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Philosophy and science are both concerned with knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Science, however, deals with the problem of the relation of knowledge to data methodically interpreted whereas philosophy deals with the problem of the nature of knowledge as a whole and its relation to reality as a whole. When we come to religion and philosophy, we observe that both are concerned with reality as a whole. They can thus be said to be similar from the aspect of noema, to use a common term of modern phenomenology that refers to the content of thought in contradistinction to the act of thinking directed to the content. The difference between religion and philosophy, however, concerns the nature of the act of being related to the content or, in the language of phenomenology, the nature of noesis. Since religion has different relations to the world or to total reality than those of knowledge, the cognitive relationship (which is specifically that of science) is not central to it. Because of this non-cognitive relationship that characterizes religion we find that total reality, which is the content of this relationship, is given a special interpretation, an interpretation that differs from the content of reality which is one of the concerns of philosophy.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-2905-6_11

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