Studying Religion: Harder To Study

Words: 590
Pages: 3

Response # 1

A. The term insider when studying religion means that an individual possesses an personal experienced based knowledge within the group they are studying that gives them an emotional connection not available to the outsider. These individuals are more likely to have the ability to access certain information that might not be available to someone who doesn’t have the trust of the group. Although it is important to note that they are more likely to experience a personal bias when studying the group. The term outsider refers to an individual that has a more objective impersonalised impersonal view of the group making it easier to draw connections between the religious group and the wider world. Although it is important to acknowledge
…show more content…
My total count was 10 belongings. I believe that this number makes it harder to study religious groups as objectively as possible because every time you can create a connection to an aspect of the group you are studying, let it be the role of the women or the country of origin, you unknowingly create a personal bias. This compromises the individual’s academic integrity as they are trying to record what is happening as it plays out and not how they perceive what is happening. Under this principal, the more “belongings” one has the harder it is to remain objective and the less “belongings” one has makes it easier to remain objective as emotions are less likely to cloud the individual’s empirical judgement.

C. I believe that it is important for not everyone to study religion as an outsider as studying the emotional impact that religion has on the individual’s lived bias provides a fresh perspective in contrast to the empirical academic model. Choosing not to study such a unique perspective means avoiding a field of research that distinguishes itself from the clinic observations of the outsider. If all we have in the future was the outsiders point of view, future individuals wouldn’t be able to understand or acknowledge the real emotional impact of religion and therefore they could not fully comprehend religion