WHAT IS RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE? (WITH EXAMPLE) - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The religious knowledge is that knowledge that is based on a belief accepted without rationing or scientific discussion, ie, a dogma that has not been demonstrated.

In this type of knowledge, the person and the reality that surrounds him are conceived and related to something higher, a divinity. This link allows people to believe faithfully in something that serves as a moral and / or ethical support.

Another characteristic of this type of knowledge is that it is based on the written or oral tradition and, sooner or later, it becomes normative, that is, it produces rules, norms and values ​​that must be fulfilled without any question. It also generates rituals and actions that refer to a sacred being.

For example, in Christianity the link with something higher would be God. The knowledge would be transmitted through the written (Bible) and oral (clergy) tradition. The rituals would be the mass or baptism and the unquestionable norms would be those that the higher being spread.

On the other hand, religious knowledge offers the opportunity to explain the events of life from a sacred and supernatural perspective to order and harmonize our world.

Characteristics of religious knowledge

Religious knowledge is based on the following characteristics:

Is dogmatic

A dogma is something that is not questioned, it is undeniable. The only foundation is belief in faith, but it has no demonstrable logic.

Believe in the divine

There is a higher being who is the creator of man and everything that surrounds him. Therefore, it must be worshiped.

God and man. Source: pixabay.com

Has a doctrine

It has a series of imposed norms that concern ethical and moral precepts. They are normally disseminated and guarded by a religious institution or organization.

Is symbolic

Religious knowledge can be expressed through prayers, rituals and other types of actions in which believers participate.

Pilgrimage to Mecca. Source: pixabay.com

Is organized

With divinity as an element that must be worshiped, man can then organize himself by establishing hierarchies that bring him closer to his word and that are his representative on Earth.

Can be collected

The usual thing is that religious knowledge is collected in the scriptures and sacred books. In them prayers, words of prophets, moral orders, historical facts or religious stories are developed.

Jew reading holy book. Source: pixabay.com

Examples

Most of the religious knowledge of any religious expression (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.) meets the above characteristics.

Christianity

If we take as an example Christianity, the most widespread religion in the world, we could say that:

His dogma is faith in God and his word, revealed through his son and the apostles and recorded in the Old and New Testaments. It is based on the message of love and forgiveness to achieve eternal salvation

. Prayers, baptism or attendance at mass are some of the rituals of this religion. It is organized around the Catholic Church, which establishes priestly hierarchies with the Pope as high pontiff.

Woman praying

Science and religious knowledge

In all human cultures, religious belief appears although its biological basis is the subject of debate in fields as diverse as evolutionary psychology, anthropology, genetics and cosmology.

However, little is known about the neural foundations of religiosity. Cognitive neuroscience studies have focused their efforts on neural correlates of unusual and extraordinary religious experiences while clinical studies have focused on pathological religious manifestations.

Hyperreligiosity in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy motivated the first theories linking religiosity to the limbic and temporal areas of the brain, while the executive aspects and prosocial roles of religion diverted research towards the frontal lobes.

Analytical studies have shown that social cognition is closely linked to religious belief.

For results like these, science today is focusing on testing whether religious belief is related to specific patterns of brain activation.

However, there is a tendency to separate scientific knowledge from religious knowledge. This trend has detractors and followers.

Among the detractors is Delisle Burn, who in her text What is Religious Knowledge? makes a whole philosophical argument about why both types of knowledge should be considered valid and radically linked.

Neuroscience Studies on Religious Experience

In the field of neuroscience there are various investigations that have tried to find physical, physiological and scientific evidence on religious experience.

Genetics of religiosity

Twin studies from the University of Minnesota in the United States suggest that there is a genetic contribution to the likelihood of church attendance or the tendency to have self-transcendent experiences.

In fact, it was even affirmed that there is a genetic determination of the wiring of the brain in the service of religiosity.

However, this also seems to be related to non-religious self-transcendence, self-forgetfulness or in other non-religious psychological and social domains.

