A Critique of the theory of founding authority as the criterion for justifying religious beliefs with emphasis on the views of Abdolkarim Soroush and William Clifford

The Theory of authority of founder is a religious criterion indicating that the prophet has the authority by simply being the prophet. In Islam however, in contrast with Christianity, the holy book has the authority and the prophet’s authority arises from it as well. However, Mixing text authority with founding authority it has been considered that the authority of the holy book is due to the founding authority. In this study, I attempt to review two of the extreme theories about this issue. As Clifford (1845) pointed out, authority is defined as building one’s beliefs based on the authority’s credibility and the Authority himself. Based on this definition of authority, he criticized it and assumed that relying on authority makes beliefs non reasonable. On the other end of the spectrum, Soroush, in his book “Expansion of the Prophetic Experience”, mentioned that religious experience and religion itself are human made phenomena. Based on his theory, expansion of the religion is a result of the expansion of the prophet’s internal and external experience. He also pointed out that revelation is a function of the prophet’s personality and characteristics. To reserve the dynamics of religion, he focused on the founding authority instead of the authority of the holy book, and perhaps even attributed the book’s founding authority. Consequences of Soroush’s theory on prophecy and revelation is greater than he assumes. This opinion questions the religion itself. However, with a moderate view point, it is possible to keep both the social and personal aspects of religion as well as the principals of it. Since this value of judgment from religious beliefs, it is worth exploring the reason for why this criterion has been focused on as well as its shortcomings, and the outcomes of this criterion being applied to Islam. The present thesis attempts to describe Clifford’s and Soroush’s theories, analyse, and criticize each of them with a descriptive and analytical methodology.