⬜⬛
A Jewish Qur’an: An Eighteenth-Century Hebrew Qur’an Translation in Its Indian Context
By Alexander Van der Haven, University of Bergen
This essay places the Washington Library of Congress Heb. Ms 183, a Hebrew Qur’an translation from eighteenth-century Cochin, in its South Indian context. After pointing out important general differences between early modern European and South Asian inter-religious cultures and attitudes to translation, this essay analyzes three salient differences between Ms 183 and its Dutch source. Then, the essay scrutinizes three relevant and interrelated contexts: the eighteenth-century Indian diplomatic culture of owning and exchanging scriptural translations; the social position of Muslims and Jews as ‘guests’ and diplomatic brokers; and the rise of Muslim military power in Malabar. On this basis, I argue that this Hebrew Qur’an translation was intended to be cultural–diplomatic capital for Jewish diplomats dealing with Muslim rulers, indicating that not only rulers translated the scriptures of their subjects but also subjects those of their rulers. In addition, by showing how the Mysorean rulers implemented Islamic reforms and how Jewish practices were attuned to majoritarian religious practices, the essay suggests that Ms 183 was also meant to serve Jewish religious purposes, making this manuscript possibly a rare instance of using non-Jewish religious scriptures for Jewish religious practice.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14111368
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Quran #History #Judaism
⬜⬛
Note on the Negative Approach of al-Shahīd al-Thānī Towards Logic in al-Iqtiṣād wa al-Irshād
By Mahmood Zeraatpisheh, University of Birjand
Aversion towards logic is a characteristic feature of the Islamic traditionalists. There is in fact a history of opposition to logic in Islam. As any other areas of history, here also the correct picture will not be achieved unless all of the pieces are put together. In what follows, I am going to shed light on a chapter written by Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 966/1558), the Twelver Shīʿī Scholar better known as al-Shahīd al-Thānī. The chapter not only shows al-Shahīd al-Thānī’s negative stance towards logic, but also is important because it is a part of less studied Shīʿite traditionalists’ tendencies towards logic; those who are considered as the most influential figures in Iranian seminaries from the Safavid period up until today.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2022.2143219
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Logic #Philosophy #History #ArabicLogic
⬜⬛
Burhān al-dīn Nasafī as the Author of Al-Manṭiq al-kabīr (MS Aḥmad iii, no. 3401
By Asadollah Fallahi, Iranian Institute of Philosophy
Recently, in ‘An inquiry on Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī’s authorship of Al-manṭiq al-kabιr (MS Aḥmad iii, no. 3401)’, we refuted the quite common view among historians of Arabic logic as to attribute Al-manṭiq al-kabιr (Major [book on] logic) to Fakhr al-dīn Rāzī; however, in that paper, we could not identify the real author of the book. In this paper, we try to show that Al-manṭiq al-kabιr was written by Burhān al-dīn Nasafī (1203–1288), who authored another book, Sharḥ Asās al-kiyāsa whose logical part is very similar to Al-manṭiq al-kabιr in the following significant features: the titles of chapters and sections, the style of writing, some technical as well as some non-technical terms, many sentences word by word. None of these features we find in any other Arabic logical work. So, Al-manṭiq al-kabιr and Sharḥ Asās al-kiyāsa are so close to each other that we might most possibly identify the authors of the books as the same scholar, i.e. Burhān al-dīn Nasafī. Fortunately, this has been verified recently by two manuscripts of a medieval Arabic logical book.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2022.2162320
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Logic #Philosophy #History #ArabicLogic
⬜⬛
The Divinity of Jesus and Ibn ʿArabī: A Study Based on Jesus’s Chapter in Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam
By Javad Fakhkhar Toosi, University of Toronto
The most impressive Muslim mystic, Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), devotes a chapter in his book Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam to Jesus. He emphasizes the divinity of Jesus and offers a distinctive viewpoint. In addition to two different expressions regarding Jesus’s divinity, by which some deny this divinity and some affirm it, similar to the Bible’s differences, he specifically focuses on the duality of reality (taḥqīq) and illusion (tawahhum) in relation to Jesus. Accordingly, Ibn ʿArabī views the divinity of Jesus as related to his aspect of reality (the identity that emerged in his human form) and regards the denial of his divinity as related to his aspect of illusion (his human form). This research investigates Ibn ʿArabī’s views on the divinity of Jesus. It adds that the evidence confirming Jesus’s divinity is not based on the general theory of the unity of being but instead points directly to Jesus’s divinity. The epistemological position of Ibn ʿArabī toward the theory of the “indwelling (ḥulūl) of God in Jesus” is discussed in light of his significant phrases.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14111346
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #IbnArabi #Jesus #Mysticism #Theology
⬜⬛
Poetry and the Qurʾan: The Use of tashbīh Particles in Classical Arabic Texts
By Ali Ahmad Hussein, University of Haifa
