Religious Intuitions Research Articles

The Unity of Religious Experience: An Analytic Reading of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Second Speech On Religion

Abstract In this paper, I present a conception of individual religiousness in terms of religious experience. Using ideas of the early Friedrich Schleiermacher, I will claim that religious experiences are contemplative experiences of the totality of being. This understanding of religious experiences presents an alternative to how religious experience is often epistemologically thought about in the more contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Furthermore, it has systematic advantages: It can construe religious plurality in terms of different ways to experience the totality of being, it stays neutral to metaphysical and moral debates such as whether there is a God whose laws we should obey, and it allows for an explanation of how religious intuitions and religious emotions relate to one another as well as of why religiousness and art often go hand in hand. Even though understanding religiousness in terms of contemplative experience also bears revisionary potential, I will discuss how more doxastic elements of religious people’s lives can be reintegrated into this picture.

Two Verticals, or the Paradox and Tragedy of Soviet Atheism

The object of the study is atheism and theism as important ideological components of two opposing solutions to the "main question of philosophy" – materialism and idealism – forming two systems of human life navigation. The subject of the study is two ideological paradigms – Soviet atheism and Orthodox Christianity. Materialism and atheism are the fundamental elements of the Marxist doctrine underlying the philosophy and culture of the Soviet period of Russian history, opposing theism, creationism and providentialism of the Christian understanding of the world and man, characteristic of the ideological paradigm of pre–revolutionary Russia. The purpose of the study is to clarify and substantiate the ideological intersection of these seemingly incompatible ideological positions. One of the objectives of the study is to substantiate their vertical semantic and value orientation. The novelty of the research, in particular, lies in the substantiation of the statement that two incompatible ideological poles represent varieties of the classical philosophical tradition with its vertical value-semantic orientation, and together oppose the main orientation of non-classical philosophy based on a horizontal scale of meanings and values. One of the main conclusions is that the vertical of Soviet materialism and atheism is a paradox and at the same time its tragedy: surprisingly, due to the vertical orientation of Soviet culture – formally atheistic – it is actually permeated with religious intuitions, questions, problems, ideas and plots disguised as secular concepts and terms, which finds its manifestation in various works of Soviet artistic culture.

CONVERGENCE OF QIBLA DIRECTION ACCURACY OF THE OLD AIR TIRIS GRAND MOSQUE KAMPA RIAU

The community experiences both positive and negative consequences as a response of Qibla direction calibration, particularly in the ancient mosque, an ancestral heritage mosque whose authenticity must be preserved. One of them is the Air Tiris Great Mosque in Kampar, which must be preserved from the initial stages of growth because it is a tourist destination and an item of cultural heritage. This article aims to verify the calibration of the Qibla direction of the oldest mosque in Kampar and the techniques employed by earlier scholars in measuring their Qibla direction using field investigations and data sources from observations and interviews. This article concludes that the Qibla direction is accurate and correct, the Air Tiris Grand Mosque was established in 1901, and that it has never undergone renovation. When the global Qibla direction was wrapped in religious intuition, the cleric at the time, Datuk Engku Mudo Songkal, used the sun's shadow to bring religious intuition and scientific truth together.

Boris Vysheslavtsev as a Critic of Industrial Culture: in Search of a New Social and Anthropological Ideal

The article examines the ideas of B.P. Vysheslavtsev as he is a critic of industrial culture. Critical theses concerning industrialism as a whole are discussed in order to then highlight and focus in more detail the critique of the anthropological ideal of the new industrial culture from the general critical reflection of the philosopher. Taking as a basis the criticism of B.P. Vysheslavtsev, the author makes an attempt to construct an idea of the Russian philosopher's own anthropological ideal, linking them with the religious intuitions of B.P. Vysheslavtsev in line with Christianity. In the light of the consideration of the anthropological concept, its influence on the formation of the social ideal and the relationship that is built between the anthropological and social dimensions and their mutual influence are taken into account.

