Revolution statt Religion: Anacharsis Cloots – der atheistische Revolutionär

Revolution, not Religion. Anacharsis Cloots – The Atheist Revolutionary On March 24, 1794, Jean-Baptiste Cloots, a native of Kleve on the Lower Rhine who styled himself Anacharsis, lost his life under the guillotine in Paris. While the reasons for his execution are diverse, one important explanation can be found in his attitude towards religion in antithesis to that of Robespierre. Cloots’, seemingly inevitable development from deist (i.e. a representative of the natural religion in the tradition of Voltaire) to nihilist as well as his correspondingly evolving views on religion and church are very clearly connected to the different stages of his life. This article will, therefore, integrate Cloots’ biography with his religious views to illuminate his struggle against church and religion in antithesis to Robespierre. In retrospect, Cloots was pioneering not only for rejecting revelatory religion but even more so for his rejection of natural religion.

The Enlightenment and Religion in Europe

This chapter on Enlightenment and religion in Europe brings together the evidence relating to an understanding of the relationship seen in broader terms. Manichean interpretations arguing for the total incompatibility of Enlightenment and religion are no longer tenable. Evidence from the history of Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Judaism is discussed in order to illustrate how reflection on ideas of natural religion, natural law, and the interplay of reason and revelation, by thinkers firmly grounded in traditions of religious faith, allowed a broadening of mutual understanding between the Enlightenment and European religious traditions and contributed to the growth of ideas of toleration.

THE RELIGION OF NO RELIGION: JUNG’S PSYCHOLOGY IN THE HISTORY OF ZEN BUDDHISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY

In the 1930s, Zen Buddhism was hardly known outside Japan. By the 1960s, it had become by far the most popular form of Buddhism in Europe and the United States. Its popularity was born from the general belief that Zen responded to the psychological and religious needs of the individual without incurring the criticisms customarily levelled against religion. Zen was imagined as a practical spirituality that accepted all religions and religious symbols as expressions of a universal psychological truth. Zen was not itself a religion, but a ‘super-religion’ that had understood the inner mechanics of the psyche’s natural religion-making function. Three authors in particular, namely D. T. Suzuki, Friedrich Spiegelberg and Alan Watts, were pivotal in the formation of this narrative. Using Jung’s psychological model as their conceptual basis, they promoted a vision of Zen Buddhism that laid the foundations for the ‘Zen Boom’ of the 1950s and 60s. This article will examine the pivotal role played by Jung’s psychology in the formation of this narrative. KEYWORDS Zen Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Friedrich Spiegelberg, The Religion of no Religion.

TOWARDS AN INTERPRETATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF DEMON POSSESSED/DEMONIZED CHRISTIANS

In the pre-modern world people generally believed in the supernatural. Individuals and culture as a whole believed in the existence of God (or gods), angels, and demons. The visible world owed its existence and meaning to a spiritual realm beyond the senses. However, such worldviews began to die with the coming of Enlightenment of 17th and 18th centuries. The age of reason, scientific thinking, and human autonomy that characterized the Enlightenment brought to being the so-called natural religion. The result was the disappearance of immanent God (Deism) and the rejection of the socalled “excluded middle” – the unseen world of spirits, and the supernatural. Such attitude may well be summarized in Rudolf Bultmann’ famous statement: “It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discovers, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament worlds of spirits and miracles.”

فقہ اسلامی کے رُو سے اقلیتوں کے حقوق اور انکے ساتھ رواداری : ایک تحقیقی جائزہ

Islam is a natural religion and always teaches justice and human rights. Islam has given different rights to non-Muslims under the protection of Muslims (dhimmis) demonstrating endurance, justice, leniency and tolerance with them in various walks of life. They will not be included in Jihad by force. In order to resolve the issues and problems of the dhimmis in the Islamic state, one of them can be made a judge. They have legal protection in the Islamic State. It is the responsibility of the Islamic government to protect their lives and property and if they suffer loss, it will be ordered to pay for them. As a resident of Dar-ul-Islam, they are required to pay a certain amount of Jizyah annually, which will not be demanded from them before the end of the year. The quantity of Jizyah will be set in small amounts depending on their financial situation. In the court of a Muslim judge, both Muslims and Dhimmis are equal in judicial rights. In case of their unjust killing, the Muslim killer will also be killed in retaliation. If they greet a Muslim with Salam, he should respond them with Salam. Gifts and presents can be given to them and also received from them. In the same way, it is permissible to accept their invitation to a meal, provided that the meal itself is not haraam.

