How we know what we know.

Today I conducted several interviews with people who had different religious views to myself to get their see if their standpoint of religion and morals.

I interviewed 6 people from 5 different religious backgrounds to my own; Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Atheist and Shinto/ Agnostic. I asked three simple questions to each participant, what is your stance on religion?, how has religion shaped your morality and are your values based in religion or something else.

Surprisingly most of the participants answered the same way, 4 out of the 6 contestants said that although they are religious it was not the driving force of their morals. They believe that although their religion contains good morals they believe that not all are perfect and developing your own personal morals is better than just blindly following morals that were developed many years ago. The same number also said that they base their morals mainly from past experiences, teachings from their parents and some were taken from their religions.

For the other 2, one seem to find nothing wrong with his/her religion and base most of their morality in their religious beliefs. The other was an atheist, their thoughts were that no supernatural being should determine one’s morals and that everyone should base their morals on societies rules and your own personal experience.

Conducting these interviews, i came to an interesting conclusion; although we may come from different religious backgrounds we are more similar than we would like to believe. I found the same problems that i had in my religion within other religions as i talked to the participants. Similar contradictions, the extremists and how the same religion has multiple branches. We may not blindly follow the teachings but use them as a helping hand through life. Our morals are not restrictions on how we should live our lives but a guiding hand to help us make the right decisions, be that ethical or personal beliefs.

Today we will take a look into the world of indigenous cultures in africa. In my research I came across a site, africa.com,  that gave me a little insight to some of the indigenous tribes that still live their lives without dependence on modern technology to survive.

This time around I will be evaluating the claims stated by said sight and their validity. The first claim presented to me was “groups of people who continue to live peacefully without dependence on any of the inventions the modern world” Yes, they maybe not be dependent on technology as we who live modern day technology but, how can such a tribe be at peace with us modern day people poking cameras into the faces of the tribes. Although when we watch the documentaries on these tribes they seem not to mind but think how annoying must it be for you to be living your life, trying to go on with your daily duties with strangers now living with you for days or even weeks with their disruptive habits and cameras constantly in your face. Just how is that not intrusive?

The next claim presented to me was “the indigenous communities whose traditions, customs and way of life have astonishingly withstood the test of time” How do we know this? Over the years their traditions may have changed in some form or fashion, so how are we so sure they haven’t? Take the Karamojong for instance, they are said to have migrated from Ethiopia and have moved to the north-east of Uganda. Also said to be a semi-nomadic clan. How can we as non-Karamojong claim to know that they have not added traditions or removed some. And yes, their are people who can translate the language for us, we also have seen time where our translators were wrong, the Mayan calendar for instance. Who is it to say that we are right and how are we able to verify this claim?

Now before I end my post I would like you, my readers to think upon these 2 questions.

1. To what extent are we able to accept information provided to us about cultures we know nothing about?
2. To what extent have their lives, indigenous peoples, remained the same?

My answers to both questions would be: 1), to a very high extent. Given that we know nothing about their culture we would have to assume that the information that we are provided is indeed accurate. And 2), based on the information provided, their lives have been altered slightly if not at all. Keeping traditions they have had for years

Site: https://www.africa.com/africas-indigenous-tribes-preserved-cultures-centuries/

That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow.”

Knowledge like the rest of the world faces a universal constant, everything changes. What we know like ourselves changes everyday, one day you might think that we humans are the only intelligent life forms in this galaxy then the next you might find out that there are more intelligent life forms out there. To get a better understanding of what i am saying we should look at our history on the earth and what were our truths then and now.

A couple hundred years ago we as humans ‘knew’ that the earth was flat and if you sailed too far into the horizon you would fall off the earth but now our knowledge has changed, we now know that the earth is round and there is no possible way that we would plummet off the horizon. Another example would be how the ancient Greeks believed/ ‘knew’ that the sun was pulled by the god Apollo on his horse drawn chariot, that was until it was proven that the earth rotated around the sun while turning giving the illusion that the sun moves when it is in fact the earth revolving around the sun.

So with each passing day our knowledge of things continues to change, from finding out that GMO means genetically modified organism and that most of are foods are gmos, to finding out that one day our source of energy the sun will one day go out  and it will take us 8 minutes and 20 seconds to notice it.

In conclusion we can say with confidence that nothing we know is set in stone because one day everything we knew will have changed.