Reading Ancient and Medieval Philosophers after Vollenhoven

Abstract This is a study of D. H. Th. Vollenhoven’s type-focused historiography of philosophy and its development with respect to pre-Socratic philosophy. It uses the work of Pierre Hadot on philosophical askesis, the work of Martha Nussbaum on therapeutic argument, and recent work on the transformative character of Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles and Summa theologiae to question some of the central assumptions of Vollenhoven’s methodology. In the process, Vollenhoven’s practice is compared to and contrasted with the historiographical practice of Aristotle in his Metaphysics. What emerges is a way to acknowledge the continued worth of type-focused reading and the religious intuitions that gave rise to it, but on the basis of different methodological assumptions and to different historiographical effects.

Religious Intuitions and the Nature of “Belief”

Abstract Scientific interest in religion often focusses on the “puzzle of belief”: how people develop and maintain religious beliefs despite a lack of evidence and the significant costs that those beliefs incur. A number of researchers have suggested that humans are predisposed towards supernatural thinking, with innate cognitive biases engendering, for example, the misattribution of intentional agency. Indeed, a number of studies have shown that nonbelievers often act “as if” they believe. For example, atheists are reluctant to sell the very souls they deny having, or to angrily provoke the God they explicitly state does not exist. In our own recent work, participants who claimed not to believe in the afterlife nevertheless demonstrated a physiological fear response when informed that there was a ghost in the room. Such findings are often interpreted as evidence for an “implicit” belief in the supernatural that operates alongside (and even in contradiction to) an individual’s conscious (“explicit”) religious belief. In this article, we investigate these arguably tenuous constructs more deeply and suggest some possible empirical directions for further disentangling implicit and explicit reasoning.

Prosociality Inspired by the Charism of the Unity of Chiara Lubich. An Application in the School of Childhood

This article presents two distinct parts. The first tries to answer the questions: How do spiritual or religious intuitions apply in life? Or, better, how do certain evangelical passages come to pass when they pass through a structuring of a system of thought? What application characteristics can a certain charism have when analysed and experimentally applied from a scientific perspective and methodology? In this first part, we present a biographical and professional journey of an academic group that started from a concern and experience of a person, the first author, for about 38 years. This group was trying to develop a theoretical-application model initially originated in the educational field and currently active in various areas of human activity, responding to the spiritual charism of a contemporary woman recognised by an institution as universal by the church. The second part shows one of the last experiences of these applications in the educational field. This experience occurs specifically in the infantile age, which is a crucial stage to mark positive tracks in the development of the personality, as well as positive patterns for the later interpersonal and social relations that employ prosociality and cooperation with a very experimental methodology.

Prospołeczność inspirowana charyzmatem jedności Chiary Lubich. Przykład wykorzystania w przedszkolu

This article presents two distinct parts. The first tries to answer the questions: How do spiritual or religious intuitions apply in life? Or, better, how do certain evangelical passages come to pass when they pass through a structuring of a system of thought? What application characteristics can a certain charism have when analysed and experimentally applied from a scientific perspective and methodology? In this first part, we present a biographical and professional journey of an academic group that started from a concern and experience of a person, the first author, for about 38 years. This group was trying to develop a theoretical-application model initially originated in the educational field and currently active in various areas of human activity, responding to the spiritual charism of a contemporary woman recognised by an institution as universal by the church. The second part shows one of the last experiences of these applications in the educational field. This experience occurs specifically in the infantile age, which is a crucial stage to mark positive tracks in the development of the personality, as well as positive patterns for the later interpersonal and social relations that employ prosociality and cooperation with a very experimental methodology.

Analytic atheism: A cross-culturally weak and fickle phenomenon?

