Religion and Knowledge

Religion and Knowledge PDF Author: Dr Elisabeth Arweck
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409471160
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Religions have always been associated with particular forms of knowledge, often knowledge accorded special significance and sometimes knowledge at odds with prevailing understandings of truth and authority in wider society. New religious movements emerge on the basis of reformulated, often controversial, understandings of how the world works and where ultimate meaning can be found. Governments have risen and fallen on the basis of such differences and global conflict has raged around competing claims about the origins and content of religious truth. Such concerns give rise to recurrent questions, faced by academics, governments and the general public. How do we treat statements made by religious groups and on what basis are they made? What authorities lie behind religious claims to truth? How can competing claims about knowledge be resolved? Are there instances when it is appropriate to police religious knowledge claims or restrict their public expression? This book addresses the relationship between religion and knowledge from a sociological perspective, taking both religion and knowledge as phenomena located within ever changing social contexts. It builds on historical foundations, but offers a distinctive focus on the changing status of religious phenomena at the turn of the twenty-first century. Including critical engagement with live debates about intelligent design and the ‘new atheism’, this collection of essays brings recent research on religious movements into conversation with debates about socialisation, reflexivity and the changing capacity of social institutions to shape human identities. Contributors examine religion as an institutional context for the production of knowledge, as a form of knowledge to be transmitted or conveyed and as a social field in which controversies about knowledge emerge.

Religion and Knowledge

Religion and Knowledge PDF Author: Dr Elisabeth Arweck
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409471160
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book

Book Description
Religions have always been associated with particular forms of knowledge, often knowledge accorded special significance and sometimes knowledge at odds with prevailing understandings of truth and authority in wider society. New religious movements emerge on the basis of reformulated, often controversial, understandings of how the world works and where ultimate meaning can be found. Governments have risen and fallen on the basis of such differences and global conflict has raged around competing claims about the origins and content of religious truth. Such concerns give rise to recurrent questions, faced by academics, governments and the general public. How do we treat statements made by religious groups and on what basis are they made? What authorities lie behind religious claims to truth? How can competing claims about knowledge be resolved? Are there instances when it is appropriate to police religious knowledge claims or restrict their public expression? This book addresses the relationship between religion and knowledge from a sociological perspective, taking both religion and knowledge as phenomena located within ever changing social contexts. It builds on historical foundations, but offers a distinctive focus on the changing status of religious phenomena at the turn of the twenty-first century. Including critical engagement with live debates about intelligent design and the ‘new atheism’, this collection of essays brings recent research on religious movements into conversation with debates about socialisation, reflexivity and the changing capacity of social institutions to shape human identities. Contributors examine religion as an institutional context for the production of knowledge, as a form of knowledge to be transmitted or conveyed and as a social field in which controversies about knowledge emerge.

The role of knowledge in Western religion

The role of knowledge in Western religion PDF Author: John Herman Randall
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Knowledge and Religion in Early Modern Europe

Knowledge and Religion in Early Modern Europe PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900423148X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This collection of essays examines interplays of knowledge and religion in early modern thought. Spanning from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, it considers varied formations of knowledge and religion, knowledge about religion(s) and irreligious knowledge in early modern Europe.

The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge

The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge PDF Author: Ninian Smart
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400868882
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Ambitiously undertaking to develop a strategy for making the study of religion "scientific," Ninian Smart tackles a set of interrelated issues that bear importantly on the status of religion as an academic discipline. He draws a clear distinction between studying religion and "doing theology," and considers how phenomenological method may be used in investigating objects of religious attitudes without presupposing the existence of God or gods. He goes on to criticize projectionist theories of religion (notably Berger's) and theories of rationality in both religion and anthropology. On this basis he builds a theory of religious dynamics which gives religious ideas and entities an autonomous place in the sociology of knowledge. His overall purpose is thus "to indicate ways forward in the study of religion which free it from being crypto-apologetics or elevating poetry." Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Problem of Religious Knowledge

The Problem of Religious Knowledge PDF Author: William T. Blackstone
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Knowledge, Theory of (Religion).
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
"This book is designed for those who have this concern and puzzlement (though, of course, it offers no guarantee of resolving such puzzlement). It is not designed to be a highly specialized and technical treatise in philosophy of religion but one which can be read and appreciated by students and educated laymen. It has two specific purposes, that of providing a clear picture of development in contemporary philosophy and the impact of these developments in philosophy of religion, and that of systematically exploring the question, "Is there religious knowledge?" Contemporary philosophy is used as a point of reference for devising a framework within which this question can be answered. Space limitations have forced an all-to-brief treatment of some positions. Such brevity tends to distort but I have made efforts to avoid such distortion." -Author's Preface.

