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

Human issues cannot be concealed. In this transition, the schools and opinions of philosophers and psychologists have helped humans solve their problems. Dr. Frankl's logotherapy is one of the solutions to human problems. He believed that people’s efforts to find meaning in life would be their most important impetus. In his Masnavi, Molana, a poet and an educated mystic, discussed the meaning of life and logotherapy for the relief of human suffering. This study aims to analyze logotherapy in Masnavi from Molana’s perspective and that of Frankl's theory. We will see that life and its hidden pain, suffering, and death are not empty and baseless. However, we can achieve peace by perceiving their meanings, modeling their concepts, and adapting our lives to natural adversities. Furthermore, love and devotion to God a method of Molana's logotherapy. In addition, religious rituals and their symbolic and secondary concepts as well as their social and psychological functions are among the other mechanisms that he emphasized to give meaning to life. Similarly, Viktor Frankl considered God-centeredness and avoidance of absurdity to be the most important versions of logotherapy.

According to ontological naturalism, the existence of an incorporeal cause for the world is in conflict with science, and basically the world does not need such a cause. According to methodological naturalism, too, scientific method is the most successful method for understanding the structure of the world and the causal relationships governing it. Looking at the issue from the perspective of theoretical philosophy, which does not belong to anything other than the outer world, we find that science has a limited share in the explanation of nature in terms of its method, and if the empirical findings arising from it are not in interaction with the metaphysical foundations of science, then it cannot have decisive theories in the explanation of the world and has nothing to say in the ontological issues. It seems that by considering the link between science and metaphysics, one can use philosophical theology in order to defend the belief in God as a complementary element in the explanation of the world of existence, and the use of science in the realm of ontology is considered unscientific and fallacious. Regarding essentialism in science, Ellis believes realistically that instead of lacking properties, creatures have powers and capacities that make up their essence and inherent properties and make their nature active and full of properties. It can be concluded that naturalism is valuable as a way of understanding material nature, without being in conflict with the transcendental and incorporeal cause. Methodological naturalism does not necessarily correlate with ontological naturalism, and what brings these two closer together is the metaphysical foundations of science, which alone is efficient in theology and the ontological explanation of nature. In sum, new essentialism establishes a connection between the inherent properties and the existence of things, and builds an objective and real foundation on the proof of the metaphysical foundations of science, from which theology can open a way to prove the belief in God.

This paper scrutinizes William Lane Craig’s perspective on the relationship between religion and ethics. According to Craig, knowledge of moral values and obligations is not inherently tied to theism, as he posits that God has embedded moral obligations within the human heart. However, in terms of ontology, Craig contends that theism provides the best explanation for moral realism. Atheistic realists, in avoiding the naturalistic fallacy, are urged to conceptualize moral properties as abstract Platonic entities akin to numbers and propositions, a stance unnecessary within the theistic framework where God, a concrete entity, serves as the supreme good and ultimate source of moral goodness. Critically assessing Craig’s viewpoint, the paper contends that 1) real property should not be conflated with an essential constituent. Drawing on Moore’s perspective, moral predicates are construed as second-order philosophical concepts inherently tied to the existence of subjects. 2) By centering on the existence of “moral evil,” Craig’s argument can be inverted, providing grounds for an argument supporting the existence of Satan. 3) The consequence of Craig’s argument is the negation of any moral obligation for atheists. 4) Positing obedience to God’s command solely for its own sake as irrational, Craig’s argument may potentially exhibit circular reasoning.