AbstractReligious belief is a topic of longstanding interest to psychological science, but the psychology of religious disbelief is a relative newcomer. One prominently discussed model isanalytic atheism, wherein cognitive reflection, as measured with the Cognitive Reflection Test, overrides religious intuitions and instruction. Consistent with this model, performance-based measures of cognitive reflection predict religious disbelief in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, & Democratic) samples. However, the generality of analytic atheism remains unknown. Drawing on a large global sample (N= 3461) from 13 religiously, demographically, and culturally diverse societies, we find that analytic atheism as usually assessed is in fact quite fickle cross-culturally, appearing robustly only in aggregate analyses and in three individual countries. The results provide additional evidence for culture’s effects on core beliefs.

Apophatic and Mystical Realism. Nicholas’ of Cusa Lesson

In my paper I consider the question, whether one can reconcile radical apophatic perspective with the realistic interpretation of religious discourse. Both are supported by very important religious intuitions, but seem to be mutually inconsistent. In order to show what form of “apophatic realism” is possible to hold, I analyze the thought of Nicolas of Cusa: fifteenth century mystic and philosopher, whose thought does justice to the deepest religious intuitions and can be inspiring, and – in its basic principles – also tenable, even in XXI century.

Key-Phenomenon and Religious Meaning

Abstract In this paper I develop a phenomenology of religious experience through the notion of keyphenomenon. My analysis moves from a general phenomenology of situation, in which we have to relate different phenomena according to a sense. What does “according to a sense” mean? My suggestion is that we should look for a relationship among these data when we find a key-phenomenon (among a series of phenomena) that would enlighten all the others. This key-phenomenon would show a non-phenomenal meaning which would make all the others understandable. Each other datum, therefore, becomes the witness of invisible meaning through a key-witness. The key-phenomenon we choose determines the role (i.e., the truth) of each datum within its situation. This phenomenological relationship belongs to both the sense of day-life situations, and that one of possible religious situations. If the religious interpretation of a situation depends on our choice of key-phenomenon, or key-witness, we have to define what kind of keyphenomenon constitutes a religious intuition.

Clear and Uncreated: The Experience of Inner Light in Gelug-pa Tantrism and Byzantine Hesychasm

Clear and Uncreated:The Experience of Inner Light in Gelug-pa Tantrism and Byzantine Hesychasm Christopher Emory-Moore In an essay collection dedicated to the religious experience of light, editor Matthew Kapstein asserts: “Among the themes sometimes taken to suggest that there is a universal basis for religious intuition and experience, images of light must hold pride of place.”1 The section of the book concerned with “the role of light in the mystic’s progression to the culmination of his or her path”2 includes two essays of particular interest: Andrew Louth’s treatment of the light mysticism of Eastern Christianity’s Hesychast tradition, and Kapstein’s own study of the “rainbow body” of light in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen (dzogs chen). Each describes particular meditative methods taught to produce one very similar experience: a blissful vision of inner light located in the region of the heart. Louth and Kapstein describe these similar religious phenomena independently, but the book includes no sustained comparative study. It is to this task that this essay turns. Following generally their selected religious traditions of study, my subject matter will differ significantly from the aforementioned essays. While Louth’s explication of the “uncreated light” of Hesychasm is based in the writings of Saint Maximos, Saint Symeon, and Theophanes of Nicae, mine will be drawn exclusively from the work of the Eastern Church’s foremost theologian of Hesychasm, Saint Gregory Palamas. And whereas Kapstein discusses Mahayana Buddhism’s “clear light” only as background for his discussion of Dzogchen’s rainbow body, I will make the clear light my sole object of study, relying principally on the teachings of the Gelug-pa (dge-lugs-pa) rather than the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism for its explication. Through a comparative analysis of the Hesychast’s uncreated light and the Gelug-pa’s clear light, I will investigate the extent to which their affinity might be said to intimate “a universal basis for religious intuition and experience.” The analysis will conclude with my suggestion that while the inner light experience represents for each tradition its own form of ultimate spiritual transformation, the Gelug-pa’s clear light [End Page 117] soteriology offers its adept the hope of a transformation, which, due principally to its naturalism, is more complete than that offered to the Hesychast by his church’s theology of uncreated light.3 This will be argued on the basis of two doctrinal points. First, while the Hesychast’s experience of the uncreated light is a mysterious gift from a self-willing God, the Gelug-pa’s clear light is presented as the reproducible result of a specific meditation methodology. Second, while the uncreated light experience is understood by the Hesychast as something that cannot be maintained, the Gelug-pa’s clear light is taught to hold the potential for systematic cultivation leading finally to permanent awakening. The inner light experiences of the Gelug-pa and Hesychasm will be studied principally as they are described in the popular orthodox theologies of each tradition and not in their devotional or mystical literature. A focus on theology rather than mysticism will, I believe, help naturally strike the balance between constructivism and perennialism advocated by Kapstein: “What is needed, surely, is a reopening of comparative work on religious experience, but without insisting upon a single ‘common core,’ and now fully alive to the dialectical relationship among cultural, historical, and linguistic constructions and the universal possibilities of human experience.”4 I hope the reader is struck by the remarkable parallels that exist between the experiences of inner light in these two disparate contemplative traditions, for it was precisely this sense that drew me to the subject. A sober comparative study of the Palamite and Gelug-pa literatures should, however, avoid any perennialist tendency to equate their respective goals, largely because their authors have presented them in the highly systematic terms of their own orthodox faith traditions. While showing the experience of inner light to be of central importance for both Gelug-pa and Hesychast, I will also explore the ways it is defined and prescribed in relation to the specific and elaborate value systems of Tibetan Buddhism and Eastern Christianity...