This study examines the use of five tashbīh (simile) particles which appear in close frequency in pre-and early Islamic poetry and in the Qurʾan. The particles are ka-(as), ka-mā (such as), mithl (like), and derivatives of the roots ḥsb (deem) and shbh (looks like, similar to). As well as understanding classical Arabic techniques for composition of similes, the study examines aspects of the interrelationship between the Qurʾan and the poetry corpus, the single surviving Arabic text to which the scripture was exposed. It finds greater common structural and lexical similarities between poetry and the Qurʾan in its earlier period (during the Meccan Revelation, 610–622 CE) than later, following the migration of Prophet Muḥammad to Medina (622–632 CE), when other ways of using these particles developed. This suggests surveying these techniques in other texts possibly known to Medinian society, such as the Bible. The present study outlines the premise that qurʾanic composition moved from the influence of the Arabic prototype seen in the poetry in the earliest periods of Revelation to a different form in later periods (texts, possibly biblical). This premise can be further explored by future examination of the interrelationship between the Qurʾan, pre- and early Islamic poetry and the Bible.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101326
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Quran #History
⬜⬛
Tracing the Tracts of Qaṣaṣ: Towards a Theory of Narrative Pedagogy in Islamic Education
By Muhammad Fawwaz Bin Muhammad Yusoff, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia
The concept of narrative holds a pivotal position in the Qurʾān, yet it has been subject to inadequate scrutiny and insufficient representation in pedagogical discourse concerning Islamic education. The present work endeavours to rectify this gap in knowledge by employing the technique of constructivist grounded theory to the Qurʾān and major exegeses, with a particular focus on the term qaṣaṣ, which pertains to the notion of narrative. This article delves into the profound tracts and maqāṣid (objectives) that qaṣaṣ hold in the Qurʾān and contemplates their exhortation for education on Islam and modern pedagogy. The analysis reveals that the qaṣaṣ present in the Qurʾān serves as a fundamental framework that directs the essence of the narrative pedagogy model of teaching and learning between the pedagogue and learner. Through typological figuration, the listener’s contemplation leads to a re-evaluation of conventional notions surrounding the dynamics between teacher and student and the dissemination of narrative within a pedagogical setting. The triad of truth, beauty and explication are fundamental pillars within this Islamic framework for narrative pedagogy, representing the essence of the human condition concerning education. Because these domains emerge from the concept of qaṣaṣ, the integration of the framework into Islamic education is a matter of utmost importance, given its centrality in the Qurʾān to foster and perfect the principles of Muslims and their sense of self.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101299
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Quran #Pedagogy
⬜⬛
THE QURʾĀN AND SCIENCE, PART II: SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATIONS FROM NORTH AFRICA TO CHINA, BENGAL, AND THE MALAY-INDONESIAN WORLD
By Majid Daneshgar, University of Freiburg
The second installment in a three-part series on the Qurʾān and science, this article provides a systematic discussion of the scientific interpretation of the Qurʾān both inside and outside the Muslim world. This discussion reveals how Muslims’ interactions with Euro-Americans have kept discourse on the Qurʾān and science alive. It also demonstrates how Muslims promoted this exegetical genre transregionally from the Middle East to Southeast Asia.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12932
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Quran #Science #History
⬜⬛
Secularism as Theopolitics: Jalāl ud-Dīn Akbar and the Theological Underpinnings of the State in South Asia
By Justin Smolin, The University of Chicago
Carl Schmitt’s well-known declaration that “all significant” modern political concepts are “secularized theological concepts” has sometimes been treated as hyperbole: a metaphorical axe aimed at the frozen sea of legal positivism, a provocation rather than a thesis. In this article, I demonstrate the fecundity of this thesis by applying it to secularism, a concept undeniably central to the Liberal state; crucially, however, I do so in the context of early modern South Asian history and ongoing debates over the secularism of premodern Mughal polity. As I argue, Jalāl ud-Dīn Akbar (1542–1605 CE) – a monarch of the Mughal dynasty often cast by South Asian secularists as a precocious emblem of the neutral state – was, in fact, an ideal type of Schmittian sovereign, who nonetheless stands equidistant from both Schmitt and his Liberal opponents in his stance toward religious pluralism. The theological correlate to Akbar’s “secularism” was an Islamicate theology of religions, which provided a contentful religious justification for religious pluralism, very different from contemporary “post-metaphysical” arguments. The final section of the article takes a critical turn, as I examine Akbar’s legendary reputation in the present, my intervention into his “secular” mythos, and the special difficulties involved in applying Schmittian concepts to an early modern, non-Western sacred king.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2022-0232
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #History #Secularism #Politics
⬜⬛
Exploring Islamic Spiritual Care: What Is in a Name?
