معرفت‌شناسیِ «دعایِ حاجت»؛ با تأکید بر دیدگاه اسکات دیویسون

This article examines the epistemology of petitionary prayer from the perspective of Scott Davison. Davison argues that even if God’s answering of prayer is metaphysically possible, acquiring knowledge or justified belief concerning answered prayer is epistemologically almost impossible. First, in most cases, the desired outcome does not occur. Second, even when the desired outcome occurs, the complexity of the laws of nature and the inscrutability of divine purposes justify skepticism regarding claims of answered prayer. According to Davison, there is always a serious possibility that God brought about the desired outcome for reasons independent of the petitioner’s prayer. Moreover, skeptical theism, which theists have proposed as a response to the problem of evil, can also be employed as an argument for skepticism concerning answered prayer. In response, Isaac Choi argues that Davison conflates Cartesian certainty with rational belief. Where there is a meaningful correlation between prayer and the occurrence of the desired outcome, one may rationally believe that the prayer has been answered, even if Cartesian certainty is unattainable. This article, while explaining Davison’s view, argues that the fundamental problem in the epistemology of petitionary prayer is the non-occurrence of the desired outcome. Otherwise, if the desired outcome occurs under distinctive conditions, it can reasonably be regarded as an answer to prayer. Given this challenge, believers in prayer must either regard God’s attribute of being “responsive”(al-Mujīb) as a metaphysical attribute and refrain from identifying particular instances of its manifestation, or treat it as a testable attribute and take negative cases into account.