Religion and morality.

The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions? These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations. Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose “religion” and “morality” into theoretically grounded elements; have adopted parochial conceptions of key concepts—in particular, sanitized conceptions of “prosocial” behavior; and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. We argue that to make progress, the categories “religion” and “morality” must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that shape and constrain relevant cultural variants. We adopt this fractionating strategy, setting out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. Our goals are twofold: to produce a detailed picture of the current state of the field, and to provide a road map for future research on the relationship between religion and morality.

Oppo, Andrea (ed.). Shapes of Apocalypse: Arts and Philosophy in Slavic Tought (review)

Slavonic and East European Review, 92, 3, 2014 Reviews Oppo, Andrea (ed.). Shapes of Apocalypse: Arts and Philosophy in Slavic Thought. Myths and Taboos in Russian Culture. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2013. 285 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $85.00. This collection of ten essays tackles an ambitious topic: the treatment and representations of apocalypse in Slavic culture. The project is founded on the premise that the Slavic approach to apocalypse is somehow distinctive and unique. In the introduction the volume’s editor, Andrea Oppo, suggests that this is due to the Slavic emphasis on the ‘kairotic idea of apocalypse’ (p. 32) — not apocalypse as an imagined end to linear, historical time, but apocalypse as the individual’s subjective experience of spiritual awakening, countering the view of time as progress. If this is indeed the case, then it needs to be explained and demonstrated at greater length; statements such as ‘it would seem that the sensitivity of the Slavic soul plays a significant role in a similar “vote of no confidence” against the reality of progress’ (p. 32) are too speculative to carry much weight. The extension of the common understanding of apocalypse to the more diffuse concept of a personal, immanent revelation, akin to an epiphany, stretches the meaning of the term so far that the coherence and focus of the volume’s subject risk being undermined. The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with philosophy and comprises two essays. Despite its considerable length (32 pp.) Giancarlo Buffo’s exploration of Rozanov and the apocalypse does not entirely succeed in clarifying the mysteries of its topic. Sentences such as ‘only Rozanov, after his brief lapse into anti-Semitism, penetrated to the bottom of the “theodramatics ” that characterizes the processuality of the religious meta-history of the West’ (p. 36) or ‘if the mystery Israel of [sic] is circumcision as the wedding ring that joins God to His people’ (p. 37) only add to the confusion that often characterizes Rozanov’s writing. The second contribution by Riccardo Paparusso investigates the relationship between Christianity and the prehistoric, mythic and biological, as presented in the late work of the Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka. Complex ideas are raised, but not always in a clear or concise manner. Virtually identical sentences are repeated on pages 68 and 72. The choice of Rozanov and Patočka as philosophers to frame the exploration of apocalypse in the essays that follow appears somewhat random. Although the editor states in his introduction that Rozanov and Patocka represent the ‘two poles of modern apocalyptic reflection in Slavic philosophy’ (p. 10), this claim is far too general and not substantiated. A contribution on the work of Vladimir Solov´ev, one of the most influential architects of Russian apocalyptical thought, would have been welcome. A consideration of the theological underpinnings of philosophical and cultural treatments of the REVIEWS 515 apocalypse would also not go amiss — do the differences between Russian Orthodox and Catholic teachings not weaken the case for a specific and unique Slavic approach to apocalypse? Part two, on literature, consists of four essays. Vladimir Glyantz explores apocalyptic themes in three works by Gogol´ (‘The Portrait’, ‘The Nose’, ‘The Government Inspector’), connecting these to the false expectation of the end of the world in 1836. Several interesting points are made, but the overall argument remains cloudy. The essay appears to draw on earlier Russian works by the author (including Gogol´ i Apokalipsis, Moscow, 2004). It is incorrect to suggest that scholars have not focused on the religious symbolism of Gogol´’s works (p. 89), or to refer to ‘The Nose’ as a novel (p. 98). The essay ends on a rather apocalyptic note: ‘Gogol’s main religious intuition was not wrong, and perhaps in the same way our world today, running late and breathless on its last lap, is also rapidly reaching the finishing line’ (p. 121). William J. Leatherbarrow’s essay (previously published in 1982) on apocalyptic imagery in Dostoevskii’s The Idiot and The Devils is an outstanding model of concise, elegant and lucid analysis. Although the author modestly refers to it as a ‘working paper’ (p. 132) and draws only tentative conclusions, he...

