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Consciousness, Subjective Facts, and Physicalism – Fifty Years since Nagel’s Bat
By Robert Van Gulick, Syracuse University
The existence of subjective facts in the epistemic sense defined by Thomas Nagel’s famous article, “What is it like to be a bat?” might be taken to support an anti-physicalist conclusion. I argue that it does not. The combination of nonreductive physicalism and teleo-pragmatic functionalism is not only consistent with such subjective facts but predicts their existence. The notion that conscious minds are self-understanding autopoietic systems plays a key role in the argument. Global Neuronal Workspace Theory is assessed in terms of its potential to answer David Chalmers’ Hard Problem of consciousness. A suggestion is made for augmenting the theory that involves another sense in which facts about conscious experience are subjective. The idea of conscious minds as self-understanding systems again plays an important role.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9030072
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Tags: #Consciousness #Physicalism #Philosophy
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A Holistic Response to the Problem of Evil
By Jonathan Fuqua, Conception Seminary College
The four standard theistic responses to the evidential problem of evil are theodicy, Reformed Epistemology, natural theology, and skeptical theism. It’s somewhat common for theists to combine Reformed Epistemology and skeptical theism or natural theology and theodicy. An insufficiently appreciated possibility is that of combining all four of these positions into a more holistic response to the evidential problem of evil. The chief hurdle to doing this is that it seems that skeptical theism isn’t compatible with either natural theology or theodicy. This first appearance, however, is misleading. And, interestingly, certain theists have implicitly put forth a holistic response to the problem of evil. In this paper, I sketch out how one can combine all four of the standard theistic responses to the evidential problem of evil so as to yield a holistic response to the problem of evil. The focus will be on reconciling skeptical theism with natural theology and theodicy.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.4.5
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Tags: #Religion #God #Evil #Theism
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The Beliefs of Nonbelievers: Exclusive Empiricism and Mortal Finitude Among Atheists and Agnostics
By Joseph Blankholm, University of California
This essay argues that “atheist” and “agnostic” are not merely negative labels that indicate a person lacks belief in God or is not religious. Relying on a new survey of very secular Americans and the General Social Survey, we demonstrate a statistically significant and substantively meaningful relationship, in both predictive directions, between identifying as atheist or agnostic and holding certain beliefs about how best to know the world and what happens when we die. We can reliably predict that most people in the United States who trust science, reason, and evidence and do not trust religious sources will identify as atheist or agnostic—and vice-versa. We find the same bi-directional relationship with belief in mortal finitude, i.e., that death is the final end. Our findings suggest that exclusive empiricism and mortal finitude are positive tenets of belief systems that those who identify as atheist or agnostic are likely to hold.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae003
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Tags: #Religion #God #Atheism #Agnosticism
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Dialetheism and the A-theory
By Sam Baron, University of Melbourne
According to dialetheism, there are some true contradictions. According to the A-theory, the passage of time is a mind-independent feature of reality. On some A-theories, the passage of time involves the movement of the present. I show that by appealing to dialetheism, one can explain why the present moves. I then argue that A-theorists should adopt this explanation. To do this, I defend two claims. First, that the dialetheic explanation is an improvement on the only other explanation available for why the present moves and, second, that adopting the explanation is better than leaving the motion of the present unexplained. Assuming that A-theorists should adopt the best available version of their view, it follows that they should adopt a dialetheic explanation of why time passes.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqae035
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Tags: #Kalam #Metaphysics #Time
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Kierkegaard and Natural Law
By Casey Spinks, Baylor University
This essay addresses the relationship between Kierkegaard and natural law afresh. First, I exposit Thomas's natural law doctrine in the Summa, particularly its theological emphasis on the God-human relationship, which often goes underappreciated. Then, I argue that natural law doctrine downstream from Thomas suffers from an acute vulnerability: its natural aspect is emphasised so much that the divine-human relationship at the heart of natural law falls away. Next, I argue Problema II of Fear and Trembling deals with this same issue and theologically criticises ethics’ secularising tendency. I then argue that Fear and Trembling and other writings of Kierkegaard's corpus claim a universal law similar to Thomas's doctrine: each individual must relate absolutely to God. Thereby, Kierkegaard transforms natural law from a general norm prone to secularisation into a gift and theological task for everyone, grounding the possibility of ethics in the divine-human relationship. For regular dogmatic purposes, I suggest this shifts natural law to the doctrines of justification and sanctification.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14328
