Question : Can revelation be justified by reason? Discuss.
(2015)
Answer : Revelation is an act of revealing or disclosing some form of truth, knowledge, divine nature etc by some divine entity to the seeker. This seeker may be a mystic. Through such a revelation, an individual may claim to know the reality and its nature. Source of religions are the religious books or scriptures. These scriptures are claimed to be a result of divine revelations, thus provides sanctity and authority to the respective religions. In addition ....
Question : Do faith and reason go together? Discuss.
(2015)
Answer : Reason and faith are sources of religious knowledge. Religious knowledge is related to the God, soul, moksha, devotion, prayers and rituals. Reason and faith are considered as a source of justification for religious belief.
Some philosophers are of the opinion that both are compatible to each other and there exists no conflict between the two. That is to say if reason properly employed or used and faith properly understood will never produce contradictory and competing claims.Infact ....
Question : Can reason be used to justify faith?
(2014)
Answer : Faith and reason are both sources of authority upon which beliefs can rest. Reason generally is understood as the principles for a methodological inquiry, whether intellectual, moral, aesthetic, or religious. Thus is it not simply the rules of logical inference or the embodied wisdom of a tradition or authority. Some kind of algorithmic demonstrability is ordinarily presupposed. Once demonstrated, a proposition or claim is ordinarily understood to be justified as true or authoritative. Faith, on ....
Question : Is religious faith opposed to reason?
(2013)
Answer : When faith is analyzed by the reason it leads to logical fallacies. And, on other hand, the idea obtained from religious faith becomes similar to the idea obtained from reason.
So it can be said that faith has no reason and reason has no faith. Or faith cannot have a reason as a foundation and Reason can no have faith as a foundation. The pattern of functioning of both is different. We can not say both ....
Question : The concept of revelation is essentially opposed to religious pluralism. Do you agree? Give reasons for your answer.
(2012)
Answer : In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some truth or knowledge through supposed communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. According to John Hick- “Revelation is the imparting to users of divinely authenticated truths. The concept of revelation is the important base of religious belief. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that revelation may be defined as the communi-cation of some truth by God to a rational creature through means ....
Question : Discuss roles of reason, revelation and faith in the sphere of religion. Are they compatible? If not, how to resolve their apparent inconsistency?
(2008)
Answer : Reason is, collectively, those faculties of the mind which engage in such activities as forming judgments, making decisions, solving problems, explaining, generating general principles, and giving particular examples. Aristotle called reason the ability to fill in the middle term in a syllogism. Reason is often contrasted with emotion, tradition and faith and is thought by rationalists to be more reliable than these in discovering what is true or what is best. The meaning of the ....
Question : Explain the notion of revelation. Does revelation stand in need of confirmation? Discuss and also explain the difference or similarity between revelation and ‘Shruti’.
(2006)
Answer : Revelation is supernatural communication from God to man, either oral or written, though usually restricted to its written aspect, that is, to the whole contents of Holy Scripture. It is the discovery by God to man of himself; God showing or unveiling himself: that is, his Being, his moral will and his redemption in God. This is over and above of what he has made known by the light of nature and reason. Revelation is ....
Question : "Religious faith consists of a set of profoundly unfalsifiable assumptions that govern of all of a person are other beliefs."(R.M. Hare)
(2002)
Answer : Faith is a belief, professedly without proof (i.e. above an acceptable standard of evidence). It is the confident belief in the truth of or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Formal usage of the word "faith" is usually reserved for concepts of religion, as in theology, where it refers to a trusting belief in a transcendent reality or Supreme Being. Informal usage of the word "faith" can be quite broad, and may be used ....
Question : Point out the relative importance of reason and revelation in religion. Are two compatible? Discuss.
(2002)
Answer : Reason precedes faith as a method of knowing the existence of God. One cannot believe in a God in whom they have no knowledge of, and cannot truly know something without reasoning about that which is to be known. A certain amount of knowledge (and thus reason) must be known of God if one is to have saving or experiential faith. One may have knowledge without faith, but one cannot have faith without knowledge. Reason ....
Question : Miracles (religious) are not possible.
(2001)
Answer : A miracle is a sensibly perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can only be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle-worker. Many folktales, religious texts, and people claim various events they refer to as "miraculous". People in different cultures have substantially different definitions of the word "miracle". Even within a specific religion there is often more than one of the term. Sometimes the term "miracle" may refer to ....
Question : Reason and Revelation.
(2000)
Answer : Reason and revelation, these the two terms seem contradictory. The word "reason" is seen to oppose faith and the miraculous. Some welcome reason and treat it as a gift from God to be used to its fullest extent. The fact of the matter is that people have several viewpoints concerning the relationship between revelation and reason. Some completely eliminate one or the other from their belief-system; others tend to lean more heavily toward one over ....
Question : Religion, Theology and philosophy of Religion.
(1999)
Answer : religion is very much linked to both philosophy of religion and theology. Philosophy of religion' is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the philosophical study of religion, including arguments over the nature and existence of God, religious language, miracles, prayer, the problem of evil, and the relationship between religion and other value-systems such as science and ethics, among others. It is sometimes distinguished from "religious philosophy", the philosophical thinking that is inspired and ....
Question : Elucidate the nature of religious knowledge. Is revelation sufficient for religious knowledge? Discuss.
(1999)
Answer : A crisis developed has over the nature of religious knowledge among philosophers and theologians. This problem has much to do with the relationship between religious knowledge and religious language. More the crisis can be resolved to a greater extent with the explanation of the epistemic content of the religious knowledge. Most of the theologians consider their knowledge concerning God to be cognitive. They claim that there are cognitive contents are there in their religious knowledge ....
Question : Place of prayer in religion.
(1998)
Answer : Prayer is the act of communicating with a deity or spirit in worship. Specific forms of this may include praise, requesting guidance or assistance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or an expression of one's thoughts and emotions. The words used in prayer may take the form of intercession, a hymn, incantation or a spontaneous utterance in the person's praying words. Praying can be done in public, as a group, or in private. Most ....
Question : Bring out the roles of Reason and Revelation in Religious knowledge.
(1997)
Answer : Revelation is the act of revealing or disclosing, or making something obvious and clearly understood through active or passive communication with the divine. Revelation can originate directly from a deity, or through an agent, such as an angel. One who has experienced such contact with or communication from the divine is often known as a prophet. Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. Revelation or information from ....
Question : The path of knowledge.
(1996)
Answer : Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge-not knowledge in the intellectual sense-but the knowledge of Brahman and Atman and the realization of their unity. Where the devotee of God follows the promptings of the heart, the jnani uses the powers of the mind to discriminate between the real and the unreal, the permanent and the transitory. Jnanis, followers of nondualistic or Advaita Vedanta, can also be called monists for they affirm the sole reality of ....
Question : Discuss the nature and inter relationship of different foundations or religious belief.
(1995)
Answer : All major theistic religions claim that God himself is the cause of religious belief. The believers of these religions put forward different bases for the foundations of religious belief. One major foundation of religious belief is Revelation. A religious man proclaims that God has revealed himself in some way both by showing by showing something of him in events and also by providing some true or important and otherwise unknowable propositions. Even revelation may include ....
Question : State and examine the various definitions of 'dharma'. Which one of these is most acceptable and why?
(1995)
Answer : There is no unanimity on the definition of religion. Each and every philosopher has tried to define it in one's way. All the definitions are partially correct but certainly lack some elements necessary to define religion in its true spirit. According to Gandhi 'Truth is God'. Gandhi has given an entirely new dimension to the definition of religion. The basis of his definition is quite rational in view of the fact that religion in its ....