The problem of evil has always been a challenge against theism and there has been a lot of disputation about it. What can be considered as a newer challenge to theism is the very problem of divine hiddenness. There are multiple similarities between the two arguments which have caused some thinkers to reduce one to another and to count only one of them as original. It is possible that one of the very concepts of evil or hiddenness be reduced to another one, or one of the arguments that is grounded on them, or the reduction occurs in both phases. Regarding the vastitude of the domain of each problem, what we solely aim at is inspecting the reasons of ones who hold that divine hiddenness is nothing but one articulation of the problem of evil and it is not necessary to be regarded as independent. These reasons range from a sort of resemblance of their logical structure, methodology, conclusion, or responses in order to show that either the problem of divine hiddenness is not independent at all or if it is, it makes a much less severe case against theism in comparison to the problem of evil so it’s not worthy of any concern. What will be eventually concluded is that despite having plentiful available similarities, this kind of reduction is not justified and each problem, regardless of their ability to prove what they claim, is independently precious, inspection-worthy, and original.

While discussions on beauty in the works of philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoreans, and others have been documented, it became a significant epistemological domain from the 18th century onwards. The connection between beauty and its truth has been articulated among Western philosophers as evidence for God's existence. The nature of the aesthetic argument and how it proves the existence of the divine through the beauties of the world is explored by Louis in a manner that the researcher seeks to analyze. Based on this, the writer, through sub-questions and a descriptive-analytical approach, aims to study and examine the dimensions of this issue. The research findings indicate that this argument attempts to prove the existence of God through both epistemic and ontological ways. These methods focus on our ability to recognize beauty or the inherent beauty in existence itself. C.S. Lewis's perspective on beauty is rich and distinctive, illuminating that he considers the longing for beauty a natural inclination connected to a dependency and, by establishing a link between the beauty of nature and the existence of God as the creator of the world, he provides evidence for this argument. Although challenges such as the rejection of natural inclination and the existence of counterexamples for satisfying human desires have been raised against this argument, it remains a novel initiative in the contemporary era. It continues to be a focal point of attention

Religion has different aspects and dimensions including doctrinal, moral, empirical, mythical-narrative, ritual, social, and material ones. Religious experience is one of the dimensions of religion and is a significant religious fact and aspect that has diverse relations with other dimensions of religion. Hence, recognizing the kind of religious experience’s relations with religion’s dimensions has its special significance. So the question of research is what relations can be conceivable between religious experience and the dimensions of religion? To answer such a question, first, we should pay attention to the importance of different tendencies toward religion and religious experiences, that is, our understanding of religious experience defines its relation with religion’s dimensions. Our understanding of religion, also, is significant in determining its essence and diverse aspects or dimensions. In this case, considering two important religious traditions of the world, namely classic monotheism and atheism, we can notice the significance of the Transcendent Being or Sacredness/Divine aspect of religion, and think of some dimensions of religion such as doctrinal, moral, mythical-narrative, empirical, social, ritual or material that each one has its special relation with religious experience, although creedal and ritual ones can be more respectable. In this case, it seems the doctrinal dimension can make or interpret religious experiences, ritual and worshiping dimention shows and manifests its symbolic repeatation. Mythical-narrative one can transfer virtues of religious experiences to the next generations, moral one can make and extend the results of religious experiences, and material one can manifest externally and make the background for the next religious experiences. In the meantime, paying attention to noticeable theories such as essentialism and structuralism about religious experiences, and dividing them into two nouminous and intuitive-theoretical experiences, can make complicated and plural of their relations with some dimensions of religion.

