Marbaniang, Domenic

NOTE: This is not a dogmatic stance, but only an hypothetical exploration attempting linguistic clarification. Culture and Religion are not the same, though they are very close. There are various theories that suggest a model of relationship between them. One of them tries to see Religion as the soul of culture. This view doesn't consider the fact that there could also be non-religious cultures. Perhaps, one may quote the Pirahas as an example of such a culture. ( Wiki ) Of course, this doesn't rule out the fact that some kind of belief-system may be involved in a culture. Another view looks at Religion as an organic part of Culture, but in such a manner that it affects the other parts. We suggest here that the elements that can be altered through religious effect are religious elements, and the basic elements that religion may use (e.g. language, art, science) for its own purposes are cultural. Of course, there are cases where the usage takes on religious flavors; however, the...

The Critique of Pure Reason (German: Kritik der reinen Vernunft) by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, attempts to resolve the conflict between rationalism and empiricism by proposing a new angle of approach, viz. phenomenalism. Kant called his middle way a Copernican Revolution in epistemology since, contrary to the traditional approaches, Kant's theory proposes that it is not the mind that conforms to reality (that is sees things as they are), but it is reality that conforms to the a priori forms and categories of our understanding. Thus, we only see things as they appear (phenomena) not as they are. Kant borrowed the term "categories" from Aristotle, but with the concession that Aristotle's own categorizations were faulty. He thought that Aristotle had no guiding principle for the discovery of the categories and so randomly picked them up; consequently, his table remained imperfect. The imperfection is apparent from his inclusion of ...