The Ecology of Religious Knowledges
Religions January 20, 2022 Juan Morales
Religious traditions claim to provide knowledge of ultimate reality, but the diversity of their accounts poses a challenge. Drawing on the ecology of knowledges—which holds that intentions, body, and physical and social environments shape experience and knowledge—the author argues that religious experiences and knowledges are both veridical (embodied and extended) and pluralistic (essentially limited). Mystical religious experience is characterized as a non-ordinary state of consciousness that allegedly enables direct epistemic contact with supreme reality, understood as eternal, infinite, and possessing supreme value. Different religious perspectives are seen as epistemic approaches along a continuum from impersonal to personal specifications of the sacred. The cognitive relevance of any religious knowledge implies explanations and interventions that go beyond those of other religious and non-sacred knowledges.