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Tags: #Theology #Aquinas #NaruralLaw #God
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Sceptical theism, divine commands, and love
By Ho-yeung Lee, University of Oxford
Sceptical theists respond to the problem of evil by arguing that we should be sceptical of our abilities to understand God's plan and the justifying reasons for his actions. A major difficulty faced by sceptical theism is the problem of moral paralysis. Some sceptical theists have proposed a divine command response: theists can appeal to God's commands in acting, and this circumvents the need to exercise value judgement in moral deliberations. This article provides an objection to the divine command response by arguing that it renders love impossible and practically undermines the possibility of the theistic way of life. As a result, this article demonstrates a constraint on any potential solution to the problem of moral paralysis in sceptical theism: the access to values of loving relationship and human well-being, as well as their role to play in agents’ deliberative process, should be safeguarded.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412524000222
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Tags: #Theism #God #Metaphysics
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Evolution, Evil, Co-Creation and the Value of the World
By Robin Attfield, Presbyterian University
This article builds on and supplements an earlier one in this journal about theodicy. It focuses on species extinctions and on the possible role of humanity as fallible co-creators. Christopher Southgate has suggested that co-creators might shoulder the task of curtailing extinctions. In appraising this view, I distinguish between extinctions resulting from evolution, which humans have limited power to reverse, but which are held to be indispensable for the evolution of complexity, consciousness and self-consciousness, and those caused by humanity itself, which humans should reduce, even if they cannot be halted. Human creativity, however, extends further to the development of skills, trades, the arts and literature. Church Fathers, such as Ambrose, Theodoret and Cosmas Indicopleustes, held that God left the creation incomplete so that humanity could enhance it; certainly, human creativity has introduced agriculture, navigation, technology and culture, adding to the value of the world. Granted belief in creation, this can be understood as co-creation. Granted the value that humanity continues to add to the world, the belief that such creativity flows from the creator’s overall plan emerges as a coherent one.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050615
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Tags: #God #Evolution #Evil
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The Continuation of Religion by Other Means?
By Chris Daly, University of Manchester
There are several published versions of religious fictionalism. This paper focuses on just one of them: it evaluates Peter Lipton’s pioneering account of religious fictionalism. According to Lipton, whereas the sentences of a religious text are to be understood literally, they are not to be believed but to be accepted. To accept a religious text is to believe the moral claims it makes but not its supernatural claims. The purposes of this version of fictionalism are to reconcile religious practice with scientific theory and to access various moral and cultural values. My evaluation will be especially critical of two of Lipton’s claims. One is that, for a religious fictionalist, a religious text can be a source of moral guidance. The other is that, again for a religious fictionalist, a religious tradition provides a better understanding of oneself and others, and a better means of community identification, than any secular tradition.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.4.6
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Tags: #Religion #Fictionalism #Science
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Two (Failed) Versions of Hume's Argument against Miracles
By Nathan Rockwood, Brigham Young University
Hume’s argument against believing the testimony of miracles is the most influential treatment of the topic, but there is not yet a consensus on how to interpret his argument. Two arguments are attributed to him. First, Hume seems to start with the infrequency of miracles and uses this to infer that the testimony of a miracle is exceedingly unlikely, and this then creates strong but defeasible evidence against the testimony of any miracle. Second, perhaps Hume takes the constancy of our experience of the laws of nature as decisive or indefeasible evidence against the testimony of any miracle. I explain the basis for each of these interpretations of Hume’s argument, and then develop a novel criticism of the latter interpretations: namely, any inductive inference depends on the relevant similarity between the observed and the unobserved, but we may have reason for thinking that purported miracles are not relevantly similar, and thus our past experience cannot be used as reliable evidence about the testimony of (some) miracles.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.4.4
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Tags: #Hume #Miracles #Metaphysics
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The Theological Significance of the History of Science: John Templeton and the Promotion of Science and Religion
By Peter N Jordan, University of Oxford