By Naveed Baig, University of Oslo; Nazila Isgandarova, University of Toronto
At present, there is limited theoretical clarity on the nature of Islamic spiritual care, which is a developing discipline around the world. How it is defined will be instrumental for spiritual care institutions, professionals and recipients of spiritual care in the years to come. This article wishes to understand and explore the idea and vision behind Islamic spiritual care and why this line of investigation may be of importance to care providers with different faith backgrounds.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101256
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Spirituality #Psychology
⬜⬛
The Echoes of a Dispute Over the Inimitability of the Qur’an in Ms Riccardiano 217 (Florence)
By Sara Fani, Università di Bologna
The paper focuses on a short text copied in the thirteenth-century manuscript Ricc. 217, preserved in Biblioteca Riccardiana (Florence), known by the title Fragmentum disputationis de Alcorani eloquentia inter Muslimum et Christianum. It is a brief Christian polemical argumentation over the eloquence of the Qur’anic language and the Islamic dogma of the inimitability of the Qur’an (iʿjāz) in which the Dominican missionary Ramon Martì is named. Some historical, linguistic, codicological, and philological aspects will be taken into account to contribute to the discussion related to the possible genesis of this text, and the authorship of the Vocabulista in Arabico, the famous Arabic – Latin/Mozarabic lexicon preserved in the same codex. The short text of the Fragmentum is examined with a particular focus on its Qur’anic quotations, which are put in relation with other echoes of the similar disputes between Christians and Muslims and reported in different sources.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0544
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Quran #Islam #History
⬜⬛
The role of religion in adolescent mental health: faith as a moderator of the relationship between distrust and depression
By Dimitris I. Tsomokos, University of Glasgow; Robin I. M. Dunbar, University of Oxford
It has recently been shown that interpersonal distrust predicts depressive symptoms in middle adolescence, and this finding has been interpreted in light of Social Safety Theory, which views distrust as an index of social threat. Here we hypothesize that religiousness provides social safety and may counteract the sense of social threat indexed by distrust. Religiousness should therefore act as a moderator between interpersonal distrust and depression. Using a nationally representative birth cohort from the UK, we provide evidence in favor of this hypothesis, even after controlling for stratum disadvantage and socioeconomic characteristics, sex, ethnicity, and multiple confounders on the level of the individual (BMI, chronic illness, cognitive ability, risk-taking, experiencing bullying, dietary habits, chronotype, physical activity and screen time), family context (frequency of eating meals together, maternal mental health), and neighborhood ecology (NO2 levels of air pollution).
