RELIGION AS AN AREA OF KNOWLEDGE 2

GOD MATTERS XS IB CLE 2011-2012 Full Name Richard Go 4G Section 9 LC#

Note: This is your digital worksheet. You will nd the instructions for todays module here. Perform the requested tasks using this Pages le. In other words, make it your own. Thank you!

Part One: YOUR Epistemological World Views Summarize here your ndings (even if tentative!) about your theories of knowledge. Domains Natural Science Item #s 1, 5, 14 YOUR world view Evaluativist Brief Reason + Remarks I base my knowledge of the natural sciences on proofs and scientic theories. I am both Evaluativist and Relativist because in the social sciences I try to look at the evidences to prove knowledge, but social sciences is harder to measure than natural sciences, thus being a bit more relativist. I am a relativist because art can be anything. Some people may think that one thing is art, but some may not. Each person sees beauty differently I am an evaluativist because I examine the situation rst before I make a decision on what I will do is moral or not. I am an absolutist because I believe that nothing can change my beliefs unless a authoritative gure gives me enough evidence to do so.

Social Science

4, 8, 12

Evaluativist and Relativist

Art

3, 7, 10

Relativist

Morality

6, 9, 11

Evaluativist

Religion

2, 13, 15

Absolutist

Part Two: Ways of Knowing How important are the different Ways of Knowing in the different domains? Rate them from 1 to 10 according to importance, with 10 as VERY IMPORTANT. If there are other ways of knowing/judging, use the last column and specify.

Sense Reason Language Emotion Others? Perception Part Three: AUTHORITY and/or EVIDENCE Natural 9 10 7 3 Science When you justify claims, how much do you actually rely on External Authority and Direct Evidence for every domain? Assign a percentage to each one per domain (Just make an Social 9 9 7 5 estimate, so NO decimal points--e.g., 25.2321%!). Make sure both total 100%. Science Art Morality Religion 10 8 6 6 10 7 8 6 9 9 10 10

Domains

Part Three: AUTHORITY and/or EVIDENCE When you justify claims, how much do you actually rely on External Authority and Direct Evidence for every domain? Assign a percentage to each one per domain (Just make an estimate, so NO decimal points--e.g., 25.2321%!). Make sure both total 100%. Domains Natural Science % AUTHORITY 20 % EVIDENCE 80 100% Brief Reason + Remarks Evidences are more important in natural science to prove what we know. Evidences justify more knowledge in the social sciences, but an authoritative gure can help more with the knowledge gaining process. External authority is more important than evidence in art because only a few people are experts in this eld. In most cases, an authoritative gure tells you what is right or wrong, but sometimes you have to look at the evidences to justify if it is moral or not
More authority is needed in religion because most of the time we rely on priests to teach us about religion, but we also need to see evidences like the cross, or the bread and wine. This is mainly for christianity, but I also believe that other religions rely more on authority than evidence.

Social Science

40

60

100%

Art

70

30

100%

Morality

70

30

100%

Religion

90

10

100%

After the class discussion, some of my epistemological world views were changed compared to the rst time I thought about it in the 1st worksheet. Initially, I was only an evaluativist when it comes to social sciences, but I realized that experiments are also conducted in the human sciences, and that we need evidence to prove claims in the social science; however, data in the social sciences is harder to measure than in the human sciences, thus becoming a bit more relativist. Before the discussion, I was an religious absolutist, but I realized that I am more of an evaluativist and relativist, but thinking of it again, I realized that I really am an absolutist. I realized that whenever faith is concerned, one should not change their beliefs. Being relativist means anything goes, I think that I shouldnt be like this in religion because if anything goes my christian values would be useless. Before discussing about the ways of knowing, I knew that each way of knowing is important in discovering knowledge through the trading card game done in ToK, but I never realized that some ways of knowing are more important than I thought in a certain area of knowledge. For example, in arts, most people only think of paintings and drawings, but art can also include poetry and music. Initially, i thought that emotion and sense perception were the only important ones in art, but I realized that language is equally as important.