نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسنده English
Within a rationalist framework, all choices ought to be grounded in sound reasons; when such reasons are available, one should follow the strongest among them. If, however, the evidences are equipollent, agnosticism (suspension of judgment) would be the theoretical mandate. Yet agnosticism is practically infeasible in many domains, since agents must adopt a stance in action. A way of life is one such domain: every individual, knowingly or not, lives by some form of it. The present paper argues that, under these conditions, the most reasonable course is to adopt a religious way of life. The supporting case combines an Argument from Reasonableness with a Pascalian conditional formulated in terms of dominant expected utility: on aggregate, the expected payoff of choosing a religious form of life exceeds that of its alternatives; hence, in practice, it should be preferred. This approach differs from standard versions of Pascal’s Wager in several presuppositions and functions: its aim is a practical preference for a religious way of life; it explicitly factors in that way of life’s constraints; and it does not assume that non-adherents are wholly deprived of afterlife benefits. The argument faces several intra-religious objections—such as the alleged absence of a necessary condition for salvation, the lack of qaṣd al-qurbah (intention of nearness) as a condition of worship, tensions with the principle of barāʾa (presumption of non-liability), tensions with qāʿidat al-jubb (“Islam effaces what preceded it”), and the putative worthlessness or low worth of religiosity grounded in such reasoning. After setting out the argument, the paper addresses these objections and offers replies.
کلیدواژهها English