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2023.2248230
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Psychology #Religion #Sociology
⬜⬛
Rūmī’s Asceticism Explored: A Comparative Glimpse into Meister Eckhart’s Thought
By Rasoul Rahbari Ghazani and Saliha Uysal, Istanbul University
This paper examines the nature of “asceticism” (rīyāḍat) in Sufism, revolving around the works of the 13th century Persian Sufi Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī Balkī and exploring two critical inquiries: Firstly, it seeks to determine whether Rūmī’s mystical perspective on asceticism is world-rejecting or world-affirming. Secondly, it investigates potential parallels and divergences between Rūmī and Meister Eckhart’s stances—specifically, through the Dominican’s Sermons and Treatises—and assesses the implications for the two figures. In examining Rūmī’s works, the current research primarily relies on secondary sources within the Persian intellectual tradition to provide an intracultural context. Utilizing horizontal and vertical interpretations, this study examines critical themes in Rūmī’s works, such as love, detachment (zuhd), the world’s deceptive nature, and seclusion. The findings reveal that Rūmī’s asceticism is not “monastic” (ruhbānī); instead, it balances moderate abstinence and worldly engagement, underpinned by the Quran and the ḥadīth teachings. Rūmī and Eckhart underscore asceticism as an inner transformation rather than mere physical austerity, emphasizing inner purification, self-transcendence, and spiritual detachment as routes to divine unity. The two thinkers’ teachings are catalysts for profound personal transformation and a more fulfilling life in today’s world.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101254
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Sufism #Mysticism #Rumi #Islam
⬜⬛
Debunking Divine Command Theory
By Hans Van Eyghen, Tilburg University
The divine command theory holds that morality finds its origin in God or that God is somehow closely connected to morality. Many people across the world hold a related, though different belief that Religious belief is required for proper moral behavior. In this paper, I look at a number of evolutionary and cognitive explanations (supernatural punishment theory, big gods theory, moral dyad, and costly signaling) that purport to explain why people hold beliefs concerning a close connection between God and morality. I assess whether any of these theories provide a reason for epistemic concern.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101252
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #DCT #CSR #God #Religion
⬜⬛
Advancing Evolutionary Science in Dialogue with Islam
By S. Joshua Swamidass, Washington University
Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm by Shoaib Ahmed Malik is a significant contribution to religious studies, likely to shape scientific dialogues with Islam for some time to come. Malik takes a theology-centric approach, concluding that faithful exegesis requires that Adam and Eve are (1) genealogical ancestors of us all, and (2) were created de novo, without their parents. Key scientific developments show these two affirmations are consistent with evolution. In doing this, Malik's work shows how evolutionary science can be advanced in the Muslim world.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255949
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Creationism #Evolution #Science
⬜⬛
Improvable Creations
By Peter Van Inwagen, University of Notre Dame
God must create the best. But there is no best. Therefore, there is no God. Various philosophers—among them Stephen Grover and William Rowe—have endorsed more elaborate versions of this argument. Dean Zimmerman (in “Resisting Rowe’s No-Best-World Argument for Atheism”) has subjected their defenses of the argument to careful scrutiny—scrutiny that was in fact so careful that there remains very little to say about the argument. This essay contains my attempt to supply that very little.
Link: https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v8i2.78723
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Religion #Metaphysics #Atheism #God
⬜⬛
Mullā Ṣadrā on Intellectual Universal
By Mohammad Hosseinzadeh, Iranian Institute of Philosophy (IRIP)
Following Avicenna, many Muslim philosophers and logicians have identified ‘intellectual universal’ (kullī ʿaqlī) with the very mental concept dependent on the mind. Apart from the controversies about Platonic Forms, they argue that they cannot be the very universals in logic. Accordingly, Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentators have interpreted their view on intellectual universal in the Avicennian framework. In this interpretation, Mullā Ṣadrā has embraced Avicenna’s explanation about mind-dependent universal concepts; however, he has modified some details of the issue as per his theory of the primacy of existence and Plato’s theory of Forms. Having explained Sabzawārī and Ṭabāṭabā'ī’s interpretation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s view in his article, the author goes to propose a different interpretation according to which intellectual universals are identical with Platonic Forms, rather than the mind-dependent universal concepts. This Platonic interpretation is supported by three sets of evidences from Mullā Ṣadrā’s own texts. It also shows how Mullā Ṣadrā has answered Avicenna’s objection about the use of Platonic universal in logic.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2022.2046453
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Logic #Philosophy #History #ArabicLogic #MullaSadra
