PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION RESEARCH (NAMAH-I HIKMAT)
Year:2024 | Volume:22 | Issue:1|Papers Count:12

Depressive disorder is one of the most common disorders that humans have been infected with throughout their lives. Considering the factors of this disorder, its cognitive and ontological symptoms, and despite all the psychological research done about it, there is still a gap in philosophical research in this field. Accordingly, the main question of the present research is: What is the perspective of Mulla Sadra regarding some cognitive symptoms of depression such as feelings of absurdity and sadness? The authors studied the views of Mulla Sadra with a descriptive-analytical method. The results show that the feeling of absurdity in humans is rooted in not finding the meaning of life, so that with a correct perception of the meaning of life this feeling and the resulting depression can be overcome to a great extent. Mulla Sadra believes that the cosmic end of the creation is the return to the supreme good, i.e. God. In this return, the human being, due to his/her exalted position among other creatures can have a volitional journey beside the cosmic one. In other words, two ends are defined for the human being: Cosmic and legislative. Moreover, by dividing sadness and happiness into the four types of sensory, imaginary, estimative, and intellectual, it is possible to better understand the types and levels of happiness and sadness. As a matter of fact, Mulla Sadra’s views give this insight that the feeling of sadness in depression is caused because a depressed person wrongly think that something is disagreeable with his/her nature.

The problem of evil has always been a challenge against theism and there has been a lot of disputation about it. What can be considered as a newer challenge to theism is the very problem of divine hiddenness. There are multiple similarities between the two arguments which have caused some thinkers to reduce one to another and to count only one of them as original. It is possible that one of the very concepts of evil or hiddenness be reduced to another one, or one of the arguments that is grounded on them, or the reduction occurs in both phases. Regarding the vastitude of the domain of each problem, what we solely aim at is inspecting the reasons of ones who hold that divine hiddenness is nothing but one articulation of the problem of evil and it is not necessary to be regarded as independent. These reasons range from a sort of resemblance of their logical structure, methodology, conclusion, or responses in order to show that either the problem of divine hiddenness is not independent at all or if it is, it makes a much less severe case against theism in comparison to the problem of evil so it’s not worthy of any concern. What will be eventually concluded is that despite having plentiful available similarities, this kind of reduction is not justified and each problem, regardless of their ability to prove what they claim, is independently precious, inspection-worthy, and original.

In this article, we have tried to show that the phenomenological approach can be a suitable method for analyzing religious experience in the field of education. To show this, we have argued that the phenomenological method, as a descriptive method from the first-person perspective, allows a person to directly describe and analyze his/her lived experience, and the analyst can use this lived experience to analyze the meaning of the experience, giving the person the necessary knowledge and understanding of the meaning of his/her religious experience. Therefore, in the first part of this article, we have mentioned some important features of the phenomenological method. Also, in this article, we have shown that the holistic approach provides the possibility for the phenomenological researcher to expose the target person, i.e. pupil or student, to the description and phenomenological analysis of his religious experience from different angles. In addition to these two important points in this article, it should also be mentioned that adopting a phenomenological approach in the analysis of religious experience in education provides the researcher with the possibility of opening his/her mind so that he/she can learn about different religious beliefs without bias and prejudice and do research about them without judging whether they are right or wrong. This issue can be one of the strong points of such research, which in the field of religious education gives the researcher and the researched people the possibility to share their religious experiences in the field of education without bias and prejudice.

The problem of evil is considered in conflict with the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence of God. In this regard, different theodicies have been proposed, the most important of which are based on: the evil is imaginary or of non-existence, the sum of good is more than the sum of evil, other attributes of God should be considered, or the evil is the result of human’s volition. Tabataba'i’s response to the problem of evil is multifaceted. His response is based on his special conception of the philosophy of Adam's fall, the inextricable link between the human and Iʾtibāriyyāt (i.e. the perceptions based on the mental constructs), and self-alienation. Adam’s fall, which is due to man’s attention to his earthly body along with neglecting the presence of God, has created a new knowledge and a new world for him, which is accompanied by suffering. In this new world, mental constructs are separated from realities, as well as legislation from creation. As a result, cosmic evils are set apart from the legislative ones which are based on mental constructs; so that sometimes, a cosmic evil is considered good. One can acknowledge the pain and suffering as a means of testing and paying attention to God's presence, and in this way, he/she will face a world where pain and suffering not only become relieved and meaningful but also disappear. Accordingly, both real (cosmic) evils and the ones based on mental constructs (Iʾtibāriyyāt) can also be considered good in their current earthly situation based on their meaning in this kind of understanding.

