From God’s Relation to Corona to Disagreement about Disagreement: An Essay by Yaser Mirdamadi

Adventures in Religion and Philosophy (4);

From God’s Relation to Corona to Disagreement about Disagreement

Author: Yaser Mirdamadi

Amidst the hustle and bustle of daily life and far from the public eye, adventures unfold in the labyrinth of religion and philosophy in Iran and the world that may not have a direct or immediate impact on our lives. After all, we are not all scholars of religion and philosophy, and perhaps we do not even have a remote hand in these matters. But experience has shown that the seemingly quiet intellectual events around us can, in the medium or long term, leave a lasting effect on our collective life.

In the monthly column "Adventures in Religion and Philosophy," we address events that, although currently unfolding in Iran or the world, may only be heard of later. These events could be the publication of a book, article, or journal; they could be a lecture, debate, dialogue, or intellectual dispute; or the pursuit of a thinker, the tracking of a trend, or the narration of a virtual wave that has occurred around a topic in religion or philosophy.

1_ God’s Relation to Corona

The global coronavirus pandemic began in Iran from Qom and soon forced the closure of the Kaaba in Mecca and the Shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf. Ultimately, despite resistance, it did not spare the Shrine of Fatima Masumeh in Qom and the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad from closure, and also disrupted Friday prayers, congregational prayers, and religious gatherings. These events raised various doubts among a wide segment of the devout.

Part of these doubts stemmed from this: How could the shrines of Shia Imams, which are called "houses of healing" (dar al-shifa) and to which the devout turn for refuge during crises, now themselves be closed to prevent the spread of disease? The city of Qom, which in some Shia narrations is called the "refuge" in crises and the "nest of the family of Muhammad," happened to be the very origin of the virus's spread. God's benevolence was also called into question amidst the spread of this ruthless and deadly virus. These doubts escalated to such an extent that Morteza Javadi Amoli, a teaching cleric and son of Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, stated in an interview with the Shafaqna website that clerics had failed to provide adequate answers to the theological ambiguities fueled by the coronavirus.

Perhaps for this reason, Abdollah Javadi Amoli released a short video message and tried to answer these ambiguities. He considered Corona a divine test that makes people mindful of God, and the result of these tests will be known on the Day of Judgment. However, by reciting a poem, he emphasized that even during the "cruelty" of the Beloved, i.e., God, one must remain faithful: "If the Beloved acts cruelly, within that cruelty lies fidelity," because divine cruelty is also "among the manifestations of divine grace."

Another video response was released by Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi. He tried to explain the common traditional answer to the problem of evil for everyone. Mesbah's answer was not only more detailed but also more technical. The summary of his answer was that the material world is inherently imperfect, and this inherent imperfection causes natural evils such as floods and earthquakes to occur. However, creating an inherently imperfect world, with all its evils, is a wise act; because this world is the place for human evolution and testing. For evolution and testing, humans must have free will, and for human free will to be real, they must be able to commit ugly deeds, even on a large scale. Hence, moral evils such as war, plunder, and rape arise. But despite all the natural and moral evils of the world, the good of the world outweighs its evil; because the world is the place for the evolution of the human being, a human being who is to become "God's vicegerent" (khalifatullah).

Among the faithful, it was not only traditionalist or fundamentalist clerics who sought to respond intellectually to the theological crisis of Corona. Religious modernists were not far behind. The website “Zeitoon” published an interview with Abdolkarim Soroush. Soroush, at least in this interview, distanced himself completely from traditional justifications in response to the problem of evil. In answer to the question of where God is in the midst of this crisis and why He does not answer our prayers, he replied that one can only expect salvation from God in the afterlife, and in this world God is merely a beloved who solely gives meaning to life, and no special expectation can be had of Him:

“If your entire expectation of your friend is that they sort out your affairs, this is not called friendship, but if you have a friend whom you simply love, and if anyone asks you what role this friend plays in your life, you say ‘None! My life is not empty because I have such a friend. That is all.’ God is essentially like this.”

Nevertheless, in the end, Soroush also added: “We said, a thousand welcomes to the affliction that comes from the Beloved”; a judgment similar to that of Javadi Amoli, who had recommended patience with the “cruelty” of the Beloved during the time of Corona.

The religious modernist movement is usually portrayed as a monolithic current; whereas Iranian religious intellectualism, despite a general consensus in negating religious fundamentalism, possesses an ineradicable diversity within itself. This internal diversity, however, has not much attracted the attention of historians of contemporary Iranian thought. This diversity also manifested itself in the reaction to this interview. Specifically, Soroush’s interview provoked the objection of the New Left tendency among religious modernists, as well as the jurisprudential tendency of religious modernists.

