Knowledge And Imagination In The Religious Beliefs

Knowledge is considered one of the most valued ideals for human beings due to the impact it has on the lives of individuals and as it constructs the basis of personal development. An individual can form knowledge through experience, perception, or discovery, which can either be theoretical or practical. Hitchen’s statement presents the acquisition of knowledge based on the concept of evidence as he proposed that knowledge, without the assistance of evidence, can be ‘dismissed’. By “dismissing”, the idea would be treated as unworthy of serious consideration. Arguably Hitchen’s statement is false as a priori knowledge for instance, does not require evidence from experience to understand it. Whereas Hitchen’s statement is credible in the case of propositional and explicit knowledge. By examining different Areas of Knowledge, Hitchen’s statement yields an impending question: to what extent can knowledge be asserted without evidence or dismissed without evidence? To initiate the process, we can consider the idea through the Areas of Knowledge in religion and history. In both areas, evidence is derived from various sources to serve to strengthen the written records that the author is creating, whereby the text would eventually become a piece of evidence. In religious knowledge systems, evidence is the holy scriptures which is the primary source to justify a religious claim. Whereas in history, historians would employ several pieces of evidence to ensure that the record is written in the most objective perspective. The areas of knowledge of religious knowledge systems and history will be examined to justify Hitchen’s proposal.

Religion is an anchor of fundamentals that dictates attitude and faith in those who believe in the system. In Buddhism, the examination of one’s mind is the premise of the religion. A fascinating side of Buddhism is that Sense Perception can give rise to a new meaning of the religious scripture, as the text only serves as the basis of the belief system. Therefore, if there is a contradiction between what we can observe and what Buddhist scriptures propose, the scriptures can be rejected and the theory can be revised. This reasoning parallels to the process of scientific method, where a hypothesis is made based on a theory and an experiment is carried out to confirm or revise the theory. For example, a Buddhist’s belief of karma, which is the accumulation of a person’s actions that would eventually contribute to future consequences, is similar to the scientific idea of Newton’s Third Law of Motion which states that every action gives rise to an equal and opposite reaction. Based on the claim, Buddhism can be construed as a scientifically reasonable religion due the way it acquires the evidence based on scriptures and empirical evidence. This proves that a claim asserted without evidence can be dismissed.

However, it can be argued that religion relies more on Faith and Emotion rather than evidence of truth in order for an individual to fulfill their psychological needs. For instance, Buddhists live by the five moral precepts, which prohibit slaughtering of living things, theft, sexual misconduct, lying, and abusing drugs or alcohol. These moral principles induces the belief in Buddhism as it psychologically helps individuals to look inward to achieve inner calmness and enlightenment as well as overcome suffering or fear through compassion. Though these principles of achieving enlightenment are stated in the Buddhist scriptures, they can be dismissed since no evidence of people achieving enlightenment is collected and recorded. However, the reason why people continue to worship Buddha is that they assert faith into the system to fulfill their psychological needs. Consequently, Buddhist faith endures despite the knowledge without evidence.

By evaluating the two perspectives regarding the reliance for evidence in the field of religion, it can be concluded that evidence acquired by Sense Perception is required to solidify the belief in religion. In the past, Buddhists often believed that humans died because God decreed it or due to karma. On top of this, an individual's ability to follow the five moral precepts determines whether they will go to nirvana. However, in the twenty first century, scientific discovery has proven that humans die due to health issues such as heart failure or cancer, not because of God or karma. The lack of evidence for the existence of nirvana further weakens the religious claim regarding divine power. Therefore it can be argued that religious knowledge can be dismissed as it does not have substantiated evidence. Ever since the period of Ancient Greece, philosophers such as Epicurus had already justified that worshipping god is a waste of time simply because there is no existence after death. Alternatively, some philosophers appeal to the fact that the prevalence of the belief that God exists is itself evidence for the truth of that belief and thus religious knowledge can be asserted.

However, although there are debates on what constitutes as evidence in religion, it is important to consider that the purpose of religion is to fulfill an individual's psychological needs, giving rise to perspectives and ethics. Therefore, although some theories lack supporting evidence, the effect it has on people's psychology allows them to assert their faith in the religion. Thus, religion tends to cater more on the Faith and Emotions Way of Knowing rather than Sense Perception.

