فصلنامه فلسفه دین
سال نوزدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 57، زمستان 1401)

In an effort to investigate the nature of faith, Robert Audi, the famous contemporary philosopher, discusses various types of faith that are internally interrelated and whose common component is the entailment of cognitive propositions. In addition to accepting the various types of faith, he sets the propositional, attitudinal, and universal faith as the basis and takes faith as a positive attitude to the truthfulness of religious propositions that is accompanied by the tendency to believe in the propositions, one that brings about action. Moreover, he puts emphasis on the non-doxastic propositional faith in which faith is not necessarily belief, but rather, it is only the potential for belief and in fact is a type of trust in religious propositions. For Audi, faith – with all of its components – agrees with his intended rationality. In his epistemic system, faith has a very important role in the justification of religious beliefs. In fact, religious obligations – such as belief, faith, and act – justify belief in God if they are rational. The present study analyzes the nature of faith from the viewpoint of Audi; examines its relationship with belief, rationality, and action; and finally evaluates it. Audi’s view to the nature of faith faces some problems, especially the non-doxastic propositional faith to which he attaches great importance and by which he justifies to a great deal the religious belief, such that it be not confirmed by the divine religions and believers in a religion, though it is a way to consider people whose views are not at the belief level as faithful.

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.

Knowledge of the quiddity and origin of religious disagreements is highly effective on our theoretical and practical stance to the religious diversity question. However, as confessed by the formal sources of religion history, the question of religious origin and – consequently – religious disagreement goes back to pre-historic era and is beyond human thought. Nonetheless, the adoption of author-oriented realism to the noble Qur’ān can help attain recurrent and realistic reports about the first religious disagreements. Thus, this study set out to explore ontologically the first religious disagreements and the factors effective on their creation through a descriptive-analytical method in order to answer the question about the quiddity of religious disagreements that lead to religious multicity and then plurality as well as to determine their reason/origin. Based on the findings of this study, the reality of religious diversity is “religious disunity,” and the most important non-epistemic source of religious division is “social rebellion” that is based on individual non-epistemic factors such as corruption and tyranny (oppression), envy and supremacy-seeking (magnanimity) and whose epistemic factors are provided by the members of an influential and powerful group in the society. They do this in the form of pseudo-rational justifications derived from jaḥd (denial after knowledge) and shakākiyyat (doubt after knowledge) toward the epistemic principles of religion via the trick “distorting the criteria of rationality and knowledge.” This widespread ignorance is done against the divine will, rule, and satisfaction, but under God’s knowledge, destiny, and providence. The analysis of the foregoing perception is the presentation of theories about the truthfulness and saving capability of religions that – according to the recurrent realities of history – regard the gradation levels of the divine religion, is aligned with the intermediate position, and prescribes a dynamic and perfect religiosity.

So far, various cases of near-death experiences have been reported by different people around the world. In addition to examining the reasons given in by the proponents and opponents of these experiences, this article proves that one cannot deem all these experiences as valid or invalid. Rather, various near-death experiences should be differentiated: (a) some experiences for which no natural explanation exists are valid; (b) some cases that are against rational and religious teachings are invalid; and (c) no decisive stance can be taken about some others; rather, one can deem the accuracy of these experiences as possible. Another important point is that the acceptance of the validity of some of these experiences does not mean that the experiencers have really entered the intermediary world and returned from it. Rather, their accuracy means that these experiences do not originate from mind and hallucination, but rather God has decided that the soul of some humans experiencing the near-death experiences get separated from their bodies so that those individuals can see parts of the realities related to the afterlife. This way, these experiences turn into a reminder of the afterlife for the experiencers and others.

The question examined in this article is one of the most important issues in the contemporary philosophy of religion: If the sentences and propositions used in the scriptures of religions and denominations have the same meaning of the common language or entail a specific, novel meaning.  With the advent of positivistic thought in the modern era, a new perception appeared in this regard, which came to be known as the meaninglessness of religion language. Richard Swinburne is a contemporary religion philosopher who believes that the meanings of theological propositions are the same as common language. In addition to criticizing the positivist view, Swinburne bases his view on logical coherence. In this article, we examine and criticize Swinburne’s logical coherence theory. Our results show that the discussion on the meaningfulness/meaninglessness of the religion language – especially from a positivistic view – revolves around understanding/lack of understanding rather than logical coherence. In other words, in the positivistic view, the claim is that we cannot have a true understanding of the content of religious propositions, and without understanding, we cannot discuss coherence. Of course, we do not intend to defend the positivist approach here, but rather we maintain that the meaninglessness theory cannot be responded via the logical coherence theory.

The concept of the vision of sublime God according to the verses of the noble Qur’ān is one of the main discussions among Islamic theologists. However, the purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which Islamic philosophers have analyzed this issue in the light of their religious background. Although Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna and Suhrawardi have pointed out the possibility of attaining knowledge of God and having a relationship with Him, they have not given in a distinctive theory about the vision of God. Of course, based on the principles of Islamic philosophy proposed by philosophers such as Farabi and Avicenna, the term “vision” cannot refer to the sensory vision as it is in the material issues; rather, it means a level of intuitive knowledge. However, examining the varied and dispersed opinions of Islamic philosophers such as Suhrawardi and especially Mulla Sadra, it can be inferred that the in his perfection path as well as his move in quality and quantity, the human achieves a station in which he can observe God via his heart. The reason is that the perfected soul will have a perfected representation over reason via the light of heart. This makes it ready to attain levels higher than the pure reason. Thus, vision by heart is a type of knowledge about God and connection with Him. Of course, the conduction of vision via heart means that this type of knowledge and perception is intuitive and immaterial, available for those who have attained the station of Servantship. Therefore, based on some qur’anic verses, reason gets help from heart to enter a station beyond the pure reason station. Of course, everyone can achieve a station of knowledge and perception about God based on his own existential capacity. In fact, the human soul should go through certain stages based on his substantial movement, and in this path, it should perfect its theoretical and practical reason so that after removing the veils, it can finally observe God via intuition and vision by heart, though to the extent of his existential and immaterial capacity.