Topics Religion

Question Some people say that you don't have to have faith to be in touch with a supernatural reality, rather you can have an intuitive access to that reality. Isn't that really just faith since it's not based on reason? I mean what is "intuition" anyways? I'm sure there are a lot of different definitions but I could use some of that "analytic" style of philosophy clarity on this concept of intuition. (even if that's by definition impossible)

Accepted:
January 18, 2012

Comments

I wonder if it is faith. There is an Islamic philosopher called Ibn al-Arabi who argued that for him there was no point in proving the existence of God since He is just so obviously all around us. Here he was thinking of one of the beautiful names for God, al-Muhit, the omnipresent. Suppose someone says that the presence of God is so evident to him that it is like believing that today is Thursday, or that the hands I see banging away on the keys of my computer are my hands. As Wittgenstein says, these are not claims that really one needs evidence for.

Perhaps the same could be said for the knowledge that the world is infused with divinity?