Amir Rastin Toroghi; Vahideh Fakhar Noghani
Volume 11, Issue 2 , December 2023
Abstract
The epistemology of prayer in theology mostly relates to considering the possibility of belief in the prayer being answered. Some philosophers of religion such as Davison hold that we cannot know whether God has answered particular prayers, because various reasons other than our petitionary prayers may ...
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The epistemology of prayer in theology mostly relates to considering the possibility of belief in the prayer being answered. Some philosophers of religion such as Davison hold that we cannot know whether God has answered particular prayers, because various reasons other than our petitionary prayers may be effective in the obtaining of the state of affairs in question. In addition, the fact that we cannot know God's reasons for the realization of the desired outcome makes the possibility of reaching this certainty weaker. On the other hand, some theologians like Choi think that it is possible to reach this certainty according to the evidences coincident with the occurrence of the state of affairs in question. Through the comparative study of Davison's and Choi's views and the analysis of their arguments, this article tries to introduce the kind of certainty required in the theology of prayer. Some religious evidences and proofs acting as an epistemic guarantee of the divine answer to the human prayer along with reasoning through the best explanation according to the available evidence can strengthen the hypothesis that God answers some petitions.
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Volume 11, Issue 2 , December 2023
Abstract
Cognitive science of religion (CSR) is a new field of cognitive science that was established in the 1990s when a group of cognitive science researchers focused on projects about religion. The three fundamental questions of this field in the most general state are: 1. How are religious ideas represented ...
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Cognitive science of religion (CSR) is a new field of cognitive science that was established in the 1990s when a group of cognitive science researchers focused on projects about religion. The three fundamental questions of this field in the most general state are: 1. How are religious ideas represented in our brain? 2. How are religious ideas acquired? And 3. Which practices institutionalize these ideas? Most scientists of the cognitive sciences of religion considered religious beliefs and behaviors to be a by-product of the cognitive powers of the human mind. "Cognitive neuroscience of religion", as a sub-branch of cognitive science of religion, seeks to identify the neural correlates of religious beliefs, emotions, actions and experiences with brain imaging methods. In this article, in the first step, we introduce the "two main approaches in the cognitive neuroscience of religion", which include the "inefficient brain activity" approach and the "normal output of the brain nervous system" approach. In the second stage, we will discuss "various models of explaining religious experience" in cognitive neuroscience. These models include "God's halmet", "altered states of consciousness", "neuro-physiological relaxation response", "neurocognitive-cultural process", "recruitment of all brain regions", "social cognition region of the brain" and "combination of hierarchical predictive coding model"(HPC) and complexity drop model of supernaturality (CDMS). In the third stage, we show that the introduction of cognitive neuroscience to the explanation of religious experience faces limitations and challenges that need to be resolved. These four challenges are: "conceptual diversity and complexity", "particularity of mental matter", "semantic challenge", and "ontological challenge".
