Journal Of Religious Thought
Year:2008 | Volume:- | Issue:26|Papers Count:11

Dualism is the view that mind and body are two distinct things: body is material and mind is non-material. Monism, in contrast to dualism, holds that human being is either material (physicalism) or non-material (idealism). Physicalism is the theory that mind and mental phenomena are either unreal (eliminative physicalism) or nothing over and above the physical facts, that is, facts about matter and material processes (reductive physicalism).The purpose of this paper is to describe eliminative physicalism and its bases and then to show that these bases do fail to prove the theory.

Just war theory is said to have begun with Augustine. The doctrine was developed further as a religious teaching, but after the Reformation, secular versions of just war theory became prominent. "Just war" is contrasted with "holy war". Since the crusades were considered by many Christians as holy wars, it is often assumed that jihad is the Islamic equivalent. In what follows, I argue that jihad shares much in common with the just war tradition. Recent theorists have used the term "just war pacifism" or "contingent pacifism" to describe the view that under the conditions of modern warfare, just war theory leads to the conclusion that it is morally wrong to engage in war. In this paper, it is argued that an Islamic ethics of war and peace may be interpreted to yield a just war pacifism that is analogous to that developed on the basis of Western just war theory. Under current conditions, the criteria required by Islam to provide a moral justification for just war fail to obtain for an important range of armed conflicts, and this conclusion may be considered an argument for a conditional Islamic just war pacifism.

Faith as one of the most central elements of religions is something that we can't ignore its basic role in forming Religious Belief. Dealing with the "Nature" of faith and its statue in religions is considered among those significant discussions of the great religions. This paper will review the Nature of Religious Faith viewpoints of Allame Tabatabayi and Paul Tillich. They both analyze the subject according to their own religion, Islam and Christianity. According to Tabatabayi, Faith is a "firm belief' and is a kind of perception, but from Tillich's viewpoint, it is the state of "Ultimate Concern" and therefore it belongs to the category of "Act". Both philosophers acknowledge that faith can have an external thing as its object, and there is no contradiction between Faith and Reason. Faith in Paul Tillich's view is something Certain In its primary stages and after that we are facing with steady Doubt, but in the view of Allame Tabatabayi faith in its primary stages is always conjoined with Doubt and ultimately leads to Certainty.

It seems that some Qur'anic sermons address only men and not women. Among them we can notice the rewards that Qur'an maintains about paradise. This paper will answer the questions on differences between men and women in paradise from Qur'anic viewpoint and how we can interperate the verses which seem to talk only about men's rewards in paradise.

Regarding the importance and semantic meaning of women's rights in the Holy Qur'an this article deals with the role of man as the head of household. What is written in the Holy Qur'an about women's rights manifests the reality of their physique as human beings. According to their gender they enjoy certain right which exhibits equality in the creation. Regarding the position and importance of guardianship it can be said that men are responsible for providing financial support for the family. In the same way women are responsible for raising, nurturing and teaching moral values to the family. This balance illustrates the relationship between the law of the nature and the divine law.

The debate over the occurrence or the precedence of the Divine Word is found both in Islam and Christianity. It has been one of the earliest theological problems that appeared in the both religions. Christian theologizes held that Jesus is the Divine Word but they have different views on his divine or human personality and question about the occurrence or the precedence of the nature of Jesus has been an old debate. The same thing happened in Islamic thought. But for Muslim theologians it is Qur'an which is the Divine Word. In this paper the similarities between these two ideas in the content and in the history, will be discussed.

In this inquiry, among various current philosophical-based approaches and instructional methods, four of them, including value clarification, character education, cognitive development and religious trends, considering Islam, by using qualitative research methodology and content analysis techniques have been investigated. Character Education approach has origin in ethical belief of virtue- oriented philosophers and is based on methods of habit formation as presenting ethical stories, biographies and exhibiting film: Exactly, because of this reason, this approach is accused of using syncretic methods. Value clarification approach has root in positivistic, analytical, phenomenological, existential and pragmatic views. It benefits from group discussion methods with focus on moral selection by learners and holding the teachers' impartiality. Recommending neutrality and relativism is the essential weakness of this view. Cognitive development approach led by Piaget and Kohlberg has Kantian background and, by planning ethical riddles, it begins moral training. This approach has been criticized because of ignoring ethical behaviors and emphasizing on logic and ethical judgment so much. But Islamic ethical training approach originated from Islamic world - Perspective is the most comprehensive one in the inquiry. It removes all the weaknesses of the other approaches by modeling illustrating and narrating.