Compatibility of Autonomy with Religious Authority

Autonomy is a rational virtue that assumes that an individual is independent of the other, with the ability to choose and decide in areas such as ethics, politics, and knowledge. The autonomous person with this definition resists religious authority. For this reason, autonomy always prevents the acceptance of religious teachings without independent evidence. The relationship between religious belief and rationality has made a hard choice for modern religious people. Modern humans have to relinquish rationality and believe in religious authority, or limit their religious beliefs to a small proposition for which it has evidence. Philosophers such as Zagzebski, Coady, and Robert & Wood are attempting to reinterpret the concept of autonomy that does not conflict with the acceptance of epistemological authority, including religious authority. In this article, after reviewing the definition of autonomy and its history, the relation between this concept and concepts such as independence and authority is discussed. Then, by providing a consistent interpretation of this concept, it analyzes the relationship between this new concept and religious authority.