Essays in Philosophy of Religion (Jostarhaye Falsafeh Din)

Abstract Today Christian theology, more than ever, is dealt with the problem of the existence and knowledge of God and especially the relation between God's knowledge and His Will, on the one hand, and human Will, on the other hand. In the contemporary era, with the advent of new philosophical beliefs in the West, Christian theology has experienced different philosophical approaches of which theistic or classical theology, neo-classical theism and Open theism can be considered as three most prominent among them. Each of the three philosophical-theological schools, have tried to present an image of God and respond to the many traditional or new questions concerning God and his relationship with the universe, especially with the human and his will. In this article, we will attempt to provide a general picture of the three approaches and analyze their flaws and criticisms, especially the criticisms raised by Christian philosophers.

Abstract This paper is a critical study on Armanshahr; based on Mortaza Motahari’s Views, a recently published book. Armanshahr in Persian means utopia. Dedicating to Motahari’s Islamic views on Utopia (Armanshahr), this book extracts and analyzes the outlines of Motahari’s views on Islamic Utopia. Before the critical study, we first have a descriptive review on this book. And, in critical phase, we have two steps. The first step studies and criticizes some statements of Armanshahr. In the second step we will evaluate the statements of Armanshahr that although the writer is right in expressing them, they have significant alternatives and rivals in Motahari’s views which the writer have not considered them.
After these two critical phases that concern the writer’s reading of Armanshahr, we have another critical discussion about the very Motahari’s views. In this final discussion, we have a critical study on Motahari’s understanding of Utopia in Islamic texts and heritage.

Abstract Pascal’s Wager is one of the arguments which is used to defend the rationality of ‘God exists’ proposition. One of the most important objections to Pascal’s Wager is called The Many Gods Objection (MGO). In this paper, we, firstly, present one of the most common versions of Pascal’s Wager, ‘Argument from Dominating Expected Utility’, and then we will introduce two versions of MGO. The first version is called the possibilist version and the second the actualist. Actualist version has itself three versions which come sequentially such that the second version of the actualist version is a result of an objection to the first version and the third version is a result of an objection to the second version. As a response to the possibilist version we will present Jeff Jordan’s response. The main idea of this response is that logical possibility does not imply an assignment of positive probability. For the actualist version, we present two responses. The first response is based on the denial of a proposition which is supposed to be true by actualist version. In the second response the main purpose of Pascal’s Wage is asserted.

Abstract Mirza Mehdy Isfahani in the area of Mashhad was the founder of a school that later became known as the School of Tafkik (Separation). Mohammad Reza Hakimi coined the title ‘Tafkik’ to indicate this intellectual school. For him, this school is a worldview that distinguishes human knowledge such as philosophy and its associated concepts from pure knowledge which flow from Quran and Prophet’s tradition.  Thus the proponents of this movement are strongly against using reason in its philosophical meaning to explain and defend the doctrines of religion.   

Abstract William Wainwright believes that mystical experience has the same structure as sense experience and thus tries to prove the cognitive validity of this experience based on the similarity between the two experiences and the principle of credulity. This kind of argument can also be found in different expressions in the works of philosophers such as Swinburne and Alston. However, it seems that neither one is not able to argue for the cognitivity of mystical experience based on the similarity between the two experiences, nor it can be defended certainly as being cognitive. While they do have some similarities, there are considerable differences between mystical experience and sense experience which makes their comparison more difficult. Furthermore, since credulity principle is not regarded as a definite principle in religious epistemology, the use of this principle to prove the cognitivity of mystical experience could be a drawback of the argument.

Abstract Meaning of life is an important topic in philosophy, ethics, biological philosophy, philosophy of religion sand psychology. Although this topic is new and appeared after Modernism, it has a long history in theistic religions and is associated with the issue of human being, his life and the world have an ultimate end and this world is the best world. The ‘meaningful’ is a central concept in the ‘meaning of life’ discussion, and includes many cognitional, tendentious and functional aspects. These aspects are interwoven,  and meaningfulness or un-meaningfulness depends on them. Each aspect has some superabundant, visible and invisible results. Some of cognitional, tendentious and functional signs and outputs of meaningful life are: proper justification of evils and hardships, hope, self esteem, amenability, optimism, tranquility.