This article is a critique of the paper "Why Miracles Cannot Prove the Truth of Prophecy?” (Anvari, 2023), which was written with a glance at the views of al-Ghazali, Averroes, and Mulla Sadra. For example, in criticizing the statement that “faith through miracles is the faith of ordinary people and one must believe in a prophet through intuition”, it should be said that since God has sent miracles along with the prophets, it shows that he wants people to believe in the truth of the prophet's claim through those miracles. Therefore, faith through miracles is correct. In addition, the strength of faith is not necessarily dependent on the strength of evidence through which one reaches that faith. In criticizing that “there is no correlation between a miracle and the claim of prophecy”, it should be said that a miracle is considered proof that a specific human is representative and messenger of God Almighty, so if an act is proven to be a miracle, the prophecy of that man is proven. Also, the statement that “there is no practical way to set apart miracles from non-miracles”, leads to denying Quran and other well-known miracles as miracles. In addition, based on the fact that a miracle is always accompanied by a claim of divinity and also according to the demonstration of Divine wisdom, it is possible to distinguish miracles from non-miracles. The author proposed spiritual resemblance to the prophet and also the examination of his teachings as means to verify the truth of an alleged prophecy. However, no criterion has been provided to determine the necessary amount of resemblance to a person. Moreover, even if this resemblance is realized, how it merely can prove the prophecy of a person? It seems that paying attention to the exclusive conditions and features mentioned for miracles and having in mind the demonstration of Divine wisdom can solve the problems in terms of how miracles can prove the truth of prophecy.

One of the fundamental topics in the history of philosophy and theology is the issue of the personal identity of human beings during their lifetime in this world and hereafter. Philosophers have studied this issue from different perspectives and have raised conflicting opinions. This question has been raised to some extent by Avicenna and Mulla Sadra, and both philosophers have examined and answered the problem within their philosophical framework. Avicenna believes that mankind is one species whose immaterial soul is personalized and individualized by accidents, and with its survival, the identity and individuation of a human person are still preserved, even though his body has changed or completely destroyed. Mulla Sadra, according to his philosophical foundations, especially the substantial motion, believes that a person's identity is subject to existential change, and this continuous motion coincides with individual unity. Therefore, with the survival of this continuous and comprehensive being, the individual's identity is preserved in this world and hereafter. Accordingly, it can be said that the person in his/her life after death is the same as the worldly one, and in fact, an evolving person goes through sensory, imaginary, and in some cases intellectual stages. Although both opinions, based on their philosophical foundations, have significant and defensible points, they face challenges from the epistemological aspect. In other words, since both philosophers believe that the body –with its terrestrial features- is absent hereafter, how an observer can identify the other-worldly individuals with the worldly ones?

Faith is one of the basic concepts in the philosophy of religion, which forms the foundation of many new issues in contemporary religious epistemology. Untangling issues such as the relationship between faith and rationality is based on understanding faith and explaining its essential elements. Faith, both in religious and philosophical works, covers a range of different meanings from knowledge, belief, acceptance, feeling to trust and act, hence it has an ambiguous and challenging nature. This ambiguity in the quiddity of faith has also spread to secondary philosophical issues, so that some questions about the rationality of faith remain unsolved. It shows the necessity of reviewing the nature of faith and refining philosophical and religious theories. The present article with a critical-analytical approach aims to explain faith based on epistemological and non-epistemological components to show that faith has a multiple nature, and ignoring each of them leads to an incomplete and insufficient understanding of the meaning of faith. According to the results of the present research, faith is a reality made of knowledge and belief, arising from acknowledge and trust, medley of feeling and action, but has an independent nature and cannot be reduced to any of the mentioned components alone. Reductionism in the nature of faith causes the challenge of faith and rationality. In determining the main core of faith, if the epistemological components are the foundation of other components in such a way that the non-epistemological components are based on it, the right relation between faith and rationality is established.

This article evaluates the success of cognitive models of religion derived from empirical research. The cognitive science of religion (CSR) is a field that uses methods and theories of cognitive science to understand how the human mind creates and transmits religious thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. The article's main point is that the success of CSR hinges on the explanatory power of cognitive models. We demonstrate that cognitive explanations encounter several limitations that cast doubt on their validity as good models. (1) Theoretical foundations: cognitive explanations rely on a third-person perspective and neglect first-person experience of the religious. They fail to recognize the interdependence of reflective and intuitive knowledge in religious people. They presuppose methodological naturalism, which is incompatible with multidimensional nature of religious phenomena. (2) Exclusionist view: They disregard crucial factors in the emergence, maintenance, enhancement and diffusion of religious beliefs such as revelation and prophecy, education, society and culture.  (3) Scientific evidence: it is challenging to replicate the religious experience by neuroscientific explanations in a laboratory setting. The findings of some researches contradict the hyperactive agency detection device; Autistic people exhibit the opposite of the theory of strategic social information. This article, while discussing the challanges of explanation in cognitive models, proposes some suggestions for improving and completing these models: paying attention to first-person stance of religious agents, highlighting the role of conscious cognition in believers, adopting methodological pluralism in studying religion, considering the historical and cultural contexts of religions and having a realistic view on development of theism.

