Religiosity can be described as ones personal interest to developing and maintaining a healthy a stable and productive relationship with God , man's interest for the higher spiritual plain lead in time to the creation of earthly institutions that mediate and regulate this relationship.
The apparition of such institutions made possible the materialization of a relationship between the spiritual plan and the earthly social one , at the begging , there was no clear distinction between the political authority and the religious one , leaders being the earthly ambassadors of the gods .
Taking this in to consideration , we can notice a influence of a community's religious believes on it's members perception of existence and the characteristics of being . The subject of existence and to coming in to being of a entity is handled by a branch of philosophy named Ontology , having a huge influence on the configuration of the primitive judicial systems and social norms , religion limited or opened new ways of gathering knowledge about our immediate environment and the techniques that are needed in order to process it in the right manner .
Religion set knowledge in to categories , it gave labels , it formed guidelines for the way in which knowledge must be used. But how did religion more exactly set us limits and rules for the way in which we perceive existence?
This is complex issue , giving the fact that there's no unity of faith across the planet , each of the systems of believe known to us set different standards in this case . Ontology studies existence from two different perspectives : 1) the way in which entities came in to being ; 2) the way in which we perceive the existence of entities that we come in contact with .
We will concentrate more on the way in which religion influences our way of perceiving existence , the first perspective being related more to empirical knowledge . Every religion gives a moral guide which is translated for practical reasons in to religious and social norms , after being assimilated by the believer , this act as filters for the information that we gather from the exterior environment .
When we talk about the subject of religion's influence on our way of perceiving existence and from that , reality in its widest sense , we can not set a very clear line between the involvement of the sciences of ontology and epistemology . Because our perceptions can't be produced without the gathering of information , the perception its self being the final product of the processing of information through a number of filters. In order to understand this subject even better , we will analyze a case and see the involvement of the different factors mentioned above in the final result.
Abortion - Is a practice that often generates contradictions between people , if we analyze it from a christian perspective , we will label it as a undesirable practice , if we analyze it from a liberal perspective , we will label it as being a necessity .What did exactly happen from ontological point of view?
A practicing christian that has well rooted in his conscience the moral values of his religion , found quickly the link to the norms derived from this theoretical concepts and by having them as integral part of his axiological system , the labeled the concept as undesirable . Ontologically speaking ,the religious system that he subscribed to , shaped his perception of the existence of a phenomena . We perceive entities , both those with material or immaterial form , by analyzing their characteristics , in this case , the believer through his religious views , found abortion to be in contradiction with a number of moral values that his religion promotes .
We can't build a image about reality without information , this can come from direct sources , when we use our senses to collect information , or from indirect sources : books , movies , sound documents , etc . We can't say that one of this sources is completely not prone to errors , both our senses can pick up information in a distorted way , especially if there are certain medical conditions involved.It can be stated that , religious norms and morals shape the way in which we perceive the world's existence .
Not only shapes our perception of entities with a material body but it also , and even more representative in a way , shapes our perception of non material entities . The limits from which the spiritual world extends are drawn by our religious believes . A good example is that christian theology states that animals are made up only of the material body , not having a soul like humans .
Nature based religions state that both plants and animals do have souls , making a believers perception of the spiritual realm wider . As a conclusion we can state that , our perception of reality is conditioned and shaped by social factors - religion being one of them . Religion plays a fundamental role here , its moral values being part of one's axiological system . Religion shapes the way in which we see the world in the present and the way in which we understand it past and formation and probably its future evolution .
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