Philsophy of Religion

In the Christian religious tradition, theological virtues of faith, hope and love have a central role. Along with the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance they present the whole of the good human life. While cardinal virtues can be cultivated by human will, faith, hope and love are given by God and therefore open 'natural' human life on Earth toward transcendent spiritual realities. Human beings as bio-psycho-social and spiritual beings incorporate theological virtues in all the activities of their life. In sport, faith, hope and love have an important, though often neglected, role. On a practical level faith can be recognized in any relation between athlete and coach. To trust one's coach, without any guarantee that the outcome of prescribed workouts will lead to the desired results, needs strong faith, trust and confidence. Moreover, faith is the virtue that makes sport so attractive also for spectators even to the point of being a 'secular' religion for the masses. Hope is the virtue of 'not yet' or of something 'being on its way'. For most athletes, daily workouts are not a goal, but just the means to that end. Any reason for doing sports needs a hope behind it in order to move or will oneself to action. Along with hope, understood as a golden mean, we find despair on the one hand and 'false hope' on the other. Both are corruptions of hope seen daily in the world of sport. To manage hope in sport practices correctly offers a path to success in sport at all levels. Love is at the apex of the theological virtues. There are many formulations of love both in ancient Greek and Roman times: eros, agape, caritas, amor. Each has its special characteristic meaning also in sport. In sport we can see laughter and tears because any love is connected with highest human joy and deepest depression. Yet, in summation, it is argued that love in sport must be understood as the binding force and source of cooperation and fulfilled life for any athlete qua human being.

The core question that this article addresses is how the Darwinian evolutionary process of random mutation and natural selection relates to God’s character, especially as portrayed in the Christian tradition. The main challenge is that the process of random mutation and natural selection generally favours welladapted
individuals, whereas, in the Christian tradition, God is said to favour the weak and poor. I first spell out the problem in more detail and explain how it is different from other problems regarding the evolutionary process and God’s character that can be found in the philosophical and theological literature. Subsequently, I draw attention to various misunderstandings, especially about the nature of Darwinian evolution. Doing so weakens the tension between Darwinian evolution and God’s character, but does not provide a satisfactory solution. I therefore move on to discuss six attempts to solve the problem and argue that each of them is seriously wanting. Finally, I propose three lines of reasoning that jointly constitute a sufficiently plausible solution to the problem.

Rezumat. Textul urmăreşte poziţia metafizică a lui Edith Stein, elementele comune dar, desigur, şi cele de diferenţiere în raport cu Aristotel, Toma d'Aquino ori Duns Scott. Situată la confluenţa acestor poziţii antice şi medievale, metafizica lui Edith Stein este puternic influenţată şi de fenomenologia lui Husserl şi Heidegger. Pe aceste coordonate, vom încerca să punem în evidenţă relaţia dintre fiinţă şi esenţă, pentru a vedea care este structura fiinţei. Vom putea, în plus, să vedem răspunsul lui Edith Stein la celebra ceartă a universaliilor.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery. WK Clifford (1877/1999). … not to have tried to see through the whole apparatus of mystification-was already criminal … For being in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences-from the very beginning. Albert Speer quoted in Ellsberg (1972: 275). Intellectual and political emancipation Religious concern with eternal, transcendent metaphysical questions is undeniably remote from the mundane realities of politics, but the other-worldly subject matter need not mark deep attitudinal or epistemic differences as commonly assumed. For example in the 1 I am indebted to the following people for most insightful criticism and comments that have led to improvements in the paper:

Exit, escape, wandering, uprooting, are concepts that mark the philosophical path of Levinas to such an extent that his reflections can appropriately be defined as a thought of exodus. The exodus from Totality to Otherwise than being, the semantics of “path” instead of “ethics,” have consequences on the political level, because the Promised Land is not a place but the encounter with others. Politics of exodus is then a policy able to constantly question one’s institutions. Such a horizon of political ethics affects also, evidently, the relations between Palestine and the State of Israel, in relation to which – notwithstanding his very often criticized lack of neutrality – Levinas does not undervalue the danger that Israel, as “State of David,” turns into a sheer “State of Ceasar.” This dubious situation leads to one of the most problematic questions of his Quatre lectures talmudiques: is the promised land also a permitted land?

En este trabajo presento algunos argumentos para sostener que la creencia religiosa es un lenguaje distinto al de la ciencia. Para esto hago uso de los trabajos de Wittgenstein sobre 'juegos de lenguaje' y creencia religiosa. Sostengo que a pesar de que se haga un uso de términos sintácticamente idéntico, la dimensión pragmática de dichos términos es la que determina en qué juego de lenguaje se está. Conclu-yo mostrando un caso donde se hace un uso inadecuado del lenguaje de un sistema y que se aplica a otro sistema.

