Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul Book Review The Book Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul by William Chittinck is written comprehensively to explain and illustrate the fundamental of intellectual knowledge in the thinking world especially from an Islamic context. The author of the book is a Sufi Islamic scholar, at the beginning of his life most of his research was focused on understanding what the world of Islamic scholar were concluding about reality and other philosophical reasoning behind why we are here, and what our role in this life. He also learned Arabic and Persian to mitigate any language barriers that limits his research in the Islamic world. After long years of research in understanding Sufism and Islam he felt …show more content…
The structure of the book is organized to introduce new concepts to the reader earlier in the book, and the author strengthen these concepts by discussing them in following chapters to engage the reader and reinforce learning. Chapter One the author mainly focuses on providing basic understating of intellectual knowledge, as well as comparing the difference between transmitted knowledge and intellectual knowledge from modern and a premodern point of view. Furthermore, in this chapter the author provided various verses and quotes from the Quran and the Hadith, to show how the idea of acquiring knowledge through intellectual knowledge is aligned with basic Islamic belief, and how God commends every human being to think for themselves and not believe in false gods. Also in this chapter the author discusses the main goals of intellectual knowledge and how it guides us on the right path to understating our innersole. Along with explaining the main human disciplines required for achieving these goals such as rejecting what we know about things that we acquired in the past by transmitted learning to allow us start with a pure mind to avoid pitfalls of believing in false
Fakhry, M. 1997. Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism: A Short Introdu ction. Oxford: One World Publications.
Is there life out there in the great beyond? It is a question that many of us have asked, but there is no real answer, no tangible evidence to validate the existence of other intelligent beings. All we have are so-called experiences that earthly people have had with these beings, like me. I remember, as a child, I stayed awake late one night. I was lying in bed admiring the stars outside my window when I saw a bright light in the distance. It moved in impossible ways I could not explain, even to this day. It was only for a moment, but the memory of this unexplainable phenomena has stayed with me ever since. If there are other intelligent beings like us living in distant worlds, how do we explain their standing in religious history? Are they gods or angels? Are they our creators? In decades past, people who claim to have had ufological experiences have banded together to create religious societies in their quest to become closer to extraterrestrial life. While all of these societies support different views on UFOs and religion, all have one common belief – there is life out there and they are real and powerful beings far more advanced than humans in technology and psychic abilities. Throughout this research paper, I will establish how some of these religious societies were formed, and describe in detail how their belief system works and why they are considered religious in nature.
Before we can introduce this theme, we must first discuss, what is wisdom literature? We must also discuss, what is wisdom? Wisdom can be defined as “the ability to cope”, “the art of steering”, “one who achieves expertise”, or “the quest for self understanding and for mastery of the world”. These definitions, among many others, describe the word “wisdom”, yet it cannot be placed into one single defining category. Rather, wisdom has no single definition, but can be considered a search that will never end. Wisdom is a lifelong search, one that can be constantly improved, augmented, and changed. In a theological sense, wisdom can be considered to be the fear of the lord, receiving instruction from him, human experience, and mysteries of creation. One who pursues wisdom in this sense must hear wisdom obediently and pray to receive wisdom.
Frequently there is an absence of understanding when it comes down to the point of what religion is and how it is characterized/translated. Religion is an arrangement of conventions that individuals obey and trust in. Moreover, the Islamic faith for Muslims is not thought to be only a religion but rather basically a lifestyle. Islam means submission to God and this can be found in the way the greater part of Muslims lead their every day lives through acquiescence to the Qur 'an and teachings of the Prophet. The Quran is known to be the fundamental source of Islamic faith, practice, and law. This paper particularly addresses the role that interpretation plays in connection to the three areas Hadith, Islamic Law and Sufism,
“In thinking about religion, it is easy to be confused about what it is.” (Smart, 1992) To combat this, Smart uses seven dimensions to define common characteristics of religion. Much of what will be explored will fit his dimensions. The practical and ritual dimension can been seen in all three religions through worship and rituals and patterns of behaviour. The latter are those acts that help the believer develop spiritual awareness or ethical insight, such as yoga or meditation in Buddhism and Hinduism. The experiential and emotional dimension of religion explains that religion feeds on human emotions and key events from history to illustrate this is, the enlightenment of the Buddha, or the visions of Muhammad. A person will not follow something without meaning or emotion driving it. The narrative or mythic dimension of religion refers to the use of story telling in religion. Typically, all faiths use stories to illustrate their beliefs or events in history, whether they might be of things to come, or like in this essay, stories of the Buddha, or Muhammad. The use of story telling is important as the stories are often based on accounts of history or documents that have been found. Story telling can enhance the believers faith and are often integrated into rituals. The doctrinal and philosophical dimension of religion talks about the importance of the holy books/ doctrines. Since the doctrines typically have an account of the leaders life, and the leaders are usually educated, believers read the doctrines to gain an insight into the leaders life; and thus strive to become more like them or abide by their teachings. The ethical and legal
Our knowledge is a key to our success and happiness in our life to give us personal satisfaction. Knowledge is power but not always. Sometimes our self-awareness and growth as an individual gives us negative thoughts that make us want to go back to undo it. Everyone wants to unlearn a part in our life that brought us pain and problems. Good or bad experiences brought by true wisdom can be used for our self-acceptance, self-fulfillment and these experiences would make us stronger as we walk to the road of our so called “life”, but Douglas’s and my experience about knowledge confirmed his belief that “Knowledge is a curse”. Both of us felt frustrated and sad from learning knowledge.
