Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Which came first...

...religion, or philosophy?

The best answer probably involves some kind of compromise, as solutions so often do. After reading most of (still not finished) Sophie's World, it seems that the two began as very intertwined. My impression was that at the start of philosophical humanity, the major questions were "What is the world made of?" and "Where did it come from?" These fundamental questions also seemed to be the starting point for religion and mythology, since creationism, for example, is one possible answer. At what point did philosophy and religion divide? I always thought of them as distinct subjects, one completely secular and one not, but I have discovered that religion or lack thereof has much to do with how one thinks about philosophy. Someone once said to me that philosophy is based on logic and religion is not, and while I think that is a little harsh, it seems along the right lines. Another version is that what we think of as philosophy today, in retrospect, used science to answer those fundamental questions and therefore every philosophy afterward generally accepted scientific, or "logical" principals. Religion used God or gods to answer those fundamental questions, and therefore religion became its own spinoff of philosophical thinking.
Did that make sense? Just thinking out loud.

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