atheism

Atheists have raised different ranges of arguments in line with their claim, one of these ranges of arguments is the argument based on the hiddenness of God, which they believe is a sign of the non-existence of such a being.One of the elements of the formation of this range of arguments, which are known as proofs of divine concealment; It is a special meaning and understanding that comes from divine concealment. Therefore, the meanings of divine concealment should be well defined so that, based on that, a correct review and criticism can be made on what the defenders of the divine concealment argument have raised against belief in God. Through the investigation, it is clear that in some of his works, a brief reference is made to the meaning of divine concealment;But no work has independently analyzed the meaning of divine concealment and its developments; Therefore, this article aims to capture the evolution of the meaning of divine concealment from the perspective of Western and Islamic thinkers in an analytical-documentary way, so that based on that, a correct position can be adopted in dealing with this range of arguments.. Through the investigation, it becomes clear that among the meanings of divine concealment, the meaning of being covered by the senses, the meaning of non-perception and the truth of the essence of truth, as well as the meaning of non-finding due to finding, can be combined with belief in God and is compatible with it.

The book Breaking the Spell, written by Daniel Dennett, is one of the most important works of the new atheism movement. In this book, Dennett claims to investigate the phenomenon of religion with a scientific method and seeks to explain religion as a natural phenomenon and negate its transcendental origin. He tries to describe religion as a structure influenced by the natural evolution of culture, with its Darwinian logic. The problem of the current research is to explain and evaluate Dennett's claims regarding the definition and roots of religion and its evolution process, with a descriptive and critical method. The results of this study show that Dennett has challenges and errors in advancing goals such as introducing religion as a natural phenomenon and drawing the evolutionary algorithm of its origin and evolution. Ignoring the traditional studies of religion, denying the independent identity of religion and confusing religion with religiosity are some of these errors. However, Dennett has shown that he is very proficient in using the capacities of doubting in Darwin's theory, and this has doubled the importance of reviewing and criticizing his book.

The hiddenness of God is a new challenge in the philosophy of religion. In short, the believers of this view say that if there is a god, he should not hide himself from the eyes of humans and should be clear in such a way that humans can communicate with him. If God exists and guides mankind, why hasn't He hidden Himself from the eyes of humans or at least given more signs of His presence to humans? Is it not possible for us to have more proofs of the existence and presence of God as well as the truth of religious propositions so that no one can claim that he has sought to find the truth of religion and has not succeeded? Couldn't it be possible for us to have options such as seeing purgatory, communication with the souls after death, and talking with religious leaders in a wider way than now, so that our religious doubts disappear and our certainty increases? How can "divine concealment" be combined with his guidance? Is it possible to combine the two and not fall into the trap of conflict? In this article, the conflict between God's guidance and His disappearance is examined in a descriptive and analytical way, and to solve the problem of His disappearance, His guidance is interpreted as "necessary" and "possible".

This paper scrutinizes William Lane Craig’s perspective on the relationship between religion and ethics. According to Craig, knowledge of moral values and obligations is not inherently tied to theism, as he posits that God has embedded moral obligations within the human heart. However, in terms of ontology, Craig contends that theism provides the best explanation for moral realism. Atheistic realists, in avoiding the naturalistic fallacy, are urged to conceptualize moral properties as abstract Platonic entities akin to numbers and propositions, a stance unnecessary within the theistic framework where God, a concrete entity, serves as the supreme good and ultimate source of moral goodness. Critically assessing Craig’s viewpoint, the paper contends that 1) real property should not be conflated with an essential constituent. Drawing on Moore’s perspective, moral predicates are construed as second-order philosophical concepts inherently tied to the existence of subjects. 2) By centering on the existence of “moral evil,” Craig’s argument can be inverted, providing grounds for an argument supporting the existence of Satan. 3) The consequence of Craig’s argument is the negation of any moral obligation for atheists. 4) Positing obedience to God’s command solely for its own sake as irrational, Craig’s argument may potentially exhibit circular reasoning.

