جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه "کلارک" در نشریات گروه "فلسفه و کلام"

Deism is a philosophical and theological view of God, man, and religion. This article is an attempt to conceptually analyze deism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through etymology and analytical- descriptive method and seeks to provide a general classification of deism using the Clark classification. The encyclopedic definition of deism is ambiguous and the etymological dictionaries show that in the transformation of the word Deus to Deism, the etymological nuances of this word have not been taken into consideration. In contrast, with Clark's typology, one can better understand the distinction of deism from theism and the different forms of this thinking. Clarke's fourfold classification, as the first comprehensive account of deism, claims that from the first to the fourth type of deism, the affinity and similarity to Christianity gradually increases from the minimum to the maximum. The first type denies the providence of God, while believing in His unity, creation, and knowledge. The second type, while believing in the propositions of the first type of deism, considers physical laws as divine providence, but denies the inclusion of providence over moral laws. According to the third type, God’s all-governing providence is related to the moral perfections of God, and God governs this world with the attributes of justice, goodness and righteousness. The fourth type, in addition to the above teachings, also accepts the immortality and doctrine of reward and punishment. According to Clark, all the four (modern) types of deists do not believe in any Christian revelation. The concept and belief in divine revelation is one of the main difference between deism and revealed religions.

The present paper tries to analyze the concept of belief and acceptance while considering the views of Van Fraassen, Cohen, Alston and Clarke. Fraassen, trying to explore scientific theories, has distinguished between belief and acceptance and believed that acceptance means adequacy and belief includes personal probability. Cohen, on the other side, interpreted the belief with the expression of inclination for the truth of the proposition and held that acceptance means assertion (to assert applying the predicate of a proposition for the subject). Alston, affirmed that belief is tied up with certainty and it differs from acceptance. He has explained the relation of these two notions with faith in his works. The author has explained the views of Alston as well. Meanwhile Clarke emphasized on voluntariness of acceptance and held that belief is not voluntary and it comes in degrees. As a conclusion the author compared the views and has held that the belief has with it some features as following: it is a kind of attitude of the knowing subject toward propositions and also things (propositional attitude); it is always considering the truth; it does not come with probability; it is not directly voluntary; and finally there is difference between the beliefs based on senses and the beliefs based on other belief making sources.

The method of the research is descriptive and rational analysis and comparing opinions about Belief. 

Results and Conclusion

The author of the survey concludes the features and indicators of belief as follow: 1- it is an approach from the area of knower in relation to the theorem. 2- it is always truth conductivity 3- not compatible with probability 4- not directly voluntary 5- there is a difference between beliefs based on the sences and beliefs based on othe sources