This article examines the rationale behind philanthropist John Templeton’s investment in the field of science and religion. His support stems in part from the conviction that historical developments in science are finally leading us to the right understanding of God’s relationship to the created order. The older, mechanical picture of nature that science purportedly gave us implies that God is distant from nature, whereas more recent discoveries are revealing nature’s complexity, elusiveness, intangibility, unpredictability, and creativity and imply God’s intimate presence to, and involvement in, nature. This newer theological picture is consistent with a theological tradition to which Templeton had been exposed since childhood. Believing that science is finally uncovering theological truths about God and God’s relationship to the world, Templeton sought to shape science and (especially) religion so that comparable breakthroughs might continue to flow in the future.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae021
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Tags: #Religion #Science #God #Theology
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THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD: ESCAPING THE CHARGE OF COGNITIVE PENETRATION
By Omid Karimzadeh, Shahid Beheshti University
By religious experiences I mean those human experiences characterised by a kind of intuitional seeming to the effect that a transcendent or all-encompassing being—God—exists. After explaining two significant similarities between religious and perceptual experiences, I will argue that the doctrine of phenomenal dogmatism about perceptual experiences can be applied to religious experiences as well. In the following two sections, the challenge arising from the objection from cognitive penetration is extended to the case of religious experiences. I show that the importance of this challenge may be dependent on a debate over the proper content of experience—namely the debate over low-level vs. high-level content. In the subsequent section, I argue that even if the religious experience is deemed an experience with low-level content, then the charge of cognitive penetration may not be avoided. Drawing upon the doctrine of divine simplicity, in the penultimate section, I argue that the experience of God has a specific characteristic which, in companion with its thin content, enables it to escape the charge of cognitive penetration. Alternatively put, the experience of God possesses an important epistemological advantage owing to its distinctive object, which makes it significantly reliable. In the final section, three possible objections are briefly addressed.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14311
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Tags: #God #Science #Psychology
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Strategies for stage II of cosmological arguments
By Simón Tadeo Ocampo, Universidad Tecnológica Nacional
The following article will examine three argumentative strategies to address a recent topic of debate in the philosophy of religion known as the “Gap Problem.” It aims to study the “Stage II” of cosmological arguments, where the goal is to establish the theistic properties or attributes that identify the first cause or necessary being with the concept of God. The unique contribution of this study lies in the formalized and systematic presentation of the various solutions proposed by authors in the philosophical field, synthesizing their central ideas and presenting them in the form of arguments.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-024-09911-7
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Tags: #Theism #God #Religion
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Islamic Insights on Religious Disagreement: A New Proposal
By Jamie B. Turner, University of Birmingham
In this article, I consider how the epistemic problem of religious disagreement has been viewed within the Islamic tradition. Specifically, I consider two religious epistemological trends within the tradition: Islamic Rationalism and Islamic Traditionalism. In examining the approaches of both trends toward addressing the epistemic problem, I suggest that neither is wholly adequate. Nonetheless, I argue that both approaches offer insights that might be relevant to building a more adequate response. So, I attempt to combine insights from both by drawing a distinction between inferential and noninferential reflective responsibility. Given this distinction, I argue that it may be possible for a theist to remain steadfast in upholding their tradition-specific theistic belief, without having to hold that belief by way of inference; but nevertheless, having to be sufficiently reflectively responsible in forming their theistic belief noninferentially.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050574
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Tags: #Islam #Theism #Epistemology
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Naskh (“Abrogation”) in Muslim Anti-Jewish Polemic: The Treatise of Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī (1247–1318)
By Y. Tzvi Langermann, Bar-Ilan University
A strong case can be made that the concept of naskh, “abrogation” or “annulment”, was the most potent weapon in the arsenal of Muslim polemicists seeking to convert Jews (Burton‘s Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān is highly informative but deals almost exclusively with naskh in its internal Islamic contexts, e.g., hermeneutics and legal theory). Naskh did not necessarily involve any rejection of Jewish scripture or tradition as fraudulent or corrupt. It rested on the simple premise, explicitly confirmed by the Qur’an, that the deity may alter or replace His legislation over the course of time. In the first part of this paper, I will briefly review the topic, adding some texts and observations that, to the best of my knowledge, have not appeared in the academic literature (comprehensively surveyed in Adang’s Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm, 1996; also in Adang and Schmidtke’s Polemics (Muslim-Jewish) in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, 2010). The bulk of this paper will consist of a fairly detailed summary of an unpublished tract on naskh written by Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlullāh Hamadānī (RD) (1247–1318), himself a Jewish convert to Islam and a monumental politician, cultural broker, historian, and author.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050547
