What Role Does Religious Knowledge Play In The Two Ways Of Knowing

The knower’s perspective plays a major role in the pursuit of knowledge as well as our apprehension of our own realities and the world that surrounds us. A Perspective is defined as the facts known to one or a mental view that shapes and mold someone’s understanding. Perspectives are developed through life experiences and personal knowledge as well as shared knowledge that spread across various areas of knowing and ways of knowing I am going to be using two areas of knowledge to address this question first is Religion which I will discuss in connection to the two ways of knowing of emotion and imagination and second is history which I will address in relation to the two ways of knowing of language and reason.

Religious knowledge systems are

Religions are all designed in one way or another to appeal to our core as emotional beings. This is even taken as far as physical pain that is in turn supposed to stimulate emotional pain. a good example of this is the performance (tatbir) as form of mourning in a small group within a sect of Muslims called Shia’s. The act is performed by hitting oneself with a sword on the head with the intent of causing blood to come out in reminiscence of the innocent killing of a religious leader. This is a very disputed act in the Shia community however and the small group that do perform it are believed to be closest in blood to the religious leader it is performed for strengthening their emotional connection to him as a leader which ultimately inhibits them from developing an objective opinion on the matter. This stands for the idea that when the knower follows or practices a religion their emotion or instincts play a great role in the manner that they look for knowledge because they of their perspective on the kind of knowledge they need to

This exposes the seeker of knowledge to a degree of conformational bias. This would therefore mean that a historian has to be selective and he would do so on the basis of his own perspective. According to historian Barbara Tuchman, “Each man is a package of variables impossible to duplicate. His birth, his parents, his siblings and the variables inherent in all of these, make up that mysterious compendium, personality-which then combines with another set of variables: country, climate, time and historical circumstance.” This is why the most disputed events in history are those concerning multiple countries or nationalities such as the cause of the world war one. Factors such as culture and country can strongly influence one and expose him to bias, prejudice and discrimination as every human is capable of