Religious experience produced or induced by hallucinogenic drugs

In the context of religious rituals, hallucinogenic substances of various types are often present to facilitate ecstatic and mystical states, including: altered perception of reality and self, heightened mood, visual and auditory hallucinations, etc.

Neurological disorder and religious experiences

The relationship between brain function and religious experiences is also evident in cases of brain disease or injury.

In a small group of epileptic patients, intense religious fear, ecstasy, or feelings of divine presence occur as a consequence of the abnormal electrical activity of the brain that constitutes the aura that leads to a seizure.

Although these cases are rare, they are frequent enough to generate speculation.

Something similar has also been found in the case of schizophrenic patients. Or, the reverse (reduced religiosity), in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Magnetic stimulation of the brain and a "sense of presence"

In one experiment, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) applied to the right temporal lobe in non-epileptic individuals resulted in reports of a "sense of presence" that some described religiously (eg, as the presence of God or angels).

Neuroimaging during religious states

Current neuroimaging studies suggest that religious states and beliefs are associated with identifiable changes in the distribution of brain activity.

All these investigations open the way to philosophical and theological questions such as: What is the nature of human religiosity? Is religion a product of biological or cultural evolution? To answer such questions, the approach must rely on theology and philosophy.

Incarnation of religiosity

Research on the neuroscience of religious experience shows that body activity is a necessary part of religious life. The role of the soul or spirit can neither be affirmed nor refuted by science up to this point.

Reductionism versus emergentism

Reductionism posits that religion is nothing more than physiology. While emergentism argues that human religiosity arises from the nature of the organization of physical systems (for example, neurons), and is causal in the sense that it is the organization of the entire system that interacts with the social world and physical.

It follows from this review that religion is a complex sociocultural construction that encompasses a wide variety of group and individual activities, events, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences, so that an appropriate neuroscience of religion must be equally diverse.

Shared religious knowledge and individual religious knowledge

Any belief system is based on a body of semantic knowledge and, in the case of religious belief, that body of semantic knowledge is the doctrine, or the set of concepts about supernatural agents and entities that believers accept as real.

This doctrine has abstract linguistic content, being specific to the different institutionalized religions, in addition to being transmitted culturally.

Another source of religious knowledge is event knowledge that comes from explicitly religious personal experiences (such as prayer or participation in ritual), but also from multiple social and moral events influenced by religion.

This means that religious knowledge draws from both sources: doctrine and personal experience. Furthermore, the adoption and application of religious beliefs is influenced by the emotions and goals of the individual.

The personal knowledge of an individual is normally based on the shared knowledge of his family and the culture that surrounds him, so it is natural that tradition has an important impact on the formation of a person's religious knowledge.

However, the experiences of the individual also end up influencing the formation, consolidation or validation of that knowledge.

But ultimately, religion is shared knowledge because communal ceremonies and traditions play a cohesive role in the community of believers of the same religion.

Shared knowledge in a religion is the foundation of that religion: rules, traditions, ancient prophecies, moral code, and cultural / historical background.

References

1. Alba María (2015). RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS. Recovered from: mariaalbatok.wordpress.com.
2. Dimitrios Kapogiannis and another (2009). Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Recovered from: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
3. Burns, C. Delisle (1914). International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Apr., 1914), pp. 253-265. Published by The University of Chicago Press. What is Religious Knowledge?
4. Henríquez Balvin, Julia (2012). Knowledge characteristics. Recovered from: teoriasdelapsicologiaucv.blogspot.com.
5. Religious knowledge systems. Recovered from: theoryofknowledge.net.
6. Wilkins, Pete (2017). Neuroscience and Religious Faith in International Society for Science & Religion (ISSR). Recovered from: issr.org.uk.
7. Zepeda Rojas Roberto Carlos. (2015, September 4). Intuitive, religious, empirical, philosophical and scientific knowledge. Definition, characteristics and relevance. Recovered from gestiopolis.com.