Research
Research Papers
Academic work exploring philosophy of religion, naturalistic explanation, and the phenomenology of experience.
The Numinous in Creation
Asrar ul Haq · Department of Philosophy, Purdue University
This paper argues that the 'Creation' clip from Terrence Malick's film The Tree of Life, when paired with Zbigniew Preisner's Lacrimosa, constitutes an artifact capable of evoking a numinous experience as theorized by Rudolf Otto. Using Otto's six-element classification and the Draper–Keller revisions regarding ethereality and ecstasy, the paper demonstrates how the artifact evokes the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. An empirical survey conducted at the Purdue Fluids Lab addresses the objection of subjective mediation, concluding that while the experience is individually filtered, the artifact remains an objective center for numinous encounter.
A Critique of Dumsday's Argument from Religious Experience at Zeitoun
Asrar ul Haq · Department of Philosophy, Purdue University
This paper critiques Travis Dumsday's argument for supernaturalism from the mass religious corporeal visions reported at Zeitoun between 1968 and 1971. It argues that Dumsday's rejection of naturalistic explanations is not sound because chemically and historically plausible alternatives remain conceptually and technologically possible, including a Zinc Sulfide based photoluminescent-resin hypothesis.