Cosmological and Design Argument

The question for this week that is posed is what, if anything, can philosophy contribute to the understanding of religion. Religious conviction, in general, is fascinating because it's a defense of a set of beliefs that most people accept as true or real from a young, impressionable age. For many people they were never presented with a choice of beliefs or a comparable amount of belief sets from which to choose (if any). Faith plays an enormous role here and it is hard to separate out faith from the topic of religious conviction for that very reason.

Many people are born into the religions they then spend their life defending and believing. People are taught what their parents believe(d) the majority of the time. There is no choice offered in many cases (note that I am making these statements in a very general and broad sense since there are obviously always exceptions). Do people stop to question later in life 'why do I actually believe these things as fact?', 'what if what I believe is not a solid fact?' or 'what if I was born in a totally different place in a different set of circumstances?' . If a person raised here in America as a Catholic were to happen to have been born in the Middle East or the Far East, for example, the likelihood that they would have grown up believing a totally different set of beliefs in a different religion is a very real one.

It's hard for me to understand how people can live their lives accepting things as total fact without evidence or without active questioning or even without considering that they may have been taught to accept something from birth that may not necessarily be true. I found the Blackboard posts for this week fascinating in that regard. Many people casually mentioned that they were raised in certain religions and now have a solid belief in a god and those beliefs of that religion and therefore in regards to the chapter we read and the arguments we had to consider they found it hard to register that things could have been different for them growing up or that what they were taught from youth could possibly not be entirely true or that one can question religion and belief(s).

The question and idea of faith is really a hard thing for me to stomach. I take a very pragmatic view of life and therefore, for me, it's important to always seek and learn and prove or disprove. I don't ever blindly accept things. For me, questioning and curiosity are some of the wonders of our species. To deny oneself the ability to question and view things objectively purely based on a notion that one should just believe and accept things as they are is counter-productive and self-limiting. It stunts progressive thought and allows for a certain complacency that blocks advances in many areas.

In my study of religions over the years, I have found it interesting that many religions (especially the Judeo-Christian-Islamic set) have parables or tenets that dissuade people from actively questioning. The concept of faith is one that exists to cushion this lack of questioning. In Christianity, for example, the Adam/Eve/serpent story is one that exists to warn people that questioning and curiosity is a fatal mistake. This particular parable is used to discourage free thinking and inquiry while also having the added benefit of keeping those who believe in line and in defense of their religious beliefs since fear becomes a huge motivator. People don't want to offend or ruin their relationship with their god figure and thus take these stories/tenets to heart. So, I can understand why people who are brought up with certain ideologies err on the side of faith since their religious background may really hammer in the acceptance of things as they are in that particular set of religious beliefs.

I think that Philosophy is interesting when it comes to this/these conundrum(s). In the case of Hume's arguments, I think something like this is good in that it allows people to question and ponder these enormous quandaries. Philosophy can be useful in getting people to begin the path to enlightening themselves (truly) that the easiest truths provided may not always be true in and of themselves. Philosophy can help people to understand the possible whys involved with why certain ideologies are so attractive while others are harder for people to grasp and maybe in this way Philosophy does a great service to those actively seeking to open their minds.

However, it's not a simple process. Changing centuries of religious 'programming' (for lack of a better word here) and getting people to adopt the desire to question and look at things more objectively, which ultimately means getting people to go beyond the fear factor present in their religious ideologies is a huge endeavor and enormously difficult because the notion of faith is the very antithesis of reason.