⬜⬛
Forms of Carroll’s Paradox in Post-Classical Arabic Logic
By Dustin D. Klinger, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Arabic logicians in the thirteenth century discussed a set of arguments raised by the theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) that in some respects closely resembles Carroll’s paradox. Roughly, the paradox states that we can never reach a conclusion from a set of premises without incurring an infinite regress. The present article presents and discusses Rāzī’s formulation of the problem with syllogistic deduction, his own solutions to the problem, and the contributions of Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī (d. 1248) and Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī (d. 1276). It is argued that the proposed solutions developed by these authors are best understood as tending in the direction of Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2022.2162781
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Logic #Philosophy #History #ArabicLogic #Razi
⬜⬛
Dashtakī's Solution to the Liar Paradox: A Synthesis of the Earlier Solutions Proposed by Ṭūsī and Samarqandī
By Mohammad Saleh Zarepour, The University of Manchester
Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498) has proposed a solution to the liar paradox according to which the liar sentence is a self-referential sentence in which the predicate ‘false’ is iterated. Discussing the conditions for the truth-aptness of the sentences with nested and iterated instances of the predicates ‘true’ and/or ‘false’, Dashtakī argued that the liar sentence is not truth-apt at all. In the tradition of Arabic logic, the central elements of Dashtakī's solution—the self-referentiality of the liar sentence and the implicit iteration of the predicate ‘false’—were initially highlighted in two earlier solutions proposed by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274) and Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 1322), respectively. Here I investigate all three solutions and show that Dashtakī's solution can be taken as a synthesis of the other two. None of these solutions seems to be convincing at the end of the day. Nevertheless, all of them include significant logical and philosophical insights. In particular, although Dashtakī's solution is not itself compelling, it is only a few steps away from a promising solution. The appendix to this paper includes translations of the relevant passages.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2023.2210918
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Logic #Philosophy #History #ArabicLogic
⬜⬛
What Should They Do? Depictions of Ribāṭ and Murābiṭūn in Early Islamic Ifrīqiya
By Antonia Sigrid Bosanquet, Utrecht University
What was ribāṭ in early Islamic Ifrīqiya and what was its primary function? The answer often differs depending on the sources that are used, and whether they focus on the building or the institution more generally. Rather than approaching the question through either of these aspects, this study will consider the expectations, reflected in textual sources, about the behavior of the murābiṭūn, or the men who inhabited them. Analyzing expectations about the character of the murābiṭūn and the activities carried out in the ribāṭ offers an insight into how the writer of the text viewed the institution, including its function and significance in early Islamic society. By comparing the expectations reflected in various texts, it is also possible to recognize different views of the ribāṭ building and institution and to relate these to the historical context or the perspective of the writer. The analysis in this study will focus on the ribāṭ in the Ifrīqiyan tradition but will relate some of the developments to the significance of the institution in the wider Islamic Empire and its intellectual tradition.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14111340
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #History #Tradition
⬜⬛
Defending ‘Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm': Abrahamic Dialogues and Interdisciplinary Insights
By Shoaib Ahmed Malik, St. Mary's University
In this article, I respond to my interlocutors, who have raised various points while engaging my book, Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm. In addressing their arguments and points of engagement, I have ordered this article into four parts: (1) methodological issues, (2) scientific issues, (3) metaphysical issues, and (4) hermeneutic issues.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255955
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Evolution #Ghazali
⬜⬛
THE QURʾĀN AND SCIENCE, PART III: MAKERS OF THE SCIENTIFIC MIRACULOUSNESS
By Majid Daneshgar, University of Freiburg
The last article of this three-part series on the Qurʾān and science discusses the creation and development of the scientific miraculousness of the Qurʾān, which claims that the Qurʾān contains scientific findings and has particular scientific features, such as harmonious numerical analogies and formulae, that confirm the divine origin of the text. It became a political-theological tool used by Muslim preachers and activists across the globe. Unlike scientific interpreters of the Qurʾān, advocates of scientific miraculousness were concerned with not only uniting Muslims and proving God's authority over the universe but also promoting the Qurʾān as a mine of modern science, archaeology, and history, the authenticity of which is unchallengeable.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12930