Are the meanings of “chance” and “guidedness” consistent? The goal of this article is toprovide an affirmative answer to this question and thereby defend compatibilism (or accommodationism), which is the position that evolutionary theory and interventionist theism can coexist harmoniously. Compatibilists, such as van Inwagen (2003), Bartholomew (2008), Dowe (2011), Bradley (2012), and Sober (2014) argue that certain components or features of the biosphere exhibit both chancy and divinely guided aspects. What is chance?The concept of chance, in its scientific sense, is closely related to the concept of probability. One can interpret the probabilities used in scientific theories ontologically. If so, by “chance” we mean whatever objective property in the world the term “ontological probability” picks out (Suárez, 2022).[1] The received view suggests that chance and randomness are identical but technically speaking, “chance” describes the process that leads to the production of an outcome, while the term “random” describes the outcome itself.(Von Mises’ definition of randomness): A sequence, such as a sequence of zeroes and ones, is considered random when no successful gambling strategy can be made to predict the next number in the sequence. In other words, a sequence is random if it cannot be exploited by a gambling system for prediction. (Eagle, 2021)Furthermore, “chance” is often used synonymously with “coincidence.” Coincidence refers to the co-occurrence of two independent deterministic chains of events. In this sense, being chancy implies having a cause. Sometimes “chancy” is used synonymously with “accidental.” In this sense, a chance event does not possess a specific purpose. It is important to note that not every coincidence is considered an accident (Dowe, 2011).Genetic mutations serve as quintessential examples of chance events in evolutionary theory, as they do not occur in response to environmental threats or opportunities faced by species. In other words, there is no statistical relationship or correlation between the usefulness to a particular species of a potential mutation and the probability of that mutation occurring.The compatibility of “chance” and “guidedness”The incompatibilist might argue that chance processes cannot be divinely guided because the very meaning of being guided is not compatible with the meaning of being chancy. In response, van Inwagen (2003) points out that 1) the term “chancy” has multiple meanings, such that (2) some of these meanings can coexist with the idea of being guided, and (3) the meaning of “chancy” relevant to evolutionary theory falls within this category. Therefore, the argument just presented is not valid. Van Inwagen believes that the compatibilist perspective favors considering “chance” as coincidence. Being a coincidence requires having a cause, but having a cause does not necessarily imply having a purpose or being divinely guided. The question facing the compatibilist is whether chance is compatible with being divinely guided. Hence, van Inwagen mistakenly conflates having a cause with being guided.However, van Inwagen's approach can be modified. There are meanings of “chance” and “guided” according to which these two concepts can be considered compatible. To illustrate this, let’s consider a chain of events as follows:Mutation 1, the occurrence of feature 1 in species A; mutation 2, the occurrence of feature 2 in species B; mutation 3, the occurrence of feature 3 in species A; mutation 4, the occurrence of feature 4 in species C, and so on.This chain is random in the sense that knowing one part of it does not allow for predictions of the next event with significant probability. Genetic mutations are chance events; there is no statistical correlation between the usefulness of a particular mutation and the probability of its occurrence. If such a correlation existed, probabilistic predictions would be possible. However, it can still be argued that this chain is guided, meaning that its members are deliberately chosen by an intelligent agent. Having a pattern is a property that describes the relationship among the members of the sequence while being deliberately chosen is a property that results from the fact that each member, and consequently the whole sequence, is somehow related to an external entity, say an intelligent agent.Thus, there is no prima facie contradiction in considering a sequence of events to be random and at the same time divinely guided. One might object that although it may not seem contradictory at first, no truly random sequence can be guided. However, it remains unclear what kind of argument could support this claim solely through an analysis of the meanings of “chance” and “guidedness.” One might argue that being random suggests a lack of direction while being guided requires having a specific direction. Alternatively, one might argue that being random implies that attempting to regenerate the same sequence via a chance process would most likely fail, whereas being guided suggests otherwise. While these objections carry weight, they all require an additional premise beyond the mere meanings of “chance” and “guidedness.”One way to understand “chancy” as opposed to “guided” is to define chance within the incompatibilist sense as follows:The incompatibilist meaning of “chancy”: not being intentionally brought about by an intelligent agent, either human or non-human, nor being necessitated by the laws of nature. (van Woudenberg, 2013)In this sense, a chance event cannot be guided. However, it is worth noting that evolutionary theory itself does not make any claims about intentional agency. The defender of the incompatibilist meaning seems to have assumed ontological naturalism, but not methodological naturalism. It is evident that ontological naturalists tend to favor the incompatibilist meaning. Van Inwagen (2013) highlights that methodological naturalism does not necessitate a scientific theory to explicitly deny the existence and effects of supernatural agents. If a methodological naturalist wishes to adopt the incompatibilist meaning, she or he must make an additional argument that goes beyond merely considering the meanings of “chance” and “guidedness”. [1]. For a defense of the existence of chance in the world, see van Inwagen (1995), Sober (2010), Bradley (2012), and Emery (2022).