God’s Providence and the Plurality of Religions

The ‘Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together’, co-signed on 4 February 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayeb, states: ‘The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.’ The article presents the starting points of correct hermeneutics of this statement. It points out that it is a positive reformulation of the anti-discrimination human rights declarations, which list the criteria according to which people cannot be discriminated. It shows the compatibility of the statement with the Quran, which presupposes a plurality of successive and graded revelations of God and religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It then represents the reactions with which Catholic theologians responded to the statement: the accusation of the Pope of heresy; the claim that while God’s creative will has instilled a natural religion in human beings, it does not positively seek a plurality of religions; the claim that non-Christian religions are an evil by which God allows to achieve greater good; the claim that all religions are wanted by God’s Providence in what is true, good, and beautiful in them as the preparation for the salvation of man in the encounter with Christ. In the end, it discusses the idea of St. John Paul II, who, for several years before the creation of the Abu Dhabi declaration, combined this last idea with the work of the Holy Spirit.

4. Religion

‘Religion' discusses Hume’s various treatments of religion, particularly in the essay ‘Of Miracles’, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, and ‘The Natural History of Religion’. Hume's earlier writings show some interesting implications for religion, including A Treatise of Human Nature and the essay ‘Of National Characters’. Looking at ‘Of Miracles’ shows that Hume’s theme was not the possibility of miracles as such, but rather the rational grounds of belief in reports of miracles. Considering the Dialogues emphasizes the distinction between scepticism and atheism. Meanwhile, ‘Natural History’ emphasizes Hume’s interest in the dangerous moral consequences of monotheism. What is the future for religion? Perhaps Hume was unlikely to have supposed that his writings would do anything to reduce religion’s hold on the vast majority of human beings.

Hume's Rhetorical Strategy: Three Views

In the Fragment on Evil, Hume announces that he ‘shall not employ any rhetoric in a philosophical argument, where reason alone ought to be hearkened to’. To employ the rhetorical strategy, in the context of the Fragment, just is to ‘enumerate all the evils, incident to human life, and display them, with eloquence, in their proper colours’. However, in Part 11 of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume employs precisely this rhetorical strategy. I discuss three interpretations that might account for Hume's decision to employ the strategy in the Dialogues but not the Fragment. The heart of this discussion concerns the relationship between reason and rhetoric. The Dialogues can be understood as part of the education of Pamphilus. Consequently, the three interpretations align with three ways of understanding the roles that reason and rhetoric play in Hume's views on pedagogy and education (or more specifically, Philo's attitude towards the education of Pamphilus).

Cudworth, Bayle y Hume: sobre el ateísmo estratonista

Uno de los debates más interesante en torno a la razonabilidad del materialismo ateo se dio entre los siglos XVII y XVIII a partir de que el anglicano Ralph Cudworth recuperó, para confutarla, una antigua versión atribuida al peripatético Estratón de Lampsaco. Esta versión, y las ideas de Cudworth al respecto, llegan al Continente por obra de Jean Le Clerc, donde rápidamente caen bajo la crítica de Pierre Bayle. Bayle, en efecto, muestra que la posición de Cudworth era menos sólida de lo que se suponía y que, por lo tanto, la hipótesis estratonista no había sido confutada ni mucho menos. David Hume, por su parte, tomó nota de este debate y lo reutilizó como parte importante de sus Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, desde donde alcanzó su más amplia difusión.