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Quran #Science #History
⬜⬛
THE QURʾĀN AND SCIENCE, PART I: THE PREMODERN ERA
By Majid Daneshgar, University of Freiburg
As the first installment in a three-part series on the Qurʾān and science, this article begins with the author's personal and scholarly experiences to demonstrate the importance of the twin trends of Qurʾānic scientific interpretation and Qurʾānic scientific miraculousness, including how both serve as Muslims theological tools. It then touches upon the close relationship between theology and scientific knowledge in the history of Islam. The main focus concerns how science is situated and defined in Islamic literature, with particular references to traditional Muslim commentaries and treatises. It also concerns the way Muslim exegetical figures and traditionalists are encouraged or discouraged from taking science into account based on the Qurʾān and prophetic traditions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12931
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Quran #Science #History
⬜⬛
Epistemic Theodicy, Epistemic Evil, and Epistemic Responsibility
By Vojko Strahovnik, University of Ljubljana
The paper explores the concept of epistemic theodicy and strengthens an argument that reconciles human fallibility with the existence of an all-powerful and benevolent God. This argument is grounded in epistemic responsibility, emphasizing our epistemic autonomy. The paper supports two aspects of this argument: the role of epistemic agency in shaping beliefs and belief formation based on experiential rationality. The paper begins by introducing the concept of epistemic theodicy and its relation to the problem of epistemic evil. Next, it presents a succinct version of the argument based on epistemic responsibility. The paper then focuses on epistemic agency, proposing a notion rooted in reasons-responsiveness and highlighting the agentive nature of belief formation. It provides an outline a of view of epistemic rationality grounded in experiential rationality, showing its compatibility with the responsibility-based response to the problem of epistemic evil. The conclusion reflects on the significance of these accounts of agency and rationality in the context of epistemic theodicy.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101264
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Evil #PoE #Theodicy #God
⬜⬛
Truth and Regret: Large Language Models, the Quran, and Misinformation
By Ali-Reza Bhojania, University of Birmingham; Marcus Schwarting, University of Chicago
The mass adoption of large language models (LLMs), spearheaded by OpenAI’s publicly available ChatGPT-3, continues to move at a dramatic pace. The ethical concerns arising from the vast array of opportunities offered by this technology are, of course, numerous. Amongst the most important of these are issues surrounding the scale, speed, and pervasiveness of misinformation infiltrating our knowledge economy. To minimise the occurrence of so-called LLM “confabulations,” and to ensure certain topics are entirely avoided by LLMs, many approaches have been proposed. These approaches include devoting greater attention to training and fine-tuning, often incorporating human feedback, as well as strategies for implementing additional guardrails. Researchers and engineers continue to improve upon such strategies to augment the performance of LLMs. Nevertheless, the tendency of LLMs to falsely present information as truth is an inherent and unavoidable feature of the technology itself. It is crucial for both developers and users of these technologies to account for this fact. Meanwhile ethicists, religious or not, must carefully consider the potential societal impact that comes with an increasing reliance on such tools.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255944
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Quran #Religion #AI #Ethics
⬜⬛
The Genoese Predicament: Christian–Muslim Communication in the Annales Ianuenses (c. 1099–1293)
By Daniel G. König, University of Konstanz
Building on research that presents Jews and Muslims as an integral part of Genoese history, this article analyses the development of Genoese–Muslim interaction in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to understand the challenges of interreligious communication in the pre-modern Mediterranean. It treats the Annals of Genoa as a collective psychogramme that provides insight into the commune’s shifting attitudes towards Muslims. While acknowledging the Annals’ obvious biases, the article argues that the multiple authors of this work of historiography faithfully depicted the problems encountered by the Genoese in their communication with Muslim interlocutors from the perspective of those in power. Consequently, the Annals allow us to trace how Genoa established cooperative relations with Muslim-ruled North Africa in the wake of the First Crusade and how it successfully weathered turbulences caused by political shifts in the Mediterranean of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. The Annals suggest that the destabilization of the western Mediterranean and intensifying inner-Christian strife began to jeopardize Genoese communication with Muslim-ruled societies in the 1230s. During the remainder of the thirteenth century, it seems, the commune was torn between different loyalties and thus unable to pursue a coherent communicative approach to Muslim-ruled societies.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2261250
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Chriatianity #Religion #Islam #History