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Tags: #Islam #History #Quran #Judaism
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From Tillable Fields to Men’s Equal Partners: The Treatment of Women in Early Muslim–Christian Polemic
By Barbara Roggema, University of Florence
Even though women and questions of gender difference are not a core issue in medieval Eastern Christian–Muslim polemic, there are numerous arguments that go back and forth between Muslims and Christians that revolve around women. In the large corpus of polemical texts from the Middle East between the 8th and the 13th centuries, it can be noted that criticism of the other religion involves pointing out illogicalities and absurdities in each other’s doctrines and rituals. Carefully constructed arguments against the claim to Divine endorsement of the faith of the other party are frequently interlaced with criticism of their alleged immoral behavior. Although women feature mostly in the emotive sections of the polemical compositions, there are also reasoned debates about the issue of gender equality in the eyes of God. The discussion of these texts here brings out a range of diverse ideas about women that function primarily as sources for subsidiary arguments against the religious other. At the same time, this study reveals that these arguments were not invented ad hoc. They show the interconnectedness of works within a corpus of polemical texts that spans five centuries.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050555
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Tags: #God #Theism #Gender #History
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Metaphysical explanation and the cosmological argument
By Thomas Oberle, University of Alberta
A premise of the Leibnizian cosmological argument from contingency says that no contingent fact can explain why there are any contingent facts at all. David Hume and Paul Edwards famously denied this premise, arguing that if every fact has an explanation in terms of further facts ad infinitum, then they all do. This is known as the Hume–Edwards Principle (HEP). In this paper, I examine the cosmological argument from contingency within a framework of metaphysical explanation or ground and defend a ground-theoretic version of HEP which says, roughly, that the plurality of contingent facts is grounded in its members.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02148-0
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Tags: #Religion #God #CosmologicalArgument
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What to Expect from the God of History
By Laura Frances Callahan, University of Notre Dame
I argue that our expectations for particular evil events, conditional on theism, ought to be informed by our empirical knowledge of history—that is, the history of what God, if God exists, has already allowed to happen. This point is under-appreciated in the literature. And yet if I’m right, this entails that most particular evil events are not evidence against theism. This is a limited but interesting consequence in debates over the evidential impact of evil
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.4.3
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Tags: #Religion #God #Evil #Theism
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The Necessity and Goodness of Animals in Sijistānī’s Kashf Al-Maḥjūb
By Peter Adamson and Hanif Amin Beidokhti, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
The Neoplatonic notion of “emanation” implies a required progression through hierarchical stages, originating from the highest principle (the One or God) and cascading down through a series of principles. While this process is deemed necessary, it is also inherently good, even “choiceworthy”, aligning with the identification of the first principle with the Good. Plotinus, a prominent Neoplatonist, emphasizes the beauty and goodness of the sensible world, governed by divine providence. This perspective, transmitted through Arabic adaptations of Plotinus, influences Islamic philosophers too. This paper delves into the thought of the Ismāʿīlī philosopher Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (d. after. 349/971), exploring the interplay of necessity and goodness in his cosmology, with a focus on non-human animals. Sijistānī’s Persian Uncovering the Veiled provides a unique perspective on animals, presenting them as both necessary unfoldings of the universal intellect and inherently good beings with intrinsic value. The paper concludes with an appendix featuring an improved edition and English translation of relevant passages.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9030072
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Tags: #Islam #Shiism #God
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The Prophet’s Day in China: A Study of the Inculturation of Islam in China, Based on Fieldwork in Xi’an, Najiaying, and Hezhou
By Chuanbin Zhou, Ping Shang
Ping Shang and Wenkui Ma, Lanzhou University