Atheism is considered a legacy of the new age. Hume is considered the beginning of this legacy. Despite fifty years of atheism tendency, Antony Flew has thrown tremors into the structure of this heritage by raising questions about the suffering of this approach and has spoken about the possibility of God’s being. His questions about doubting the claims of atheism cannot be considered only as violations or fault and the possibility of refutation. The impulse that he proposed by asking about the possibility of God's being based on the foundations of science in the future produced three results. First, creating a fundamental hole in Hume's claims and atheism, secondly, the possibility of re-examining the claims of atheism and re-reading the arguments of atheists and criticizing it and the possibility of unproven of violations and objections, and thirdly, returning to the correct and accurate re-reading of the arguments of the theists in proving the being of an intelligent principle in the creation of the world.The main idea this article is that first the approach and period of Flow’s first intellectual period regarding the impossibility of positive proof of theism is analyzed, then are explained the triple achievements on the theoretical impulses of the heritage of atheism and at the end his main thought in the second intellectual period is analyzed.

Talking about the belief in God and its opposite point, atheism, is one of the essential topics in theology and philosophy. Rejection of monotheistic worldview, negation of faith and surrender to any supernatural object or person, disbelief in the existence of a personal God who plays a role in human existence and life, denial of fixed beliefs and laws and monotheistic dogma or rites and rituals, negation of immortality and utopianism of monotheistic religions and so on, are the common characteristics of atheists. But the question is whether atheists really are honest in their claim of independence and distance from theism in their worldview, beliefs, and actions. With a descriptive-analytical method and by presenting numerous pieces of evidence, this article has challenged the claim that atheism is a totally independent and contradictory idea and is opposed to theism and considered it false. The result of this evidence and reasons is that atheism is a crude, immature, and indefensible idea and, at best, a clumsy, unjustified, and impractical copycat of theism.

Can atheistic explanations scientifically explain the world and humans? Can theistic deductive arguments provide a rational explanation of the world? Many philosophers of contemporary religion believe that deductive arguments for the existence of God are invalid because they are either deductively invalid or based on one or more false or uncertain premises. Hence, they turned to non-analogical arguments about the existence of God. The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate one of these interesting new arguments, the Swinburne inductive argument. This research paper is a library-based theoretical analysis that is done through the concepts, propositions, and arguments. Swinburne claims that humanistic and materialistic explanations cannot explain the world and humans. In contrast, he has three arguments for the existence of the universe, the existence of scientific laws, and the laws of the process of evolution; He uses the existence of God as three affirmative inductive arguments and concludes the accumulation of theism as the best explanation. The result of such arguments is that theism can be the ultimate explanation of the world. It will also be shown that such arguments are less challenging and can greatly increase the likelihood of God's existence.

Divine Conceptualism is a solution to the problem that Platonism poses for theism. This view is put forward by Alvin Plantinga and Greg Welty, two contemporary American philosophers, argues for a Platonic realism about propositions, possible worlds, and mathematical abstract objects; That is, although it considers these abstract objects to exist, it considers them to be concrete and not abstract, and in order to reconcile with theism, it considers these objects as the thoughts of God. Craig, a contemporary American theist philosopher, argues that this view can not be considered a sutible solution; Because it is not acceptable to consider abstracts as mathematical objects as concrete; In addition, conceptualism has difficulty in justifying false propositions. Conceptualism also requires God's attribution to malicious thoughts, and in Welty's interpretation of conceptualism, the challenge of Platonism remains. Examining what has been done, it seems that some of Craig's objections to Welty and Plantinga's view of conceptualism are true. More serious objections of conceptualism can also be introduced into Welty and Plantinga's views. Plantinga and Welty have neglected intuitive(direct) Knowledge and reduced God's knowledge to acquired(indirect) knowledge; For if the knowledge of God is to be regarded intuitively, while at the same time realizing the realities of mathematics, propositions, and possible worlds, these objects are simply present in the existence of God; Not in the sense of separate concepts.

