Some intellectuals in contemporary Iran, among whom one can mention Abdolkarim Soroush and Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, hold that Islamic law (fighh) is duty-oriented law. They strongly believe that nowadays in the modern world, which is the age of the prevalence of the paradigm of rights compared with ancient world which was the age of the prevalence of the paradigm of duties, Islamic law has lost its equilibrium between duties and rights. Accordingly they put emphasis on the significance of modifying and reconsidering presuppositions on which duty-oriented law has been constructed. They clearly announced we need “right-oriented Islamic law”.

It would be the case that God exists but as s/he is allegedly alive object s/he may doesn't want to indicate him/herself for everyone in every circumstances. So, one in such a condition is justified in not accepting but not denying God's existence.

Only the one who makes errors can discover the truth, because discovering the truth is not but correcting errors in the light of new ideas.

Is it possible at all for the limited to encounter and have personal (not theoretical) relationship with the limitless? Besides, is it useful for it? Or as atheistic existentialists claim, it leads to destruction of the limited? Beside all of this, what is the exact meaning of "the confrontation of the limited and the limitless"?

Fragmentary analytical thoughts (7)

A person who claims once and for all s/he has  discovered the truth is like person who claims a bottle of water is sufficient for all of his/her life.

“Unexamined life is not worth living” is it really so? I’m not sure. Because it is possible that examined life is not worth living too, and even  worse than unexamined life. Am I sure about it? Definitely no. Let me try.

Just  it.

Do you believe in god? This is a controversial question people have been asking each other since the beginning of time. What would you say about it? In this short article, I try to briefly explain what I find on the issue without any definite claim and I seriously doubt if any one could.

First of all, let’s distinguish between the two kinds of theism which is necessary in this discussion. Theism in the narrow sense means believing in the “existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, supremely good being who created the world.”(1) And in the broad sense, it means believing in the “existence of some sort of divine being or divine reality” (2)

According to me, seemingly one can be justified in not believing in god in the narrow sense because of the “problem of evil”. Unfortunately there is no opportunity to elaborate it here. According to this opinion, the vulgar idea of god which almost all of Jewish, Christian and Muslims share will be rejected.

Now let’s look at theism as a broad meaning. Briefly speaking, to believe in god in this sense has equal evidences with nonbelieving and it’s up to you to choose either one. Nevertheless still there is a nontheoretical preference for believing in god: “psychological health”. Some intellectual theists, who believe in god in the broad meaning, claim believing in god-divine reality-is psychologically useful.

Besides that, it is commonly accepted that believing in god is a never-ending issue which human being have been coping with throughout the history.

Y.M      

1. Philosophy of religion, the big questions, edited by Eleonorse Stump and Michael J. Murry, Blackwell,1999,p.157.

2. Ibid, p.157.