The Book of Black Fire: An Eco-Theology of Revelation

The Book of Black Fire:An Eco-Theology of Revelation Lawrence Troster (bio) Rabbi Pinḥas says in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish: The Torah that the blessed Holy One gave to Moses was given as white fire written on black fire. It was fire, mixed with fire, hewn from fire, and given by fire, as is written: "From His right, a fiery law to them" (Deuteronomy 33:2). —JT Shekalim 6:1 Introduction What does it mean when we say we believe in the revelation of the word of God? In the Abrahamic faiths, this usually refers to the belief that God has communicated with humans through a prophet (or prophets) and that communication was then written down. Thus those who identify themselves as fundamentalist Christians claim that the (Christian) Bible is "the true word of God" and, therefore, inerrant and unchangeable. Revelation, however, whether from a biblical or a modern theological perspective, is in fact a more complicated process. And when one considers the creation of a modern religious response to the environmental crisis, what we believe about how God communicates will have a significant impact on the way that response will be shaped—for revelation creates and shapes the values and normative actions of a religious community. In rabbinic Judaism, revelation is one of the three central categories of divine action—Creation, Revelation, and Redemption—which have been codified in the traditional liturgy.1 In modern Jewish theology since the [End Page 132] nineteenth century, the category of Revelation has received the most attention because of the impact of the historical analysis of the Bible.2 In recent Jewish environmental theology Creation has been the central concern, while the categories of Revelation and Redemption have been mostly ignored.3 This lack of theological attention has created a disconnection between Jewish environmental theology and the other major concerns of modern Jewish theology, and it has also meant that Jewish environmental theology has been unable to generate the creative new moral imperatives and ritual practices necessary to deal more comprehensively with the environmental crisis. In his article on Process Thought and Judaism, Brad Artson shows how a process theology of revelation can emphasize human partnership with God in an ongoing dynamic relationship. While he shows how this approach is fully compatible with Jewish sources, he does not go far enough in showing the radical implications of such a theology of revelation. In particular, he does not integrate sufficiently the implications for theology of the modern scientific worldview. In this article I will show how a process theology of revelation can broaden and deepen Jewish environmental spirituality and ethics. A theologian who has fully explored the implications of Process Thought for modern eco-theology is Thomas Berry, who asserted that, in this age of environmental crisis, Creation itself must be our primary source of revelation. According to Berry, reading Creation today means learning the new "story" of Creation from the modern sciences of cosmology, evolutionary biology, and ecology. This new theology of revelation must be formulated in the context of science, historical analysis of the Bible, and the ways people spiritually respond to the natural world. In creating this eco-theology of revelation, I will be following the method that Process theologian David Ray Griffin calls "Constructive Post-Modernism": It seeks to overcome the modern worldview not by eliminating the possibility of worldviews as such, but by constructing a postmodern worldview through a revision of modern premises and traditional concepts. This constructive or revisionary postmodernism involves a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, [End Page 133] and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such but only that scientism in which the data of the modern natural sciences are alone allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.4 Through this methodology science can help illuminate meaning in the universe, while religion can infuse science with ethical responsibility. In fact, following Thomas Berry and also the work of Norbert Samuelson, the facts of modern science are essential to a modern theology of revelation.5 Jewish Law and Environmentalism In a Jewish context, a theology of revelation is pivotal as well as to how halakhah is created and...

