Actually, religion has had a lot of peer review...from philosophers across centuries of time. At its core, much of religious doctrine was established through a grueling process of review, debate, and logical introspection. The process is not verifiable the way scientific process is verifiable, but the threshing-out logically or dogmatically unsupported concepts and ideals is, in fact, very similar to what happens to concepts and ideals in the scientific community. Even down to the part where different groups of people can arrive at different conclusions given the same sets of premises.
Now, none of that has anything to do with explaining/justifying how people within religion choose to use religious doctrine in dealing with their respective faiths or church communities; with those from other faiths/communities; or with those who who claim no faith for themselves.
I am no Catholic scholar, but I've examined enough of its doctrine to be comfortable saying that, if you accept the basic premises on which the Catholic Church is set, its doctrine is pretty sound, with a *lot* of though going into they "why's and whyfore's" of what they do in their faith. |