Graham Oppy, a contemporary Australian philosopher, is a naturalistic atheist who denies any supernatural causes. The problem of research is that; What are Oppy's principles in replacing naturalism instead of theism? The findings of the research, which were obtained with the analytical method of evidence, show that Oppy's epistemological, methodological and ontological foundations, based on which he considers naturalism more believable than theism, are not realistic and have fundamental challenges and slippages. In epistemology, his view of a successful argument faces many challenges; in methodology, he relies on the principle of simplicity, but by claiming the simplicity of naturalism against theism, he does not provide adequate answers to the many questions that are raised and does not resolve the theological philosophical problems about it. Ontologically, naturalism is not a substitute for God's supremacy, and the possibility of replacing naturalism with theism is very weak. Also, Oppy does not have a correct explanation of causality and has confused causality with the principle of determinism.

Experimental philosophy is a new approach in analytic philosophy emerging in the last decade. Experimental philosophy emphasizes the intuitions of ordinary people and compares them with philosophers' intuitions to understand and analyze philosophical problems. One important philosophical and theological issue that can be addressed with such an approach is the problem of evil. Since in the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is raised in two logical and evidential forms, the research questionnaires were designed to cover both accounts, although more emphasis was placed on the evidential problem of evil. The statistical population of this research was 100 people from different social groups who did not have special studies in philosophical and theological fields. The findings of this research show that the public's sympathy with the logical account of the problem of evil is more than their sympathy with the evidential one. However, the ratio between the answers and all the questions indicates a significant inconsistency in the folks' understanding of the problem of evil and its relationship with theism.

A leading figure of "new atheism", Sam Harris, maintains that religion and morality are in conflict. He, despite what religious believers generally think, does not take religion to be a basis for morality, instead, he believes that religion devastates morality and the moral system. In order to substantiate this claim, Harris takes two ways. First, based on some surveys, he argues that religious countries witness a moral decline, while atheist countries are morally in an acceptable situation. Accordingly, he seeks to induce by field studies that atheist countries are in a much better position than the theist countries in the moral indicators such as material well-being, respect for women's rights, human rights, etc.. As a result, it is atheism that has made society more moral. Second, by inspecting some religious doctrines, he decides that they are sources of violence and clashes among human beings and, consequently, lead societies toward moral decline. In this article, we examine Harris' claims concerning the relationship between religion and morality, concluding that they suffer from following flaws: not accurately determining the meaning of theism and atheism, misunderstanding about moarality and values, not paying attention to various indicators in human moral life, taking a weak scientific approach in evaluating the moral indicators of theist and atheist countries, not paying attention to the crimes of atheists throughout history, and having a superficial and false understanding of religious teachings.

Explanatory defense of theism is a method based on "inference to the best explanation", and probability that Swinburne defends. In this method, monotheistic theism, as a hypothesis, competes with other competing hypotheses, such as materialism, humanism, and non-monotheistic theism. This competition is in the form of inference to the best. In this article, we examine Swinburne's method by stating the main elements of his view. We have come to the conclusion that Swinburne's quantitate method in defense of theism, the use of challengeable premises, and non-adjutancy of causal explanation are among the most important challenges to which his view is faced.