Rationalists would claim that knowledge comes from reason or ideas, while empiricists would answer that knowledge is derived from the senses or impressions. The difference between these two philosophical schools of thought, with respect to the distinction between ideas and impressions, can be examined in order to determine how these schools determine the source of knowledge. The distinguishing factor that determines the perspective on the foundation of knowledge is the concept of the divine.
ibn-Bajja’s theory of intellect can be defined as his theory of how people grasp the forms. He defines intellect as being the soul fully developed. (CAP, Conjunction of the Intellect with Man, pg.274, 12) This concept of the intellect being soul is essential to his theory because it is directly connected to the immortality of the soul. Only the happy are immortal and they are one-- meaning that there is no individual salvation. (CAP, Conjunction of the Intellect with Man, pg.281, 30)
There is a complex process through which a person acquires knowledge, and it depends on the mental capacity of a person as to how much knowledge he can acquire. In Plato’s Republic, we can see what knowledge does for the man in the allegory of the cave. In this story, knowledge was acquired by experience. In Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, we learn what the ultimate intellectual virtues are and that wisdom is the highest of all. Knowledge from Plato and wisdom from Aristotle can be connected through the achievement of intellect.
On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy gives us insight to the philosophical views of a certain sect of Islam, and how it influenced it 's followers to view the world around them. Although it is helpful, this is written from a very biased position and it cannot be said that the views of the author are the views of Muslim culture as a whole. There is a constant attack on another religious group throughout the article that helps us to understand what this specific sect deems right and wrong through comparison of the groups.
Religion and science are complementary elements to our society. The notion that religion and science should not be merged together, does not mean neglecting to understand the parallel relation between these two concepts and will result in a better understanding of our surroundings. This will put an end to our scientific research and advancement because we will be relying on answers provided by religious books to answer our questions. If we don’t argue whether these answers are right or wrong, we would never have studied space stars or the universe or even our environment and earthly animals. These studies have always provided us with breakthroughs, inventions and discoveries that made our lives better.
ABSTRACT: Curiously, in the late twentieth century, even agnostic cosmologists like Stephen Hawking—who is often compared with Einstein—pose metascientific questions concerning a Creator and the cosmos, which science per se is unable to answer. Modern science of the brain, e.g. Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind (1994), is only beginning to explore the relationship between the brain and the mind-the physiological and the epistemic. Galileo thought that God's two books-Nature and the Word-cannot be in conflict, since both have a common author: God. This entails, inter alia, that science and faith are to two roads to the Creator-God. David Granby recalls that once upon a time, science and religion were perceived as complementary enterprises, with each scientific advance confirming the grandeur of a Superior Intelligence-God. Are we then at the threshold of a new era of fruitful dialogue between science and religion, one that is mediated by philosophy in the classical sense? In this paper I explore this question in greater detail.
All the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy admit in thinking of the soul as not only immortal but also as endless. The reasoning of the materialists like Charvakas amount to this that, however consciousness is unseen in external objects, it develops i...
Faith may be a strong basis for obtaining knowledge in religion. Believers perceive a lot of the teachings and practices in a religion as pieces of knowledge due to the fact that they have faith in that religion. In Islam, it is considered wrong to eat pork. Because a Muslim has faith in Islam, their religion, they might consider it a piece of a knowledge that it is wrong to eat pork. This can be considered a piece of knowledge that originates from the faith in the religion. Hence, one can c...
Ghazali in his theory of virtue considers rational knowledge as a complicated discipline which contains three divisions or classes. Mathematics and logic takes the elements of the first class. In this division, mathematics is inclusive of geometry, music, and arithmetic. Physics takes the second division comprising medicine and mineralogy among the other natural sciences. The third and major class is metaphysics, which examines the existence of Creator. It reflects His real meaning and aspects. After providing this division, he classifies ethics in religious science showing that ethics belongs to another type of knowledge called practical religious. He later combines both rational and religious knowledge into knowledge of mystics (Sherif, 1975). This raises the issue, where and how is rational knowledge acquired? As many philosophers put it, ‘Knowl...