There are so many things about life and nature that we know little to nothing about. Most of the things we know come from theories, which in actuality are supported assumptions or claims. A theory is never proven, but rather supported, because there is not a definitive answer or reason. We still do not even know everything about the human body itself let alone everything about the earth and universe. If we only relied on what can be validated or proven, many aspects of our lives would be nonexistent to us and not even worthy of discussion.
Religion, however, gives people a peace of mind and a sense of purpose to live and aspire to be an upstanding person, when the only thing constant in our lives is death. To only take life as it is at face value would lead to a very meek existence in my opinion. The only definite thing you would know in life is that you would eventually die, and the concepts of life after death or having morals would not be relevant to your existence.
Maybe I'm being too extreme here, but this was on my mind when I left class. I was left feeling that so many people try to prove or support claims that they will never really know and that maybe would be better off not knowing. Education is important, but some go through life only wanting hard factual knowledge, and miss out on so many other elements of life. Religion often answers the unknown so that we can live fulfilled lives, and whether it is based on invalidated or unproven points, I wholeheartedly do not care.
How do you all feel about grundnorms that are present in our society? What purpose do they serve and is it valid to have these grundnorms in place?
As I'm sure you're aware of, there are many people in this world who claim no religion. I do not think that they live an unfulfilled life because of this. I think you are arguing that there are some things that we just will never understand. And while that might be true, I think the list of things truly beyond our ability to find out is very limited. I will argue that we in fact live in a society in where everything must be validated; validation of new ideas is how progress is made. Perhaps f you were able to give me an example of some of these unknowns you had in mind, I could better argue, but for right now I will say that those who are inclined to want fact supported answers rather than Grundnorms will see an unknown as a challenge to fill in the variable the unknown causes.
ReplyDeleteI think that people use religion to answer the unanswerable questions and you can't blame them for wanting to have faith in the after life or to understand why things happen, but I think the problem is when people have faith and choose to ignore the facts. I know people who do not want to learn about other religions because they are scared that it will undermine their beliefs. Or they do not want to learn about things like evolution because this challenges their beliefs. If people examine these things and still retain their beliefs then that's fine, but ignoring other's opinions and living in ignorance is not okay. Kelsen believes that there needs to be active discussion and that no one should claim that they know the absolute truth, which is what many people attempt to do when it comes to religion. There needs to be a better argument for a person's belief than that people just need to have faith.
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