Moreover in the realm of history, it can be argued that evidence is necessary to justify a claim. This is because unlike in science where we can repeat experiments, the past cannot simply be rerun and thus, evidence derived from historical records is relied on to form knowledge. In the past Historians always utilized evidence to assert a historical claim. For instance, Thucydides relied only on ‘factual’ evidence to provide an account of the Peloponnesian wars and considered historians who utilized myths and tales in their historical writing like Herodotus, as ‘liars’.

As a result, the role of the historian is highly valued by our society as the information in which the historian provides allows us to better understand ourselves in the present through understanding the roots of modern institutions, people’s choices, and subsequent events that allowed us to arrive at our current situation. By having these fundamental understandings of the past, we are enabled to effectively solve problems in the present. Therefore, the future is highly governed by the past as it can forecast the present, which is the basis of the future. If a historical claim is proposed without evidence, then it can be dismissed due to the unreliability since the wrong piece of information has the possibility of becoming a threat to society. This threat can be presented by the Mccarthysim period in the United States. In an attempt to expose and exterminate suspected communists in the country, U.S. senator Joseph Mccarthy made accusations without proper regard for evidence of what the accused had done wrong in the past. As a result of not using evidence, thousands of people were imprisoned or executed, the political spectrum was drastically narrowed, contributing to a long lasting damage to democratic institutions. Therefore, evidence is obligatory to assert historical knowledge.

However, Napoleon Bonaparte once argued that, ‘What is History but a fable agreed upon?’. The statement implies that humanity’s depiction of the past stands in truism merely because we have come to the conclusion that it is so based on Consensus gentium, not because we are presented with an undeniable truth that is derived from a variety of evidence. For instance, many people would visualize Joseph Stalin as a ruthless dictator who terrorised his own people during the Great Purges. However, they would also fail to recognize that he was the leader who had transformed the Soviet Union into a modernized nation due to his plans for industrializing the Soviet Union, called the Five year plans. Therefore, perhaps evidence is unessential to approve a historical claim.

Moreover, Imagination is often employed as a Way of Knowing when there is insufficient evidence as Historians would have to ‘fill the gaps’ with their imagination on what could’ve occured, though, the historians prediction must reflect what is humanly possible during the time period. As there is no evidence presented and the historian is merely ‘filling the gaps’ with their imagination, it can be argued that evidence is unnecessary to form historical knowledge. One may similarly agree with this statement by referring to the utilization of Memory in history. Though memory is defined as a recollection of the past, memory does not provide a veridical representation of events as accurate as experience since it becomes skewed due to our subconscious behaviours. This is known as confirmation bias. Due to difficulties in confirming the validity of Memory, memory may not be regarded as susceptible evidence in history. Though in many cases, memory utilized to form historical knowledge. For instance, there are many written versions on the event of 9/11.

By evaluating these two perspectives, it is concluded that history is necessary to form historical knowledge. Though Historians employ Imagination to generate historical claims, according to historian Charles Freeman, one still cannot make any assertions which contradict viable evidence. Moreover, although Memory has its limitations, in reality historians persist to employ memory to form historical claims. This is because historians cannot simply rerun the past in order to witness the event and take better notes. The memory of witnesses allow us to deal with the past, and figure out what happened from the echoes that remain. Even Thucydides utilized eye witnesses and his own experience of the Polepenisian wars to assert his claims. However, all sources in history have their bias limitations and thus, any source cannot be treated in isolation. A variety of sources must be employed by the Historian to analyze in order to allow the historian to remain objective.

To conclude, the reliance for evidence depends on the Area of Knowing being focused on. In the realm of history, evidence is the prominent force to form a historical claim. Whereas in religion, it is established that evidence is necessary however, Faith and Emotion is a more important factor in asserting the knowledge. In this essay, we established that the purpose of religion is to fulfil an individual's psychological needs. However, if science persists to disprove theories in religion, will religion continue to exist, or perish from our future society? Moreover, in history we established that evidence is required to assert knowledge. However, the interpretations of the sources will vary from each historian due to their political, ethical, ideological beliefs. Thus, how would historians and readers make a critical judgement on which version is the most truthful in representing our past?