⬜⬛
Media, Religion, and the Public Sphere
By Coman Mihai, University of Bucharest
In the present study, I undertake to show that the public sphere can be constructed within the frames of a discourse loaded with religious symbols, either as part of religious institutions and manifestations, or, in a more interesting case, through the media discourse. I want to show that media functions as a ritualizing agent, which builds symbolic spaces of action and thinking. Journalists accomplish this by presenting events as if they had pre-established and immutable order and meaning, set within a religious system. The ritualization of the journalistic performance and the mythologization of the representation of events are some of the strongest tools for promoting a representation of events in a language loaded with religious symbols and to outline a public sphere constructed in a religious frame. Thus, using a sacralizing language, media creates a religious public sphere, which function as a liminal, subjunctive framework: it is possible to assume that now a new type of public sphere, defined by a religious frame, is developed, in a social context and symbolical frame that are totally different to the usual circumstances of a religious experience.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101253
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Media #Religion #Secularism
⬜⬛
God, the laws of nature, and occasionalism
By Jeffrey Koperski, Saginaw Valley State University
Occasionalism is often seen as a peculiarity of early modern philosophy. The idea that God is the sole source of efficient causation in the world strikes many as at best implausible. It was, however, a natural inference based on the seventeenth-century view that the laws of nature are simply God's decrees. The question here is whether such a view and its more recent descendants entail occasionalism. I argue that they do not, but showing why involves a new take on what exactly the laws of nature do.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412523000835
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Occasionalism #God #Religion
⬜⬛
Aquinas On Being, Goodness, And Divine Simplicity
By Eleonore Stump, Saint Louis University
Aquinas's virtue-based ethics is grounded in his metaphysics, and in particular in one part of his doctrine of the transcendentals, namely, the relation of being and goodness. This metaphysics supplies for his normative ethics the sort of metaethical foundation that some contemporary virtue-centered ethics have been criticized for lacking, and it grounds an ethical naturalism of considerable philosophical sophistication. In addition, this grounding has a theological implication even more fundamental than its applications to ethics. That is because Aquinas takes God to be essentially and uniquely being itself. Consequently, on Aquinas's view, God is also essentially goodness itself. Aquinas's metaphysical grounding for his ethics is thus meant to be understood in connection with his more fundamental views regarding God's nature, and in particular his views of God's simplicity. This metaphysical grounding confers significant philosophical and theological advantages on his ethics.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12874
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Aquinas #Theology #Naturalism #God
⬜⬛
Vexed Issues on Evolution in Christianity and Islam: A Comparison
By Gijsbert van den Brink, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
In response to Shoaib Malik's Islam and Evolution, this paper compares Christian and Muslim views on six oft perceived conflicts between neo-Darwinian evolution and religion. These concern (1) holy scripture and hermeneutics, (2) evolutionary evil, (3) human uniqueness (4) human origins, (5) divine providence in relation to evolutionary chance, and (6) the origins of religion. Whereas stunning similarities surface, we also find remarkable differences, which lead to some questions for Malik. These pertain to the status of the Qu‘ran, the seriousness of evolutionary suffering, and the possible consequences of neo-Darwinian evolution for theological anthropology and the doctrine of revelation.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255951
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Islam #Christianity #Evolution #Science
⬜⬛
Modest Molinism
An Explanation and Defense
By Michael Bergmann, Purdue University
Molinism, which says that God has middle knowledge, offers one of the most impressive and popular ways of combining libertarian creaturely freedom with full providential control by God. The aim of this paper is to explain, motivate, and defend a heretofore overlooked version of Molinism that I call ‘Modest Molinism’. In Section 1, I explain Modest Molinism and make an initial case for it. Then, in Sections 2 and 3, I defend Modest Molinism against Dean Zimmerman’s anti-Molinist argument, which is directed at all versions of Molinism, including Modest Molinism. Zimmerman’s anti-Molinist argument combines two distinct and separable challenges to Molinism that I call the ‘Irrelevance Objection’ and the ‘Extreme Manipulation Objection’. Despite the fact that Zimmerman intertwines these two objections, they require separate treatment. Thus, Section 2 will raise concerns about Zimmerman’s Irrelevance Objection and Section 3 will focus on concerns about Zimmerman’s Extreme Manipulation Objection.
Link: https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v8i2.77783
------------------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Religion #Metaphysics #Molinism #God
