TOK RESOURCE.ORG 2026

 OPTIONAL THEME:
KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGION
RELIGIOSITY AND FAITH

For many religions it seems that belonging can be more important than belief.

Belief without evidence

A TRICK QUESTION ABOUT RELIGION

Next show in full Ghanaian philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah's 2014 TED talk entitled “Is Religion Good or Bad?” 

 
CLASS ACTIVITY: REFINING OUR DEFINITION OF RELIGION

Begin this unit of inquiry by reminding the class of two of the interesting conclusions of Kwame Appiah’s 2014 TED talk, Is Religion Good or Bad? in Introduction to the varieties of religious experience.  Appiah stated that the Dalai Lama is an atheist. He also mentioned a Rabbi who said the great thing about being Jewish is that you do not have to believe in God; you have to believe in being Jewish.

For many religions: belonging can be more important than belief.

Next, here is a succinct definition for religion offered at the BBC website:

Religion can be explained as a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Jared Diamond offers a broader and more detailed distillation. He offers a constellation of five sets of attributes, which vary in strength amongst the world’s religions (including the traditional religions found in Indigenous Knowledge Systems):

1. Religion is the belief in a postulated supernatural agent for whose existence our senses can’t give us evidence, but which is invoked to explain things of which our senses do give us evidence.

2. They are social movements of people who identify themselves as sharing deeply held beliefs.

3. Their adherents make costly or painful sacrifices that convincingly display to others the adherents’ commitment to the group.

4. Belief has practical consequences for how people should behave.

5. Many religions teach that supernatural agents not only reward virtuous rule-obeying people and punish evil-doers and rule-breakers, but also can be induced by prayers, donations and sacrifices to intervene on behalf of mortal petitioners.

Diamond, Jared (2012: 329-331) The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?Penguin, New York.

LANGUAGES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA ORIGIN STORY

Before unleashing this next sub-unit, invite students to quickly Google roughly how many languages there are in the world, and how many languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea? The point will be driven home further if they look up the population of Papua New Guinea and compare the ratios mathematically.

To add a indigenous cultures perspective, students should first read in silence the following narrative from Geography professor and author, Jared Diamond.  Afterwards it should be read aloud, in bold story telling mode including hand gestures, by a student who has proven theatrical talent. (The performer could be given the text well in advance.) 

This origin story, which has some parallel with the story of the Tower of Babel, could be included with the What can we learn from traditional societies? unit in Indigenous Knowledge Systems. 

Printable Pdf. of the language origins story and the generative questions.

“In the beginning, all people lived around a great ironwood tree in the jungle, speaking the same language. One man whose testes were enormously swollen from infection with a parasitic worm spent his time sitting on a branch of the tree, so that he could rest his heavy testes on the ground. Out of curiosity, animals of the jungle came up and sniffed at his testes. Hunters then found the animals easy to kill, and everyone had plenty of food and was happy.

“Then, one day, a bad man killed a beautiful woman’s husband, in order to get the woman for himself. Relatives of the dead husband attacked the murderer, who was defended in turn by his own relatives, until the murderer and his relatives climbed into the ironwood tree to save themselves. The attackers tugged on lianas hanging from one side of the tree, in order to pull the tree’s crown down towards the ground and get at their enemies.“Finally, the lianas snapped in half, causing the tree to spring back with tremendous force. The murderer and his relatives were hurled out of the tree in many different directions. They landed so far away, in so many different places, that they never found each other again. With time, their languages became more and more divergent. That is why people today speak so many different languages and cannot understand each other, and why it is hard work for hunters to catch animals for food.”

That story was related to me by Sikari people, a tribe of six hundred New Guineans.

Diamond, Jared (2012: 209) The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies? Penguin, New York.

PRELIMINARY KNOWLEDGE QUESTIONS

Students should tackle the following Knowledge Questions in Groups of three. Students must stay on task. The conversation will broaden significantly in the units of inquiry which follow. Allow a timed five minutes for each.

• Well, is there such a thing as religion?
  
  

• Is belief in God a pre-requisite for being religious?
  
  

• Formulate a Knowledge Question of your own on any aspect Religious Knowledge Systems. Write it down and add the names of the students in the triad before submitting your paper to the teacher.