One of the new and famous arguments in denying the existence of God is the Divine hiddenness argument. Based on this argument that was first proposed by John Schellenberg, a contemporary Canadian philosopher, God’s hiddenness is in conflict with his attribute of perfectly loving. Considering this conflict, defenders of the hiddenness argument have denied the existence of God. By adopting a new approach to the issues of being and knowledge, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi (1154–1191) has presented a different point of view. Suhrawardi calls God the Light of all lights. In his opinion, God’s essence is nothing but his light, and light is that which is manifest (Ẓāhir). Therefore, it is necessary that God’s essence be also manifest. Of course, Suhrawardi also has paid attention to the issue of divine hiddenness and its relationship with the human soul. In Suhrawardi's view, divine hiddenness is due to man's lack of attention to the origin of the universe (i.e. the Light of all lights) and his neglect of his own existential (luminous) aspect. Nevertheless, in Schellenberg's view, God itself is the cause of divine hiddenness, and man has less responsibility. While comparing the viewpoints of Suhrawardi and Schellenberg on divine hiddenness, this article, using a descriptive-analytical method, tries to explain how God’s essence can be hidden while it is manifest, but this hiddenness should not return to his essence.

The demonstration of preserving Sharia with its three accounts is one of the intellectual reasons that Shia theologians have used since the Islamic medieval centuries to prove the infallibility of Imams. Several objections have been raised regarding this argument, the most important of which discussed in this paper, is related to how Sharia is preserved during the absence of Imam Mahdi. Using the analytical-descriptive method, this objection and its responses are explained. These responses include: the necessity of the appearance of Imam Mahdi in case the path of knowledge is blocked, the guidance of the Imam in an unconventional way, supplying the society's needs for Sharia by the jurists, and lack of the necessity of actual preservation of the Sharia by the Imam. All these responses are evaluated and criticized and finally, it is shown that the objection is still strong and also applicable to previous religious laws. In the last part of the paper, two solutions are proposed: (1) Although this demonstration cannot prove the infallibility of prophets and Imams, one can still believe in their infallibility regarding the instances; (2) Infallibility is necessary except in cases of expediency. Nevertheless, the result of both solutions is incompatible with what theologians expect from the demonstrations of infallibility for the prophets and their successors.

One of the most important sociological, psychological, and theological issues in the contemporary world is "lifestyle". The significant point here is the role of worldviews in forming, dividing, and explaining the lifestyle. The divine and material worldviews divide the lifestyle into two important types. The subject matter of this article is the role of monotheism, as the most important foundation and infrastructure of Islam, in the lifestyle. This paper has answered these questions using a descriptive-analytical method: What is the role of belief in God in people's lifestyles? What are the main characteristics of a monotheistic lifestyle? Is there only one type of monotheistic lifestyle or one can believe in different types of it? The results of this article show that monotheism completely changes the lifestyle and a believer's lifestyle is completely different from a non-believer’s lifestyle. Moreover, a monotheistic lifestyle leads to an optimistic view of the world and life, a profound and comprehensive understanding of the human being and the world, balance in life choices, deep pleasures, a coherent system in life, superior knowledge and values, rational action in life, making the immeasurable aspects of affairs measurable, creating the capacity of having superior choices, and directing the choices. Finally, the monotheistic lifestyle has different levels, so we are not faced with only one type of monotheistic lifestyle.

Since society is among the contingent entities, its existence is dependent on Necessary Existence. God, as the agent and creator of the contingent world, grants the existence of society through human wills and actions, in such a way that the existence of society cannot be reconciled with its non-existence. The divine traditions that we can know through the revealed and rational structures are the basis of our existence and all other realities. Just as realism is the precondition of our existence and all scientific and rational theories, divine traditions also -with the same extent and with the same breadth- provide the basis for our individual and social lives. Accordingly, society is a collection of divine traditions and its emergence requires collective action. Divine traditions, as the constitutive principles, play a causal role in the existence and survival of society. This paper, using a descriptive-analytical method, also deals with some consequences of this understanding of society, the most important of which are: the centrality of human primordial nature in perceiving divine traditions and formation of society, reverse predication in predicating tradition upon society, the necessity of immateriality of society, rejecting relativism, and preserving human volition and responsibility.