Why I Believe in Science and Believe in God: A Credo

Abstract. The conflict between science and religion is not irremediable: the world concept of science is changing, and the change brings about a rapprochement with religious beliefs in some fundamental areas. One such area is the question of original creation. Recent findings regarding the nature of the universe show the improbability of its having arisen in the course of a random process. The perennial religious intuition of a transcendental act of creation is a logical entailment of the randomly entirely improbable fine tuning of the natural laws and processes that the observed universe manifests.

Aesthetics and Judaism, Art and Revelation

Aesthetic sensation (sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch) and aesthetic creation (architecture, music, poetry, painting) are at the base of religious thought and culture. In rabbinic memory, the Temple in Jerusalem was once the adornment (noyo) of the world (Zebahim 54b), its altar compared to a wolf (53b), its sanctuary to a lion, narrow behind and broad in front (Middot 4:7). Religious environments build upon a mass of physical stuff: objects and texts, stories and sound, organized and reorganized by acts of custom and law. Empirically, the co-relation between aesthetics and religion is the self-evident subject of art history and the history of religions, its existence, if not its significance, a matter of fact. At a second order of analysis, the relationship proves cryptic. The religious culture of Judaism depends upon the presupposition that the presence of God, the glory of God, is made manifest to human consciousness through visual, aural, and tactile media. Such a theoretically fraught claim and the counterclaims against it are of unique concern to theological speculation and philosophical analysis. They relay human consciousness past the limits of reason into the dim vagaries of aesthetic judgment and religious intuition, into Plato's cave, the holy of holies.

On the Unique Origin of Revelation, Religious Intuition, and Theology

On the Unique Origin of Revelation, Religious Intuition, and Theology

On the Unique Origin of Revelation, Religious Intuition, and Theology

On the Unique Origin of Revelation, Religious Intuition, and Theology

Overleeft Godsdienst De Rationalisering?

SummaryIn his early books and the Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Habermas has criticized religion as a pre-modern form of life. But in later texts, especially Nachmetaphysisches Denken, he acknowledges religious intuitions as indispensable for the critical continuation of culture. On the base of an accurate analysis of his propositions on transcendence, metaphysics and metaphors we can conclude, that he thinks too quick to have a rational and objectivating grip on these matters. At the same time metaphors function in his theory and the life world gets a transcendent status. Further his very rational discourse ethics are a more abstract and less human way of life than religious morality. Habermas's conception of religion could be made consistent, if we situate religion immediately next to the life world, which is neither pre-modern nor modern. Of course some definite forms of religious thinking have grown more modern, e.g. the individual beliefs and the internal criticism. When in the end Habermas asserts, that the continuation of modern culture, especially the sustaining of rationalisation, depends on the substantial influence of the life world, than this also applies to the influence of religion.