IB/TOK Name: ____________________________

January 2016
Notes on Religious Knowledge Systems (Part 2)

Essential Questions

1. What are the questions and issues to which religion provides solutions or answers?
2. What concepts, methods, and activities are employed in religion in order to reach those
solutions or answers?
3. By what means can we evaluate the solution or answers that religion provides?
4. Should we regard those solutions or answers as knowledge?

The Purposes of Religious Knowledge

1. What are the issues that religion addresses? See list on page 310 of TOK textbook. (To what
extent are these issues different from issues addresses by other areas of knowledge, particularly the
human sciences and natural sciences, ethics, history, and the arts? Do we really need religion in
order to deal with these issues?)

2. If the other areas of knowledge have How answers, does religion supply the Why answers? Do we
need religion to give us a sense of purpose or meaning?

Definition of Religion

3. How easy (or difficult) is it to say what is, and is not, a religion?

4. We might claim that religions comprise:

 A creed – set of beliefs
 A cultus – a set of practices
 A code – a set of ethical values or precepts
 A community – a set of people who subscribe to the religion

Exceptions? Additional characteristics?

Conventions and Methodology

5. How important are conventions and traditions? Is procedural knowledge (rituals, sacraments) an
important component of religious knowledge?
6. How is religious knowledge generated? (Can we find parallels to methods used in generating
knowledge in other AOK?)

7. What roles do the various ways of knowing play?

a. Faith: seems to be central. Is it required? If so, why?

In the religious context, what “kind” of faith is needed?

 The faith that says Yes” to knowledge claims for which no evidence is possible?
 The faith that is an openness to ideas, a disposition of trust?

Protestantism made faith central, with its emphasis on the individual’s relation with God.

Some religions are not very concerned with the concept of faith.

b. Reason. Can reason lead to religious knowledge in the absence of faith?

The rational arguments for the existence of God:

 Ontological argument: God is defined as existing, as a Being greater than which it is
impossible to conceive. Since it is greater to exist in reality than to exist only in the
mind, God must exist in reality.
 Cosmological argument: God is the “first cause”, the one that started the cosmic
sequence.
 Teleological argument (argument from design): A universe this complex needed to
have a designer (and a purpose).

Are some religious concepts beyond the reach of human reason? (Should we expect to be
able to comprehend and understand God?

c. Language: What is the role of language in religious knowledge?

The importance of key concepts (heaven, nirvana, sin, grace, karma) and the difficulty of
defining them clearly.

The problem of literal language v. metaphorical language.

The problem of sacred language and translation.

Are some religious concepts beyond the reach of language?

d. Emotion

Is an emotion experience of God a requirement for belief?

Are emotions at the core of religious knowledge and practice (love, empathy, awe, joy, fear,
compassion)?
 e. Sense perception

Is the wonder (and the puzzle) of the observed natural world a foundation for religious
belief?

f. Imagination, intuition, revelation

Does belief in the existence of the supernatural require imagination?

Does revelation (a direct, personal experience of the supernatural, or some mystical

experience) qualify as evidence and justification for belief?

g. Memory

Personal and Shared Knowledge

1. Religion is a deeply personal part of identity for some people. (What is the importance of the
personal, even private, elements of religions with which you are familiar?)

If you have no religious beliefs yourself, are you affected in any way by the religious culture of
your surrounding society?

2. It is important to distinguish between what a religion teaches (remembering that there may be
many different strains of a religion) and the beliefs and practices of the people who follow it. In
other words, be very careful about making generalizations! (It is generally wiser to inquire than to
state.)

3. To what extent does understanding religious knowledge depend on gaining a sense not just of what
beliefs people hold, descriptively, but what they mean to them in their cultural associations and
influences on their worldviews?

Religious knowledge claims

1. Metaphysical knowledge claims: statements that go beyond the physical world; claims that cannot
be proved false on the basis of evidence.

2. Value judgments: claims about the nature of goodness and morality

3. Definitions (concepts and language): clarifying exactly what is meant by “soul”, “nirvana”,
“heaven”, etc. can involve extensive religious scholarship and debate.

4. Observational claims: Claims made in sacred texts can sometimes be in conflict with knowledge
claims established in other areas of knowledge. (Sometimes a conflict between literal
interpretation v. a metaphorical interpretation.)
5. Predictions: Religions often predict what will happen in the future – after death or some general
transformation in the universe through the action of a diety.

Religious Perspectives

1. Religions give perspectives on the world.

2. Questions for reflection on perspectives and religions:

 What are the basic assumptions of this faith or religion? Are there “givens” taken as
indisputably true?
 What are the values associated with this set of beliefs? How do you know what they are?
 What are held to be important facts according to this religion or the particular religious
community?
 What are the processes of validation for knowledge claims and settling differences of
interpretations or views within the group? What councils of authority or leaders make final
decisions on matters of doctrine?
 What are the implications for personal behavior or other actions of the body of beliefs?

3. It is important to remember that religious perspectives are sometimes willfully misrepresented for
political or ideological purposes.

The Varieties of Religion

1. How do we deal with the fact that there are a multitude of religions, and of religious knowledge
claims (and sometimes those claims are contradictory)? What reasons, if any, are there for
believing that some religions are superior to others?

2. There are three possible ways of responding to the fact that different religions contradict each
other:
o One religion is true and all the rest are false.
o All religions are false.
o All religions point toward the same underlying truth.

Other possible responses? Which is your response?

3. Can a person be “religious” and not subscribe to any organized religion? (Is pantheism a religion?)