Dogma is an unshakable belief, often applied to religion, but also to other beliefs such as Marxist philosophy and free education. It is based on faith and not evidence, and is often misused interchangeably with doctrine.
Dogma is the unshakable belief that something is true, regardless of evidence. The word is often misused as interchangeable with doctrine, but doctrine is, rather, the interpretation of dogma. Most frequently, the term is seen applied to religion. Examples in Christianity include belief in God and the belief that Jesus’ conception was immaculate.
In religions such as Hinduism, dogmas express a fundamental belief in the concept of karma and reincarnation. A person who doesn’t believe in these ideas could not shake the faith of someone who believes in reincarnation. In essence, dogma comes from faith.
The first dogma, as far as religion is concerned, is the belief in some sort of divine being or beings. Although most of the religions have deviated from the original religions, they retain the kernel of truth in the sense that humans want to find the divine and believe in a divine presence. Belief in such a presence or intelligence is the foundation of most religions.
Certain other types of belief are also called dogma. For example, believing in Marxist philosophy, and truly that socialism is the best possible construction of society, is dogma. This type of belief presupposes some factors, such as “the worker is oppressed” and “religion is an opiate of the people”. How these ideas are applied to a society would become political doctrine or an interpretation of Marxian dogma.
Virtually all schools of philosophy have a set of unproven truths to which they cling. In extreme examples, according to deconstructionist thinking, the central dogma is that most text contains multiple contradictions and meanings. Such proofs that are offered, the doctrine of deconstruction, are really arguments and not proofs.
The dogma also applies to ideas like free education for all. There is an underlying belief structure that it is good for all children to have a free education. This is not based on statistics, but on the belief that access to education is a fundamental right and is valuable to all.
Mostly, however, dogma applies to fundamental faith-based truths. People in Judeo/Christian/Islamic religions don’t believe that God exists, they know that he exists.
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