For this week's reflection, I'd like to talk about some religion based thoughts I had while we discussed Locke in our class. I realized, that people do not know a lot about religions in this day and age, they only know about the basics of other religions and their own religion. Of course, there are the exceptions, as there is in anything, but for the most the part, religious knowledge is limited. When Locke talked about the Jews conquering lands, he mentioned the fact that the Jews let the people live as they were, and only forced people who were Jewish or converted to follow their specific rules. What many people don't realize nowadays, is that Judaism is a religion where they don't force convert, unlike others where it's in their laws. Knowledge like this was known to people in Locke's time, yet nowadays, that's a surprising fact, including the fact that there used to be a Jewish kingdom. In a survey done of the different religions, it was found that Jewish people and other minorities, knew much more than the other religions about other religions, even atheists barely knew anything.
I think one reason that this story about the Jews wasn't mentioned, other than religion being a difficult topic for people, is that people in our class didn't fully understand the history and references that Locke made, unless it was about a major religion like Catholicism. I believe, that to properly read old texts one has to have more than a basic idea of religion, since as was seen, Locke quoted the bible multiple times.
- Eli
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