Öz
Her türlü dini ve metafizik öğretinin dışlandığı ve bireyin ön plana çıkarılarak insan aklının kutsanması gerekliliğinin savunulduğu bir dönem olan Aydınlanmanın ürünü olan modernizm, günümüzde dini ve ahlaki hemen bütün alanlarda yeni yapılanmalara sebep olmaktadır.
Bu çalışma, modernizm düşüncesinin aşk ve mahremiyet kavramları üzerindeki etkisini incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır.
Abstract
MODERNISM, LOVE AND PRIVACY RELATION
Modernism, the product of the period of Enlightenment when the necessity of consecration of human mind was defended by highlighting the individual and excluding all religious and metaphysic doctrine, paves the way for new structuring in almost all areas such as religion and moral fields.
The objective of this study is to examine the effect of the modernism on the concept of love and privacy

This study aims to present a new interpretation of the theory of evolution and its compatibility with intelligent design based on special views of Peter van Inwagen. This article which is conducted by descriptive analysis relies on library research findings. Peter van Inwagen, an American analytical philosopher and one of the leading figures in metaphysics and philosophy of religion, is a skeptical theist who defends compatibility between the theory of evolution and Darwinism and intelligent design. He maintains that he has presented a new interpretation of the theory of evolution and in this regard, proposes a kind of Darwinism called � weak Darwinism�. In his account, Van Inwagen admits basic principles of Darwinism such as common descent, random mutations, natural selection, and even the widespread acts of natural selection in nature, however, he restricts the acts of random mutation and natural selection with a sort of agnosticism in order to pave the way for explaining the universe through other mechanisms like intelligent design. As a Christian who has love and affection to God, he believes that the order in the universe is as a result of God� s� guidance and wisdom, and although the order in the world is under the influence of random mutations and natural selections, all the past and current events could not have occurred randomly. Many research works have been conducted about the theory of evolution and intelligent design and we can point to the most recent ones entitled � Theological Argument, Evolution, and Accurate Arrangement: The Comparative Analysis of Swinburne and Mutahhari�s Viewpoints� by Ghazale Hojjati 1 and � Anthropological and Critical Analysis of Darwin Based on Transcendent Theosophy� by Faranak Bahmani and Ali Allah Bedashti 2. However, no article has been written in Persian yet on the theory of evolution and intelligent design from the perspective of Peter van Inwagen. The objective of this study is to shed light on Van Inwagen�s views on the theory of evolution and his theist defense from intelligent design as well as the compatibility between these two theories. Van Inwagen can be regarded as compatibilist in two sense: first, because he holds there is compatibility between free will and determinism, and also because he does not regard any inconsistency between the theory of evolution and theism. After he believed in determinism, Van Inwagen felt skeptical toward

مناظره‌ی عِمران صابی با امام علی بن موسی‌الرضا (ع) سه محور عمده دارد: ذات و صفات الهی، کیفیت آفرینش و ویژگی‌ها و اقسام آفریدگان. اهتمام نوشتار پیشِ رو بر بسط و شرح محور دوم (= کیفیت آفرینش) قرار دارد. این مقاله می‌کوشد تا با روش توصیفی ـ تحلیلی ضمن ارائه‌ی تصویری از گفتار امام (ع)، تبیین‌ها و تفسیرهای مختلف را احصاء نموده و منطق حاکم بر آن را آشکار سازد. بحث کیفیت آفرینش بر سه موضوع اساسی استوار است: نحوه‌ی آفرینش، هدف آن و نسبت آفریننده و آفریده. نگارنده نخست جایگاه و مختصات این مناظره را ترسیم نموده، آنگاه جوانب و پیشینه‌ی مباحث مطرح‌شده در هر موضوع مورد بحث قرار گرفته است. بسط و شرح گفتار امام (ع) و بررسی و نقدِ تفسیرهای آن بخش اصلی متن را شامل می‌شود.

Inleiding Volgens Max Weber (1864-1920) wordt ons tijdperk gekarakteriseerd door " onttovering van de wereld ". De wetenschappelijke ambitie om de wereld rati-oneel te verklaren, alsook de aspiratie om heer en meester te worden over de natuur door middel van technologische berekening maakt het geloof in Goden die ons moeten behoeden voor gevaren steeds overbodiger. Door op weten-schappelijk-technologische wijze causale ketens bloot te leggen, zal de wereld volledig worden beroofd van mysterieuze en onberekenbare krachten (Weber 1946, p. 155). Religie verliest daardoor, zo wordt gedacht, haar bestaansrecht. De visie dat religie en wetenschap een vijandige relatie onderhouden, lijkt door de jaren heen steeds meer aanhang te hebben gekregen. Bepleiters van deze opvatting verwijzen dan vaak ter bevestiging naar vervolgingen van grote wetenschappers (zoals Galileo en Bruno) door de Rooms-Katholieke kerk. Dit vermeend antagonisme tussen religie en wetenschap heeft ertoe geleid dat veel wetenschappers menen dat wetenschap gezuiverd moet worden van religieuze motieven en overwegingen. Religie en wetenschap worden als incompatibel of als niet-overlappend beschouwd, zoals bijvoorbeeld uitgedrukt in de 'Draper-White' conflict-these (1874, 1898) en Goulds NOMA (Non Overlapping Magis-teria – 2002). Vandaag de dag wordt deze opvatting sterk verdedigd door 'reli-gie bashers' als Richard Dawkins en Herman Philipse. Aangezien technologie veelal wordt opgevat als toegepaste wetenschap wordt gedacht dat ook religie en technologie niet goed kunnen samengaan. De vraag of er noodzakelijk een antagonistische relatie bestaat tussen religie en wetenschap/technologie zal ik in deze bijdrage onderzoeken door te reflecteren op fundamentele vooronderstellingen die betrekking hebben op die relatie. De vraag is derhalve in hoeverre en in welke zin religie en wetenschap/ technologie als afzonderlijke categorieën kunnen worden beschouwd. Ik zal