Morals Not Knowledge

Morals Not Knowledge PDF Author: John H. Evans
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520297431
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
"Academics have long claimed that the relationship between religion and science concerns knowledge of the physical world, and that conflict ensues because religion has one way of knowing and science another. For example, it is claimed that to find the age of the Earth religious people look to holy scripture and scientists look at the age of rocks. This book shows that this is indeed true among the elites who focus on this debate. However, contrary to the assumptions of elites and public discourse in general, that same relationship and conflict does not exist between religious citizens and science. This book shows that regular religious people in the U.S. are at most in conflict over a few fact claims with science, and that this limited conflict does not lead to conflict with scientific claims writ large. More importantly, American religion has changed since the 1960s, de-emphasizing knowledge claims about the physical world, and becoming more focused on social relationships and thus morality. This book shows that any religion and science debate in the public is not about scientific claims about nature, such as the age of the Earth, but rather about morality - and opposition to the morality implicitly promoted by scientists"--Provided by publisher.

The Western Construction of Religion

The Western Construction of Religion PDF Author: Daniel Dubuisson
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801873201
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The Western Construction of Religion not only provides a critical assessment of the whole history of religionas it is understood in the West but offers better ways of constructing the study of this central part of human experience.

Islam and Knowledge

Islam and Knowledge PDF Author: Imtiyaz Yusuf
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
ISBN: 9781780760681
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This is an era when the Islamic World is making a range of attempts to redefine itself and to grapple with the challenges of modernity. Many schools of thought have emerged which seek to position modern Islam within the context of a rapidly changing contemporary world. Exploring and defining the relationship between religion and knowledge, Ismail Rafi Al-Faruqi, a distinguished 20th century Arab-American scholar of Islam, formulated ideas which have made substantial contributions to the Islam-and-modernity discourse. His review of the interaction between Islam and knowledge examines the philosophy behind this relationship, and the ways in which Islam can relate to our understanding of science, the arts, architecture, technology and other knowledge-based fields of enquiry. This book includes contributions from Seyyed Hossein Nasr, John Esposito, Charles Fletcher and others, and will prove an essential reference point for scholars of Islam and students of philosophy and comparative religion.

Basics of Religious Education

Basics of Religious Education PDF Author: Gottfried Adam
Publisher: V&R unipress GmbH
ISBN: 3847102656
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
This volume offers an introduction to all questions of teaching Religious Education as a school subject and as an academic discipline related to this subject. The chapters cover most of the aspects that religion teachers have to face in their work, as well as the theoretical background necessary for this task. The volume is a textbook for students and teachers of religious education, be it in school or in an academic context, who are looking for reliable information on this field. The book has proven its usefulness in German speaking countries. This volume is the English translation of the German Compendium of Religious Education (edited by Gottfried Adam and Rainer Lachmann). The present English version is based on the 2012 edition which aims for a most current representation of the field. The background of the book is Protestant but its outlook is clearly ecumenical, and questions of interreligious education are considered in many of the chapters. The compendium continues to be widely used in Germany, Austria and Switzerland - as an introduction to the field and as a handbook for students who are preparing for their final exams. The English edition makes this compendium available to students and colleagues in other countries.

Faith Versus Fact

Faith Versus Fact PDF Author: Jerry A. Coyne
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143108263
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
“A superbly argued book.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion The New York Times bestselling author of Why Evolution is True explains why any attempt to make religion compatible with science is doomed to fail In this provocative book, evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne lays out in clear, dispassionate detail why the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion—including faith, dogma, and revelation—leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions. Coyne is responding to a national climate in which more than half of Americans don’t believe in evolution, members of Congress deny global warming, and long-conquered childhood diseases are reappearing because of religious objections to inoculation, and he warns that religious prejudices in politics, education, medicine, and social policy are on the rise. Extending the bestselling works of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, he demolishes the claims of religion to provide verifiable “truth” by subjecting those claims to the same tests we use to establish truth in science. Coyne irrefutably demonstrates the grave harm—to individuals and to our planet—in mistaking faith for fact in making the most important decisions about the world we live in. Praise for Faith Versus Fact: “A profound and lovely book . . . showing that the honest doubts of science are better . . . than the false certainties of religion.” —Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith