of predecessor thinkers’ opinions and the systematic usage of three principles: the nation’s opinion, the gradational unity of existence and personal unity of existence were analyzed in this article by analyzing Sadra’s attitudes toward different mystical resources and investigating different aspects of Sadra’s way of dealing with philosophical issues