Strengths And Weaknesses Of Knowledge

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Emotions are at most times elusive. Yet, it is the earliest applied and used way of acquiring knowledge. An example will be, a baby's first cry at birth. Emotions shape the way we think and behave thus influencing our interpretation of the world around us, and how we respond to circumstances in it. It also affects how we interpret perceptions and language, selective memory and how we apply our reasoning. “Philosophers in particular, tend to agree now that there is a connection between the way one's emotion is to be described and the nature of the beliefs or the knowledge on which it is based." (Gordon, Robert M. 408) Emotions can be regarded as either an obstacle to our knowledge or a source of knowledge. In this essay, I will assess the strengths and weaknesses of emotions in two areas of knowledge, namely, religious knowledge and scientific knowledge.

Religion is a system of beliefs that consists of elements, which cannot be fully supported or accounted for by natural science. Of all areas of knowledge, it is perhaps the most contentious. While some people may embrace their religion as the ultimate truth in their life, others are indifferent to such possibilities. Some examples of religion include Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Believers encounter emotional experiences, which help strengthen their faith to bridge the gap of knowledge in religion. Faith allows us to accept things as knowledge even without the definitive evidence of our senses or our reason. Emotions positively impact religion and can be used as an effective way of knowledge.

In their places of worship, most religions organize congregational activities for its believers that evoke a high state of emotions, which in turn, encourages them in their ...

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...new theories in the quest of scientific knowledge, it can also hinder and stand in the way of scientific progress. One such example would be the Nazis rejecting Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, due to racial discrimination. A 1939 article in a newsletter published by the most prestigious of the Nazi research institute on the ‘Jewish Question’, argued that he was no scientific genius, but a typical useless Jew. Such typical Nazi propaganda was directed against Einstein claiming that ‘there is nothing new about the Theory of Relativity, and even if there were, Einstein plagiarized it.’ (Redlin 3-4)
Having analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of emotion in the area of religious knowledge and scientific knowledge, I believe, in conclusion, that emotion is more justified as a basis of knowledge, and has the ability to produce a more positive impact in both these areas.

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