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, the doubt of God as a historical matter has been criticized in an analytical-descriptive way based on library sources. Kent's doubt about God is based on the theory of three-stage thinking; Based on that, man first thinks about God, then he relies on philosophy and finally on science. On the basis of evidence such as induction, intuition and logical necessity, Auguste Comte comes to the conclusion that this law governs human thought, and now human societies have reached the scientific stage, i.e. the last stage of the development of human thought, and thus God, who was a centeric principle in the divine era, was central, now it has been pushed aside as a historical matter. Since this doubt is based on the law of three stages, we tried to criticize this law from different perspectives. In the process of criticizing the cited evidence, such as induction, intuition and logical necessity were criticized. By criticizing the Law of three Stages, the weakness of God's doubt was revealed as a historical matter.

M-theory is a fundamental theory in modern physics. By presenting a new framework of this theory and inspired by some results of quantum mechanics, Stephen Hawking believes that the material world as a whole was created from "nothing" spontaneously and by physical laws. What we aim at in this article is to review and criticize Hawking's theological views, which are mainly related to M-theory; Views such as “denial of God”, “denial of human will”, “rejection of prayer, miracles and in general everything that has a metaphysical aspect, such as the existence of a spiritual dimension in man” and “denial of life after death”. For this purpose, after presenting Hawking's words, we will criticize the theological views of this physicist by relying on the foundations of Islamic philosophy. Some criticisms of Hawking's views include misperception of the concept and position of God, as well as the concept of time, his wrong image that humans are machines; failure to pay attention to the moral and social aspects of this view. Our method in this article will be descriptive-analytical.

John Gray, who is an English  philosopher and specialist in the history of theories, proposes different types of atheism and tries to define, categorize and criticize them by extracting the presuppositions and logical consequences  of each one. New atheism, atheism based on secular humanism, atheism as making a kind of religion out of science, atheism in the form of antitheism, atheism in the form of modern political schools, atheism without progress, and atheism of silence are types of atheism are the varieties of atheism that John Gray distinguishes from each other. According to John Gray, some types of atheism have gone astray by misunderstanding the definition of religion and considering it as the primary type of science. Some others, by taking presuppositions such as the idea of humanity and the idea of progress, have suffered a kind of logical contradiction in their accepted principles; Because while denying the truth of religions, they have taken these two assumptions from the idea of monotheism and the idea of salvation in religions.The impossibility of establishing moral.

Although Freud is not the originator of the theory that "God is a creation and projection of the human mind" (as this idea has been discussed before him), he is the founder of the psychoanalytic interpretation of this concept. Relying on his psychoanalytic findings, Freud establishes the foundation of psychological atheism, asserting that God is the product of human childish illusion. Humans always need security. This need is fulfilled through the father during childhood. But as individuals mature, this is done through a psychological process that substitutes the father figure with God. Freud attempts to support this notion by applying his psychoanalytic findings to primitive societies and subsequently to monotheistic religions. For this, he employs frameworks such as scientific worldview, Darwinism, and physicalism into his argument. In this paper, written with an analytical-descriptive approach, we demonstrate that Freud’s perspective as well as its foundation encounter significant weaknesses and challenges. One of the important challenges that this perspective face is that despite accepting scientism as a principle and considering the scientific method as the only valid means to reach the truth, Freud appears to neglect this method when expressing his own views. His perspective also lacks the conditions of a scientific viewpoint because scientific viewpoints require testability, a criterion that his perspective lacks. Furthermore, even if his perspective is assumed to be correct, it does not necessitate the denial of God.

The issue of the temporal beginning of the cosmos is one of the challenging issues which, in addition to philosophy and theology, has attracted the attention of contemporary physicists, so that some of them have expressed metaphysical-theological reactions and even atheistic opposing in choosing their opinions. Reviewing of Stephen Hawking’s works shows that he merely bases the physical rules that rely on the method of sensation and experience without the use of metaphysical and philosophical methods. Some metaphysical results such as temporal of beginningless have concluded the creation of cosmic and thereby denied the existence of God. The findings of the research in the present article which has been written by descriptive-analytical method and with philosophical approach indicate that Hawking’s cosmic temporal of beginningless is consistent with the view of some philosophers such as Mullā Ṣadrā but Mullā Ṣadrā unlike Hawking does not conclude atheism and atheistic readings from cosmic temporal of beginningless. Some of Hawking’s ontological concepts have led to fallacy of non-sequitur and lead to internal contradictions in philosophical discussions which in this article have been investigated and evaluated with the principles and fundamentals of transcendent theosophy or al-ḥikmat al-muta’āliyah (Arabic: الحکمه المتعالیه). It has been concluded in the end that Mullā Ṣadrā considers the criterion of the cosmic need for cause as “possible” in transcendent theosophy and has concluded between the “cosmic temporal of beginningless” and “the existence of God.”

