Construction of views

A discussion that we had today in my religious studies class really struck a chord with me. Part of the reason it did was probably because it had formed because of something I wrote on my midterm. My professor quoted my answer to spur some conversation. The question being answered was about how people put religious texts into a "convenient context", meaning whatever works best for us at the time. My quote was this: "No matter what, as humans, we will always perceive things in our own context and think what we will, whether we are right or wrong." Soon after the Prof. read this to the class one of my classmates posed the thought that my idea assumes that there is a right and wrong. At first I agreed that the last part of the statement seemed to contradict the first half and that it should possibly be omitted from my idea, but after I thought about it for a little bit I decided that the second half should stay. There is a right or wrong, it's just not something that human beings can truly know (we're not talking about someone's opinion that is right or wrong, it's from a higher power). That is what religion is for... it is a lens through which we attempt to view the what can't be viewed; I know this seems like a very pessimistic statement (that we can't know the truth), but the usefulness of religion is not in its accuracy of the true forms, but in its faith that those forms exist.

I'm going to head in a slightly different direction now... same quote but different train of thought; this one kind of relates to how we learn. A statement my professor made got me thinking about this. He kind of disagreed with my quote, at least in the context of studying religion. He said something along the lines of: "In order to study religion we need to pull away from our own framework and try to view things from another framework." I agree with him; in order to study something, one needs to view it as objectively as possible. The part about his statement that I disagree with is "pull away from our own framework." The way I see it, one cannot be perfectly objective of a situation. Even if you try to be as objective as possible, you still present what you have found in your objective viewing within the context of what you know, automatically biasing you. "What you know" includes a pretty wide spectrum of ideas... including language; by simply thinking about something in English symbols one is biased. The only thing we can do when trying to come to any conclusions is gather as many views as possible, biased or not, and make them into a whole new framework.

Profound statement of the day: Learning is all about construction... the more complex and numerous the materials put in are, the more beautifully complex the product will be. Enrich.