Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

may be obvious to many of our readers
It
religious knowledge has sometimes
that
enhanced, and at other times utterly
greatly
the wellbeing of peoples, nations
devastated,
cultures throughout history. Religion is
and
brought up in casual as well as formal
frequently
as necessarily entangled with
conversations
of conflict, conquest, subjugation and
forces
Whether God exists or whether
imperialism.
is a force for good or evil are interesting
religion
but not quite within the scope of
questions
Rather, we ask questions such as “How
TOK.
are we that God exists?” and “How can
sure
untangle causation from correlation when
we
at the consequences and implications of
looking
religiousknowledge?”
WRETCHED man, earth-fated to be cursed;
OH
of plagues, and miseries the worst!
Abyss
on horrors, griefs on griefs must show,
Horrors
man’s the victim of unceasing woe,
That
lamentations which inspire my strain,
And
that philosophy is false and vain.
Prove
in crowds, and meditate awhile
Approach
shattered walls, and view each ruinedpile,
Yon
and children heaped up mountain high,
Women
crushed which under ponderous marble lie;
Limbs
unnumbered in the pangs of death,
Wretches
mangled, torn, and panting for their breath,
Who
beneath their sinking roofs expire,
Buried
end their wretched lives in torments dire.
And
when you hear their piteous, half-formed cries,
Say,
from their ashes see the smoke arise,
Or
will you then eternal laws maintain,
Say,
God to cruelties like these constrain?
Which
you these facts replete with horror view,
Whilst
you maintain death to their crimes was due?
Will
IV. Ethics
III. Methods and tools
IV. Ethics
(Voltaire 1755)
I V. E T H I C S
Our situation at the beginning of the 21st century
is like that of Europe at the beginning of the 17th
century. Then, as now, the landscape was littered
with the debris of religious conict. It is fair to say
that religion did not distinguish itself at that time.
The secularization of Europe grew directly out of the
failure of religion to meet the challenge of change. As
one who deeply believes in the humanizing power of
faith and the stark urgency of coexistence at a time
when weapons of mass destruction are accessible to
extremist groups, I do not think we can aord to fail
again. Time and time again in recent years we have
been reminded that religion is not what the European
Enlightenment thought it would become: mute,
marginal, and mild. It is re, and like re, it warms but
it also burns. And we are the guardians of the ame.
(Rabbi Sacks 2003)
161