What can religion understand? What can be known by religion? The difference between religious belief and religious practice

Knowledge is defined (Oxford English Dictionary) variously as:Oxford English Dictionary 1.expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, 2.what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or 3.awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

God: ”I know God exists and I have no doubts about it” Afterlife: ”I definitely believe in life after death” Bible: ”The Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word.” Devil: ”I definitely believe in the Devil” Hell: ”I definitely believe in Hell” Heaven: ”I definitely believe in Heaven” Miracle: ”I definitely believe in religious miracles” CountryGodAfterlifeBibleDevilHellHeavenMiracles United States Philippines Norway Russia

“God is Dead” “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature….”

Charles Darwin Sigmund Freud Joseph Campbell

George Went Hensley

Gordon Allport Extrinsic Religiosity outer Intrinsic Religiosity inner

Extrinsic Religiosity Religious Belief Conventional Knowledge Intrinsic Religiosity Religious Practice Unconventional Knowledge

An analogy: the eye Conventional knowledge Central vision One-thing-at-a-time Look at…. The world of facts and events Maya Classification and measurement

An analogy: the eye Unconventional knowledge Peripheral vision Everything-all-at-once Aware of…. Solzhenitsyn

The “other”

Two physicists Charles A. Coulson and Harold K. Schilling both claimed that, "the methods of science and religion have much in common”.Charles A. CoulsonHarold K. Schilling Schilling asserted that both fields - science and religion - have "a threefold structure - of experience, theoretical interpretation, and practical application.“ Coulson asserted that science like religion "advances by creative imagination" and not by "mere collecting of facts," while stating that religion should and does "involve critical reflection on experience not unlike that which goes on in science.

A Religion is a set of doctrines and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature and often arranged as prayer, ritual or religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience.