An Account of the Agreement between Religiosity and Rationality

How rationality and religiosity agree is a significant problem for the scholars of religion and philosophy as indicated by various and sometimes conflicting views suggested in this regard. Religiosity consists in a conclusive acceptance of the principles and detailed doctrines of the religion as is meant by it in fact, and rationality consists in discovering the reality on the basis of the acceptance of the pure, necessarily true principles of the reason. The fact that many great philosophers throughout the history, including Muslim philosophers, have been scholars of religion as well might imply an agreement between rationality and religiosity, but an account needs to be provided of how the two agree. Specific features of the reason’s questions and a priori answers can be taken as a starting point of showing such an agreement, as well as an account of a relationship between the reason and the religion and the significance of the reason in religion. Taking some conditions into account, the agreement extends to questions and answers at the next level, all of which are acquired types of knowledge having different features. In this paper, I have sought to articulate the method of Muslim philosophers in establishing a connection between pure philosophical research and speculative research in religious texts and doctrines as well as the place of either of these for them, in order to show such an agreement not only as a matter of fact, but also as intertwined in these two types of research.