Islam is widely spread throughout every corner of China, with the Hui people, the largest Muslim ethnic group in China, numbering over 10 million people, serving as its main carrier. Their culture types and local features exhibit great diversity across different provinces. The ceremony of Prophet’s Day or Mawlid al-Nabi in China, as one of the three fundamental festivals of the Hui people alongside Eid al-Fitur and Eid al-Qurban, appears to be more comprehensive, open, and localized. Drawing from fieldwork in three Hui communities—Xi’an in Shaanxi province, Najiaying in Yunnan province, and Hezhou in Gansu province—this paper approaches the topic from the perspective of inculturation and cultural innovation. It aims to describe the ritual processes observed in these three different Hui communities and discuss how the Hui people integrate Islam with traditional Chinese culture in their local contexts, with the intention of forming and preserving their own cultural characteristics.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15060630
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Tags: #Islam #Religion #Culture
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Embodying Pedagogy
By Allen G. Jorgenson et al, Wilfrid Laurier University
This article reflects on an instructor's experience of incorporating an optional assignment in a theology class wherein students are invited to learn a new athletic skill, journal while doing so, and then theologically reflect on their experience. It begins with the instructor making a case for the need to bring the body back into the classroom. This is followed by the theological reflections of three of the instructor's students. Finally, the instructor reflects on the themes of balance and muscle memory, stretching, and flow developed in the student reflections. These are used to outline how a balanced classroom revives theological wonder, affirms change in a cruciform fashion, and understands failure as part of God's modus operandi and so intrinsic to theology.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/teth.12662
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Tags: #Theology #Pedogogy #Religion
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Knowledge and God
By Matthew A. Benton, Seattle Pacific University
This Element examines a main theme in religious epistemology, namely, the possibility of knowledge of God. Most often philosophers consider the rationality or justification of propositional belief about God, particularly beliefs about the existence and nature of God; and they will assess the conditions under which, if there is a God, such propositional beliefs would be knowledge, particularly in light of counter-evidence or the availability of religious disagreement. This Element surveys such familiar areas, then turns toward newer and less-developed terrain: interpersonal epistemology, namely what it is to know another person. It then explores the prospects for understanding what it might take to know God relationally, the contours of which are significant for many theistic traditions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009127103
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Tags: #God #Epistemology #Metaphysics
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Special Divine Action and the Miraculous
By Donghwi Kim, Presbyterian University
This paper attempts to outline the miracle discussions that show up intermittently in the CTNS/VO project. The project's main purpose focuses on how and in what ways God could act in a non-miraculous manner in nature and history rather than through God's miraculous interventionist activities. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to cover the miraculous in light of this project, as special divine action and miracles are conceptually interwoven in the sense that the extraordinary divine actions could be included within the larger range of God's special providence. Thus, several relevant arguments concerning the miraculous in the project need to be addressed.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2024.2351640
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Tags: #God #Miracles #Metaphysics
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Love for God and Self-Annihilation
By Michael Rea, University of Notre Dame
In The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Porete, a 14th century mystic, there is a straightforward path from claims about what love for God in its purest form entails to the conclusion that a kind of self-annihilation is the ultimate goal for a Christian. There is, furthermore, an implicit argument in her work for the conclusion that achieving self annihilation through love for God is superior to and better for us as individuals than achieving conformity with God’s will through the (mere) cultivation of virtue as it is traditionally conceived. Taking inspiration from Porete’s work, this paper defends both of these counterintuitive claims.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.4.1
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Tags: #God #Christianity #Metaphysics
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A Holistic Response to the Problem of Evil
By Jonathan Fuqua, Conception Seminary College
The four standard theistic responses to the evidential problem of evil are theodicy, Reformed Epistemology, natural theology, and skeptical theism. It’s somewhat common for theists to combine Reformed Epistemology and skeptical theism or natural theology and theodicy. An insufficiently appreciated possibility is that of combining all four of these positions into a more holistic response to the evidential problem of evil. The chief hurdle to doing this is that it seems that skeptical theism isn’t compatible with either natural theology or theodicy. This first appearance, however, is misleading. And, interestingly, certain theists have implicitly put forth a holistic response to the problem of evil. In this paper, I sketch out how one can combine all four of the standard theistic responses to the evidential problem of evil so as to yield a holistic response to the problem of evil. The focus will be on reconciling skeptical theism with natural theology and theodicy.
