فصلنامه فلسفه دین
سال هجدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 50، بهار 1400)

William Rowe’s various works on the evidential argument from evil now occupies a central place in the Western discussions on the problem of evil. In one of his formulations, Rowe tries to justify the atheistic belief by showing the likelihood of gratuitous evil’s existence based on some particular instances of intense suffering. However, some of the philosophers, who are called skeptical theists, attempt to show that if there is a God, it is completely rational to accept that the humans are not in a cognitive position to make true judgments about all of the divine intentions and actions. Therefore, we cannot infer God’s justification(s) for the prescription of what seems to us to be an instance of intense suffering. Our aim in this paper is to show that skeptical theism offers a good reason to reject the evidential problem of evil developed by William Rowe.

Norman Geisler believes that the reason for the transition of the God of the Abrahamic religions from the Trinity to the height of Oneness and All-Richness in the Qur'an is the influence of Plotinus' thought on it. This has led to the emergence of a monotheistic gap between the Bible and the Qur'an. On the one hand, he believes that the thought of the absolute simplicity of divine essence comes from Plotinus and is imported to the Qur’ān in the form of Aḥad and Al-Samad words, and on the other hand, he believes that the relation between attributes and essence is inevitably implied by the occurrence of plurality and the negation of absolute simplicity. In this paper, the dimensions of Geisler's critique have been examined from the perspective of Sadrian theosophy. Instead of the claim for the importing or imposing simplicity concept onto the qur’ānic verses, the inference of the simplicity of the divine essence is done through a philosophical analysis of divine attributes such as absolute richness, absolute perfection, non-limitation and non-destructibility of the divine essence, all kinds of combinations (including the combination of the attributes and essence) are rejected, and the simplicity of the divine essence is emphasized.

In John Schellenberg’s eyes, divine Hiddenness has a special meaning and refers to the lack of empirical evidence to prove the existence of God. In his view, the existence of logical nonbelievers or agnostics is the best evidence of this claim. On this basis, Schellenberg sees the Hiddenness as a contradiction to the absolute love of God and, ultimately, as an evidence for the nonexistence of God. However, the concepts of agnostism and love as the two key points of this argument have different meanings in Henry Carbon's theological system. Paying attention to these meanings and presenting an analytical formulation of it can be an explanation for the divine Hiddenness from a different and original perspective and can be considered as a critique of the argument of divine Hiddenness. According to Carbon, the problems with rational theism include its reduction of the perceptual powers to sensory and intellectual faculties, its disregard for the cognitive role of the imagination faculty, and its elimination of the intermediary imaginal world from the levels of the world. This has caused the human to become agnostic in understanding the unseen (inward) aspect of the universe – i.e., God. Carbon's innovative way to overcome this epistemological crisis is to revive the cognitive position of the imagination faculty and its corresponding world. In this article, an attempt is made to introduce a novel path to knowing God by introducing the manifestation of Islamic mystics’ opinions in the works of Carbon. This way, the adequacy of the efforts of agnostics can be doubted.

Relying on the interpretation and defense of David Lund’s viewpoint, this study examines the strong dualism or the dualism of particulars to prove afterlife. The biggest obstacle in this regard is the concept of causality and the specification of the way the two particular and universal substances interact. Therefore, using philosophical and phenomenological argumentations, we demonstrate that the basis of this interaction is the priority of the subjective matter and the essential, causal, unreducable features of the two substances that have causal access to each other through embodiment. “Self” as a non-physical substance has no essential dependence and reliance on the physical substance of the body; therefore, it can survive after it cuts its causal relationship with it at the time of death. This study focuses merely on showing the logicality, meaningfulness, and occurrence of the foregoing dualism. The findings of the study indicate that no matter if we reduce causality to the natural system or deem it as the causal interaction of uneducable forces and potentials of the two substances, there would be no doubt in its logicality and meaningfulness. Therefore, due to the abstractness of “self” and its causal-causative features, the best explanation for our inevitable and direct insight of our volitional acts is to say that what is seen in this insight is real and the dual causality occurs in practice. If our argumentations are correct, they might be used to prove afterlife.

Relying on his hermeneutic and interpretive perspective, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari regards the Holy Quran as "prophetic words" and the Prophet's monotheistic reading of the world in the light of revelation. In this paper, we have used a library-research method within the descriptive-analytical approach to criticize his interpretive perspective to illustrate the weaknesses of this view so as to indicate the weakness of his theory of the prophetic origin of the Qur'an. In addition to the fact that his interpretive theory leads to the denial of prophethood and Islam, there are also other weaknesses in that theory. These involve ignoring the other meaning of interpretation, not paying attention to all kinds of presuppositions, not paying attention to the degrees of understanding and implications, integrating two perspectives as well as two methods which are incompatible, generalizing the doctrines of the age of modernity and philosophical hermeneutics,  confusion of part and whole, not adhering to one of his foundations, introducing a loose criterion as a criterion for the examination and evaluation of presuppositions, and ignoring the most important use of language.

One of the debated concepts in the Iranian culture is the concept of intellect, which is an expansive yet at times self-contradictory semantic field. This is why poets, scientists, writers, and experts have offered different interpretations of it. In the works that have dealt with intellect, it has sometimes been opposed to religion and sometimes to love, and has somehow failed against both of the above-mentioned concepts. This moved us to examine the contradiction in the attitude to intellect in the light of adherence to the Shari'a based on Sanai's odes. Sanai has sometimes respected intellect but at other times has strongly condemned it. Sanai considers the highest level of intellect as "intellectus adeptus", which is the fourth and highest level of theoretical intellect in which "the soul has achieved all perfections and does not need their actualization." According to Sanai, the intellect is respected if it is in the right direction of Mustafa's Shari'a (i.e. Islam) as a guidance tool; otherwise, it is condemned. Sanai has a dual attitude to reason; he sometimes praises it and at other times condemns it.