Ma`rifat Farhangi Ejtemaei

Religiosity has many variations. Today, the ineffectiveness of classifying individuals into two categories of religious and non-religious in measuring religiosity is more evident than before. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the types of religiosity. The great influence of elites on the destiny of societies increases the importance of studying religiosity. This study examines the academic elites who, while simultaneously believing in the three principles of monotheism, prophecy, and resurrection, believe in transpersonal dimensions and express their belief in social rules. In this study, based on the grounded theory method, a conceptual framework consisting of 23 components under 6 axes of conversation was used to measure the epistemic religiosity of the interviewees. Analysis of the collected data led to the distinction of three groups: “non-believers in the principles of religion,” “non-believers in Sharia,” and “believers in Sharia.” The latter group is divided into several other groups, one of which is “holists in practice.” In this study, due to the diversity and breadth of the data, only the epistemic positions of students in this category are studied. Under this category, three types were found: “Cautious”, “Combined (persuasive-argumentative)”, and “Argumentative”.