The Divine Puppets In a memorable passage in book I of Plato’s Laws, the Athenian expounds upon the psychological sources of human action: ATHENIAN: Do we assume that each of us is one person? KLEINIAS: Yes. ATH: But we have inside ourselves two opposite and mindless advisors, which we call pleasure and pain. KL: That’s the case. ATH: In addition to these, we have opinions about the future, who...

Recent research has shown that religious individuals are much more resistant to utilitarian modes of thinking than their less religious counterparts, but the reason for this is not clear. We propose that a meta-ethical belief that morality is rooted in inviolable divine commands (i.e., endorsement of Divine Command Theory) may help explain this finding. We present a novel 20-item scale measurin...

What role does the notion of the divine play in Aristotle’s account of a good life? This is not an obvious question; god appears relatively infrequently, for example, in the Nicomachean Ethics. But it might interest us, if only because of the perplexing appearance of the divine in Book 10 of that treatise, as that which appears to underwrite the choice of a contemplative life. The cognate quest...

Background: Determining the genetic gender has been a human's inaccessible will during the history. Today science resolves the problem; pre implantation diagnosis (PGD) is used as a method of genetic disease diagnosis and gender determination. The holy Quran in many verses ascribes genetic gender determination and recognition to Allah, the Almighty. Hence, according to some, genetic gender...

Abstract Does God trust human persons? Very little in philosophy of religion has been written about God's trust, which seems striking for two joint considerations. First, many the Abrahamic faith traditions posit that union and close personal relationship with is telos life. Second, to be an essential element ideal, relationships between persons. While there much literature emphasizes role on s...

since the word “treasuries” has been mentioned in the koran and hadiths, scholars of the interpretation of the koran and hadiths as well as theologians, philosophers and gnostics have discussed it from several aspects. in this paper, we first interpret it literally, formulating the scholars’ opinions about it; then, we develop the discussion to the “key of treasury” and “treasurers”; finally,  ...