According to materialist neo-Darwinists, life and all things related to it are merely the results of the operation of material laws, and no immaterial or transcendental factor has been involved. Therefore, in order to provide a comprehensive and ultimate explanation of living things, it is enough to know the material laws and reduce everything to these laws. Thomas Nagel, a prominent philosopher of the mind and one of the opponents of materialism, argued that the existence of life from inanimate matter was improbable, that physical laws are not self-sufficiency, that consciousness existed and that it could not be reduced to physical matters, and then natural selection theory can not explain reason. But he also critiques materialist neo-Darwinism. But it also criticizes the theistic view, arguing that it firstly creates a dilemma and explanatory gap between the mental and the physical, and secondly that it does not, as the materialists’ view, bring the explanation to an end. In contrast, he proposes the theory of panpsychism for the constitutive aspect of his view and natural teleology for its historical aspect. The purpose of this analytical-critical article is, firstly, to critique materialist neo-Darwinism using Nagel's critical views, and secondly, to argue that, based on the principle of inference of the best explanation, theism in A comparison with Nagel's materialism and the panpsychistic hypothesis is a more plausible explanation.

Contemporary Platonists acknowledge that some abstract objects, such as mathematical objects, exist necessarily, eternally and independent. On the other hand, biblical theism and classical theism acknowledge that God is the sole ultimate reality. This is the challenge that Platonism has posed to the theology of the Scriptures and classical theology, as a result of which God is not the only independent, necessary, and uncreated reality. William Craig, a contemporary American theist philosopher, believes that theism is undone by Platonism. Thus a theist cannot hold a Platonic realist view of abstract objects; And believes that abstract objects exist and are also uncreated, necessary and eternal. Craig believes that believing in beings with these qualities is incompatible with God's perfection, and the doctrine of creation. Craig cites some biblical verses to prove his view of the incompatibility of Heavyweight Platonism with traditional Christian theism. He believes that by moving from a realistic to an  Anti-realistic view of abstract objects, the above challenge will be solved. Craig's arguments do not seem to be defensible in view of wisdom rudiments   in the science of Asul (the science of principles) And the use and generalizations of the creation from the verses cited by him is not correct. In the end, Craig's main claim of passing from the Platonic realism to the view of anti-realism seems perfectly justified, although his method does not seem correct.

Since the beginning of his life, man has been looking for a reason for the origin of existence, and this issue has provided the basis for discussion among thinkers. Antony Flew is one of the thinkers who, based on evidentialism and following the analysis of religious worldview, first turns to atheism and then to deism. According to his approach, Flew sought scientific and experimental evidence for his beliefs, which by resorting to this approach and its arrangement in the form of teleological argument, finally leads to deism that the analysis of these evidences is the subject of this article. As a result, it will become clear that these scientific and empirical reasons can be useful evidence for deism to some extent, but the nature of science is the lack of stability, and transformation, which is considered an important weakness for epistemological matters. Also, although Flew does not go beyond deism by appealing to them, he refers to God's intervention in nature after creation, which indicates the lack of sufficient coherence of his thought after the change of belief. Finally, it should be said that considering his deism, his belief in practice is not much different from his atheism.

Gratuitous evil is an instance of evil that an omniscient and omnipotent being could prevent it without thereby losing some greater good or creating some equal or greater evil. William Rowe believes that the existence of gratuitous evil is a serious threat to theism. Peterson argued that the two are compatible by use of free will. According to Hesker, Patterson's strategy on gratuitous evil is not effective. Hasker's answer falls into the category of compatibilist answers, but his view indicates an important difference, i.e. theism and the existence of gratuitous evil are not only compatible, but also the existence of gratuitous evil is necessary to believe in God with all the main divine attributes. Hasker uses the concept of "significant morality". In his opinion, in order for human choices to be morally significant, morality must not be undermined. According to Hasker, this answer_ unlike the libertarianism respond_ is useful when one encounters gratuitous natural evil, because there are many moral virtues that can be realized in the face of natural suffering and Goods such as awareness, foresight, courage, caution, cooperation, etc. In this article, we examine Hasker's argument and some of the criticism that follows it.