Atheism is considered a legacy of the new age. Hume is considered the beginning of this legacy. Despite fifty years of atheism tendency, Antony Flew has thrown tremors into the structure of this heritage by raising questions about the suffering of this approach and has spoken about the possibility of God’s being. His questions about doubting the claims of atheism cannot be considered only as violations or fault and the possibility of refutation. The impulse that he proposed by asking about the possibility of God's being based on the foundations of science in the future produced three results. First, creating a fundamental hole in Hume's claims and atheism, secondly, the possibility of re-examining the claims of atheism and re-reading the arguments of atheists and criticizing it and the possibility of unproven of violations and objections, and thirdly, returning to the correct and accurate re-reading of the arguments of the theists in proving the being of an intelligent principle in the creation of the world.The main idea this article is that first the approach and period of Flow’s first intellectual period regarding the impossibility of positive proof of theism is analyzed, then are explained the triple achievements on the theoretical impulses of the heritage of atheism and at the end his main thought in the second intellectual period is analyzed.

Talking about the belief in God and its opposite point, atheism, is one of the essential topics in theology and philosophy. Rejection of monotheistic worldview, negation of faith and surrender to any supernatural object or person, disbelief in the existence of a personal God who plays a role in human existence and life, denial of fixed beliefs and laws and monotheistic dogma or rites and rituals, negation of immortality and utopianism of monotheistic religions and so on, are the common characteristics of atheists. But the question is whether atheists really are honest in their claim of independence and distance from theism in their worldview, beliefs, and actions. With a descriptive-analytical method and by presenting numerous pieces of evidence, this article has challenged the claim that atheism is a totally independent and contradictory idea and is opposed to theism and considered it false. The result of this evidence and reasons is that atheism is a crude, immature, and indefensible idea and, at best, a clumsy, unjustified, and impractical copycat of theism.

In "Value and Virtue in a World Without God," Weillenberg considers naturalism as an atheistic account of the universe. He first introduces the meaninglessness of life in the absence of God with four narrations and then challenges it with the help of three perspectives. He then goes on to find ways to ontologically base morality on religion and tries to show that these ways are dead ends. In this book he does not clarify his alternative view, but in the book "Strong Ethics", it is revealed that he is a naturalist. In response to the question why should one live morally? It wants to show that there is a possibility of moral motivation apart from God, although God can also be a good supporter of morality. In introducing virtues into his proposed ecosystem, he is no longer content with merely presenting a positive view, and seeks to show that some virtues are born in the absence of God, or at least have a deeper meaning. The most important criticism of him is the identification of theism with being a Christian.

We can introduce two classes of scenarios. The first, standard model of cosmology proposes a scenario in which the BigBang is beginning, and the second, scenarios where the BigBang is merely a gate to our universe and the universe have more dimensions than ours. The basic question is why and how did the universe come to be out of nothing? To answer such a question, two methods have been taken in the physics: firstly, finite but no boundary model and secondly, the scenario of eternal inflation. Having explained the two classes, I will show that the main experimental and theoretical evidence support the past incomplete directions of the universe; whether we consider it as Big Bang or more developed. Also, the existing models and scenarios are not against the supernatural approach, but also consolidate it.

Experimental philosophy is a new approach in analytic philosophy emerging in the last decade. Experimental philosophy emphasizes the intuitions of ordinary people and compares them with philosophers' intuitions to understand and analyze philosophical problems. One important philosophical and theological issue that can be addressed with such an approach is the problem of evil. Since in the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is raised in two logical and evidential forms, the research questionnaires were designed to cover both accounts, although more emphasis was placed on the evidential problem of evil. The statistical population of this research was 100 people from different social groups who did not have special studies in philosophical and theological fields. The findings of this research show that the public's sympathy with the logical account of the problem of evil is more than their sympathy with the evidential one. However, the ratio between the answers and all the questions indicates a significant inconsistency in the folks' understanding of the problem of evil and its relationship with theism.

