Philosophy and Religion: Are They Compatible?a
Philosophy and Religion: Are they compatible?
For me, philosophy and religion are compatible. Philosophy has always had a major role in the church as means to spread knowledge and also to learn more about Gods revelation. The Christian religion is God's revelation to us. It is compatible with natural philosophy, but it is not necessarily something we would have come up with on our own. Philosophy doesn't contradict religion, some atheist evangelicals use it as a "tool" although they do not always know what things they are talking about. They get good looking terms and words from philosophy without understanding the deeper meaning of those terms. Skeptic for example is not supposed to believe in anything without hard enough proof, Atheist call themselves Skeptics but they are not since they actually believe a lot of things without proof, skeptic should always find ways to disprove let say evolution, but atheist will not do that. There are enough similarities that religions can be philosophical and philosophies can be religious. Does this mean that we simply have two different words for the same fundamental concept? There are some real differences between religion and philosophy which warrant considering them to be two different types of systems even though they overlap in places. To begin with, of the two only religions have rituals. In religions, there are ceremonies for important life events (birth, death, marriage, etc.) and for important times of the year (days commemorating spring, harvest, etc.). Philosophies, however, do not have their adherents engage in ritualistic actions. Students do not have to ritually wash their hands before studying Hegel and professors do not celebrate a “Utilitarian Day” every year. Another difference is the fact that philosophy tends to emphasize just the use of reason and critical thinking whereas religions may make use of reason, but at the very least they also rely on faith, or even use faith to the
For me, philosophy and religion are compatible. Philosophy has always had a major role in the church as means to spread knowledge and also to learn more about Gods revelation. The Christian religion is God's revelation to us. It is compatible with natural philosophy, but it is not necessarily something we would have come up with on our own. Philosophy doesn't contradict religion, some atheist evangelicals use it as a "tool" although they do not always know what things they are talking about. They get good looking terms and words from philosophy without understanding the deeper meaning of those terms. Skeptic for example is not supposed to believe in anything without hard enough proof, Atheist call themselves Skeptics but they are not since they actually believe a lot of things without proof, skeptic should always find ways to disprove let say evolution, but atheist will not do that. There are enough similarities that religions can be philosophical and philosophies can be religious. Does this mean that we simply have two different words for the same fundamental concept? There are some real differences between religion and philosophy which warrant considering them to be two different types of systems even though they overlap in places. To begin with, of the two only religions have rituals. In religions, there are ceremonies for important life events (birth, death, marriage, etc.) and for important times of the year (days commemorating spring, harvest, etc.). Philosophies, however, do not have their adherents engage in ritualistic actions. Students do not have to ritually wash their hands before studying Hegel and professors do not celebrate a “Utilitarian Day” every year. Another difference is the fact that philosophy tends to emphasize just the use of reason and critical thinking whereas religions may make use of reason, but at the very least they also rely on faith, or even use faith to the