Ahmet Erkan

This article reconsiders the familiar opposition between Avicenna and al-Ghazālī on the afterlife by distinguishing the question of possibility from the question of nature. It argues that the fundamental divide in Islamic eschatological thought is not initially between Avicenna’s bodiless immortality and al-Ghazālī’s bodily resurrection, but between theistic materialist and dualist accounts of the self. Materialist models that appeal to reassembly or re-creation fail to secure numerical identity after bodily death. By contrast, dualism grounds post-mortem survival in the persistence of the immaterial soul, a framework shared by Avicenna and, with qualifications, al-Ghazālī. Their real disagreement concerns the mode of post-mortem existence: whether the surviving soul remains bodiless or is rejoined to a body. The article argues that neither side decisively refutes the other. Consequently, Avicenna and al-Ghazālī should be seen as dualist allies on possibility and intra-dualist rivals on nature. This redrawing clarifies the philosophical structure and significance of Islamic eschatological debates.

This article discusses a particular example of the intelligent design argument, which is one of the theistic arguments put forward to prove the existence of God. The intelligent design argument, in contrast to evolutionary theory, is central to the debate between religion and science. In this context, the problem that the article deals with is the validity and persuasiveness of William A. Dembski's design argument based on spatial regularities. Both historical and contemporary versions of design arguments mainly focus on spatial regularities. However, with the widespread acceptance of evolutionary theory in scientific and philosophical circles, design arguments based on spatial regularities have been severely criticized. The article aims to examine a contemporary example of design arguments based on spatial regularities, and to determine whether it maintains its strength against the objections originating from the theory of evolution. Literature review, one of the qualitative data collection methods, was used in the study, and the data were philosophically evaluated in terms of consistency and defensibility. This subject, which has a very comprehensive place in the debates in the context of philosophy of religion, science and religion, is limited to Dembski's proof and objections to him. As a result of this study, it will be argued that Dembski's design argument based on spatial regularities is not convincing enough in the face of criticisms originating from the theory of evolution.