Journal Of Religious Thought
Year:2010 | Volume:- | Issue:33|Papers Count:8

Every part of knowledge has involved in reductionism. Also religious studies has involved in reductionism. This essay investigates the reductionism in defining of religion. Some of definitions of thinkers in different schools are investigated. Increasing intemperately non-Intellectual aspects of mystical experiences, Otto defined the holy by intuitive, phenomenological, psychological analytics of experiences of religion. So he can't attain a comprehensive definition for complexities of religion. Eliade developed the holy and contrasted it to the earthly, but he doesn't represent an integrated definition of religion. Hick found that it is impossible to get a common definition of religion, so he converted religion to religions and accounted current properties of religions. Wittgenstien doesn't consider religion as a regulated set. He pointed out to the religious action rather than religion and reduced religion to the religious action and accounted properties of religious action. Tillich reflected two meanings of religion; common meaning and special meaning. The Ultimate is in common meaning and in special meaning, it is the aspect of human spirit. Our definitions of religion can be protected by perspectivism which is provided by interdisciplinary approach. Perspectivism and interdisciplinary approach are not perfect but they can help us to make our definitions more and more perfect.

Ontological arguments are those arguments which prove God's existence by a preori method through analyzing the concept of God. The first one who represented this kind of arguments was Anselm, the medieval theologian and philosopher. Anselm's argument has always been marked from its proposal (11th century) until now, because of its complexity and ambiguity. There are various versions of this argument, contemporary one of the most important versions of which belongs to Alvin Platinga, the contemporary philosopher and epistemologist. Since axiomatic method is a suitable way to evaluate and criticize an argument through explaining its logical format and specifying its premises, this article is going to introduce it and show the sufficiency of Plantinga's version in proving God's existence through using this method and presenting its exact logical format (by employing both ancient and symbolic logic).

Meaningfulness of religious propositions has been questioned by August Comte, sociologist, in the recent decades and has been intensified with severe support and predilection of Anthony Flew, Popper's disciple. By accepting falsifiability principle of Popper, that Popper himself had planned it for differentiate experimental science from pseudoscience against logical positivism, and by connecting that with meaningfulness, Flew structured a pattern and criterion for meaningfulness of experimental and other propositions, including religious propositions.By believing in experimental abolitionary of meaning principle and by accepting presumption of devout, that ((religious propositions do exist)), Flew concluded that only experimental propositions are capable of being abolished experimentally and despite the fact that religious propositions are existing rules according to devout, they are not meaningful, because they can not be abolished experimentally. Therefore Flew believes in meaninglessness and absurdity of religious propositions, because of lack of experimental evidences regarding their abolition, so he regarded all religious propositions uninformative and unabolishable (elimintivisim).In this paper, we try to show the structural methodological weakness of reductionism, exclusiveness, and empirical dogmatism by a critical review of Flew's theory. And we also try to pursue the idleness and baselessnes of his hypothesis on religious propositions.

We can not find any philosopher, in the history of philosophy, who has not thought on the existence of God, despite his acceptance or rejection of God. In this paper we have compared the viewpoints of Mulla Sadra and KarlJaspers on the subject of God and have reached the following results:1- Although both philosophers have been considered as existential philosophers, their approaches to existence are different,2- Sadra's God is the God of religion contrary to that of Jaspers.3- Both of them use intuitive approach in understanding God.Discussing God's existence and attributes, Mulla Sadra represents a positive theology and Jaspers represent a negative one.

Considering the roles of Imams' Paternship, the authors reviewed the religious education in Imam Hussein’s biography using analytical methods and concluded that the Ashura movement is one of the most significant manifestations of Imam Hussein’s (AS) biography, a comprehensive model in religious educations. The practical biography of Imam Hussein during the Karbala Event is a comprehensive and integrative model that human relationships (with Allah, beings, himself and others) offer.Conscious worship, trust surrender and satisfaction in dynamic and constructive concept of religious educational patterns in relation of the man with the Creator is found in Imam Hussein’s (AS) biography. Due to individual differences in humans in the process of education, general positive attitude, practical trends and respecting the rights of others are some of the characteristics within the human relationship with others. Self honor which brings about authority and power against the enemies as well as humility for the friends and the servants of Allah, is among the manifestations of the religious education in Imam’s biography indicating the role of religious education in association of human with himself. Instrumental use of both material and spiritual possibilities in the World in order to achieve higher goals is the constructive practical model that is obvious in Imam’s educational biography in association with the World.

Intercession is one of the most debated and important topics in Islam which is particularly addressed in Quran and narrations of infallible Imams. There is a consensus among Muslims as far as the concept itself is concerned and it is considered as one of the fundamental principle of Islam and Islamic beliefs. However, the complexity and intricacy of the concept has given rise to various interpretations and brought about differing viewpoints among Muslims. This paper intends to explicate the concept from the viewpoint of Sadr-ol-Mota’alehin Shirazi, one of the great scholars of Islam. A number of questions including, “what is the most plausible approach to understand the reality of intercession?”, “what are the different interpretations of intercession and which one gave rise to differences among scholars?”, “who is the real intercessor and whether there are any other intercessors?”, and “is intercession limited to this world or whether it will be practiced in the other world?” have been raised in this paper and following Mulla Sadra, we have made an attempt to come up with more plausible and scholarly discussion of the questions hoping to have a contribution to the cause of legitimate interpretation of Islamic beliefs.