Link: https://doi.10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.4.5
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Tags: #Religion #God #Theology #PoE #Evil
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Sect, Sectarian, Sectarianism: The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of an Analytical Category in the Study of Western Religions
By Yonatan Moss, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
This article charts the changing uses of the interconnected terms sect, sectarian, sectarianist, and sectarianism in the academic study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Following a review of the term sect’s early roots in Greco-Roman antiquity and its distinctly Christian transformation, three main steps are analyzed in the genealogy of the category in modern scholarship: (1) deployments by Weber and his early followers; (2) an influential sociological turn in the latter half of the twentieth century; and (3) a sharp decline in the years around the turn of the century in the popularity of sect as a category, followed by a redefinition of its derivative terms (sectarian, etc.) in recent years. Toward the end of the article, lessons are drawn from this genealogy for the future use of the category within scholarship.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae023
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Tags: #Religion #Christianity #Judaism #Islam
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Science-Engaged Thomism
By Simon Maria Kopf, ITI Catholic University
This article discusses a form of Thomism that has emerged in the field of science and theology, which is termed “Science-Engaged Thomism” (SETh), following the recent and growing movement of Science-Engaged Theology (SET). After a brief introduction of SET, various definitions and essential features of SET and SETh are introduced and discussed, highlighting their similarities and differences. To showcase the latter, the article presents recent examples of SETh. The objective is to suggest that SETh is a form of Thomism, although not necessarily a new form of Thomism. As such, SETh might be considered a complementary approach to SET.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050591
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Tags: #God #Religion #Thomism #Science
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Modal appearances and the modal ontological argument
By James Simpson, University of Florida
In a recent paper in this journal, McIntosh (2021) argues that a modalized version of an epistemic principle of phenomenal conservativism can be used to successfully defend the key possibility premise of the modal ontological argument for the existence of God. I argue, however, that such a defense of the possibility premise is not going to be successful even if one concedes a number of contentious claims to McIntosh.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-024-09916-2
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Tags: #Theism #God #Epistemology
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An Imaginary Byzantium in Early Islam: Byzantium as Viewed through the Sīra Literature
By Yassine Yahyaoui, The University of Münster
This article examines the emergence of new representations of Byzantium in early Arabic literature, with a focus on the Sīra, the biography of the Prophet Muḥammad. This historical investigation leads to a dual conclusions that the Arab perception of Byzantium not only forged an “imaginary Byzantium” but also marked the emergence of Arab self-consciousness. This process significantly influenced the Arab historical and cultural narratives, framing them within the context of the Arabic identity that emerged in late antiquity. Nevertheless, this relationship between the early Islamic community and Byzantium does little to confirm accurate knowledge about Byzantium, rendering the emerging representations as not truly reflective of “reality”, but rather presenting us with an “imaginary Byzantium”. This applies whether related to events in the 1st/7th century or the transition from oral to written texts during the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries. Furthermore, these representations reveal more about the creators of this imaginary than the other itself, shedding light on the motives of early Muslim writers who used the Sīra as a vehicle for these imaginaries. Ultimately, the article identifies, through the textual analysis and historical contextualization of Sīra, two narrative layers therein that are related to the imaginary Byzantium. The first layer reflected a pervasive fear of Byzantium, while the second layer represented an attitude of challenge and rivalry.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050545
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Tags: #Islam #History #Seerah
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Visiting the Prophet at His Grave: Discussions about the Religious Topography of Madina
By Martin Kellner, University of Osnabrück
Theological discussions about visits to the Prophet’s grave in Madina are the focus of this paper. The relevant question in this context relates to the idea of a postmortem life of the Prophet and its accessibility for believers after his death. The idea of a spiritual presence of the Prophet in this world is found in the description of religious visits to Madina, namely in the traditional Sunni books of Fiqh (describing the normative rules concerning the Prophet’s grave), as well as in some books of Tafsir. These ideas have been challenged by the Wahhabi movement, in which the idea of becoming connected to the Prophet’s presence is refused and the visit to Madina is seen to be focused on the mosque, not the grave of the Prophet. This reinterpretation is examined in this article on the basis of various textual references.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050552
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Tags: #Islam #History #Prophet
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Methodological worries for humean arguments from evil
By Timothy Perrine, Rutgers University
Humean arguments from evil are some of the most powerful arguments against Theism. They take as their data what we know about good and evil. And they argue that some rival to Theism better explains, or otherwise predicts, that data than Theism. However, this paper argues that there are many problems with various methods for defending Humean arguments. I consider Philo’s original strategy; modern strategies in terms of epistemic probability; phenomenological strategies; and strategies that appeal to scientific and metaphysical explanations. None of these methods have been sufficiently developed to provide a clear and distinctive defense of Humean arguments. Defenders of Humean arguments need to spend more time on the underlying methodology of their arguments.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02135-5
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Tags: #God #Evil #PoE #Theism