For example, Taghi Rahmani, a religious modernist close to the New Left, in an interview with “Nour World Network,” without naming names, considered Soroush’s theological view to be a neoliberal theology that, in order to exonerate God from the evils of the world, sends God on “leave” or “privatizes” Him only for the elites. In Rahmani’s view, this leads to the flourishing of religious fundamentalism. Because fundamentalists, by bringing the absent God onto the scene and making Him tangible for the masses, proceed to suppress others. According to Rahmani, instead of neoliberal theology or religious fundamentalism, one must speak of liberation theology; a socialist theology with Christian roots, whose Islamic-Iranian version was first developed by Nakhshab and then by Shariati. In Rahmani’s view, liberation theology seeks neither to exonerate God nor to condemn Him, but is action-oriented and seeks God in the reduction of the natural and moral evils of the world.

The other objection came from Mohsen Kadivar; the representative of the jurisprudential tendency among religious modernists, who is himself a mujtahid. He also, in an interview with the “Zeitoon” website, stated in criticism of Soroush’s theology that “the absent God or the theology of absence is a positivist view of God.” Although Kadivar did not specifically explain what he meant by “positivist view,” it emerged from the context of the conversation that he meant that some expect to be able to experience God’s hand in every single detail of the world’s affairs, and when the world does not yield to such a desire, they then dispatch God entirely to the pavilion of absence. However, Kadivar himself, later in this interview, presented an empiricist theological view.

According to Kadivar, God does not administer the world directly, but through “divine traditions.” Part of these traditions are the very laws that natural-empirical scientists discover. In his view, the material world is inherently imperfect, and the imperfection of this world generates evil, although this evil is relative and not absolute. Human free will also generates evil in some cases, but humanity needs this free will to attain perfection. It can be seen that Kadivar’s response to the theological crisis of Corona bears many similarities to the responses of Javadi Amoli and Mesbah Yazdi. This similarity is not accidental. All three, despite profound disagreements in other areas, have been deeply influenced by the tradition of Sadrian philosophy (known as “Transcendent Theosophy”). In Kadivar’s words in this same interview, “Divine philosophy, such as Transcendent Theosophy, powerfully proves the pervasive presence of God.”

2. Disagreement about Disagreement

Our human lives are full of disagreements. From minor disagreements, such as one’s preferred hair color, to major disagreements, such as the best way to combat global warming and the coronavirus. Setting aside practical disagreements large and small, history is replete with epistemic disagreements, especially religious and philosophical ones, such as the disagreement over whether God exists or not.

Setting aside philosophers’ disagreements over every single philosophical issue, the irony of the matter is that philosophers also have profound disagreements with one another over the philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of “disagreement” itself. The discussion of the “epistemology of disagreement” in Western philosophy (especially analytic philosophy) is relatively new, dating back no more than two or three decades, although philosophers from ancient Greece to the present have addressed this topic sporadically.

Some philosophers consider disagreement to lack epistemic value, while others consider it to possess epistemic value. Consider two philosophers who have more or less the same knowledge, intelligence, and skill (technically considered “epistemic peers”). One of them has reasons in favor of theism (suppose the “argument from design”) and the other has reasons in favor of atheism (suppose the “argument from evil”).

This type of disagreement is technically called “epistemic disagreement among epistemic peers.” Does this disagreement itself have an effect on the epistemic justification of the disputing parties? Specifically, does the mere fact of epistemic disagreement count as a reason—equally destructive—against the belief of both parties? If so, is this destructive reason to such an extent that both philosophers should entirely abandon their beliefs?

If that is the case, then both parties must suspend their belief, meaning the theist must abandon their theism and the atheist must abandon their atheism, until independent reasons in favor of each party’s view are found. However, the abandonment of belief here does not occur because one party to the disagreement has convinced the other with a particular reason (for example, the theist convinced the atheist with the “argument from design,” or the atheist convinced the theist with the “argument from evil”). Rather, the abandonment occurs because the mere event of epistemic disagreement between two epistemic peers has arisen. That is, the very fact of disagreement is considered a reason, from above and equally, against the position of both parties in this philosophical dispute.

But perhaps the mere fact of disagreement among epistemic peers has no epistemic value. Both parties to this dispute have their own reasons that do not convince the other, and as long as no specific reason is presented that refutes the belief of either party to the disagreement, each party to the dispute is epistemically permitted to maintain their belief; the theist is permitted to remain in their theism, and the atheist is permitted to remain in their atheism.

If you are interested in this philosophical topic, you might find the first book written in Persian on the “epistemology of religious disagreement” worth reading. This book is titled “Religious Disagreement: An Epistemological Inquiry” and was written by Ghazaleh Hojjati. This work was published by Taha Publishing in Qom in the solar year 1398 (2019/2020).

In this work, which was originally his doctoral dissertation, Hojjati defends a view that accords epistemic value to disagreement in the domain of religion; meaning that disagreement diminishes the certainty of religious belief, but not to the extent that the believer is compelled to abandon their religious belief entirely (i.e., to suspend it). Rather, it means that while recognizing the rival view (the atheistic view) as a view possessing—at least some degree of—reasonableness, the theist ultimately also considers their own theistic view reasonable and does not relinquish their belief. In this way, pluralism is recognized and bigotry is washed away, without diminishing the flourishing of theism. Thus, one can provide a philosophical excuse for the “war of the seventy-two nations,” and in such a way that the prosperity of the factory of “unbelief and faith” is not diminished.