Having believed in Darwin's theory of evolution, the contemporary biologist and animal behaviorist, Richard Dawkins has tried to present a naturalistic and atheistic account of the theory during several decades thus basing atheism upon evolutionism. His strongest support for such an account is natural selection which he considers as a clue to decipher the mystery of being, invincible though blind, bereft of any orientation, in an accumulated way, along with some sort of luck, and based not on intelligence or awareness. In his paper, the author goes to study and assess Dawkins' view and arguments.The upshot of this research is Dawkins' many mistakes in his very claims, arguments, results, and at last his failure in imposing his naturalistic metaphysics on the evolution theory thus his so-called scientifically atheistic explanation. Furthermore and contrary to Dawkins' assumption, not only the theory of evolution is compatible with monotheistic approach, but also divine and wise calculations are the best explanation and infrastructure for the cognitive value of evolution theory.

The beginning and non-eternity of the world is one of the hot topics of modern cosmology that has attracted the Abrahamic believers and philosophers , In the standard model of cosmology this idea has become more prominent than in the past. Some have tried to explain the beginning of the world from zero or nothingness with the fluctuation of the quantum vacuum in the condition of infinite curvature, so that the problem does not turn to a philosophical one. In this article, at first the necessary quantum prerequisites to understand this scenario have explained and then its description are presented, then based on this detailed explanation, we will show two main problems: 1) it includes verbal false reasoning and 2) it still doesn't remove the need for a supernatural agent to explain how the world began from nothing.

Dawkins, the leader of modern atheism, believes in the incompatibility of the theory of evolution and theism, and is against creationism. He maintains that creation, evolution, and diversity of life can be explained based on the evolution theory, so there is no need to imagine a superior, powerful, and complex God to explain the changes. Rejecting the traditional arguments for the existence of God and providing arguments for the implausibility of the existence of God, he rejects the need to a supernatural being called God. In the article at hand, the shortcomings of his claims are expressed, including the weakness of his arguments, the defectiveness and inconsistency of his understanding of God, the inaccuracy of his presupposition that belief in God is illogical, and the frequent fallacies in his analysis of theism. Dawkins, who has derived the rejection of God and purposefulness of the universe from the theory of evolution, is logically wrong.

Since the beginning of his life, man has been looking for a reason for the origin of existence, and this issue has provided the basis for discussion among thinkers. Antony Flew is one of the thinkers who, based on evidentialism and following the analysis of religious worldview, first turns to atheism and then to deism. According to his approach, Flew sought scientific and experimental evidence for his beliefs, which by resorting to this approach and its arrangement in the form of teleological argument, finally leads to deism that the analysis of these evidences is the subject of this article. As a result, it will become clear that these scientific and empirical reasons can be useful evidence for deism to some extent, but the nature of science is the lack of stability, and transformation, which is considered an important weakness for epistemological matters. Also, although Flew does not go beyond deism by appealing to them, he refers to God's intervention in nature after creation, which indicates the lack of sufficient coherence of his thought after the change of belief. Finally, it should be said that considering his deism, his belief in practice is not much different from his atheism.

Ontological naturalism is one of the most important foundations of the new atheism, but also its main basis and foundation, and, therefore, its study is inevitably vital for seekers of doctrinal issues. This kind of naturalism has also been considered in the philosophy of science and some have considered it as an essential presupposition of empirical knowledge. As a result, research on this issue and its assessment is inevitable for those interested in the field of philosophy of science, especially those who claim the evolution of science and the pioneers of the production of religious science. Thus, the main issue of the present article is to examine this approach and value judgments about it. The research method is in the position of document collection and in the position of descriptive-analytical judgment. The result of the research is that ontological naturalism is neither a logically coherent and rational claim, nor is it supported by science and philosophy, nor will it be a necessary presupposition of empirical knowledge.