Human Construction Based at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

There are two broad views that underlie the religious education debate and that reflect fundamental philosophical doctrines, that is,on the one hand the extent to which we see understanding and experience as based on an external reality, i.e. realism, and on the other, the notion of understanding as based primarily on human needs and interests that may be seen to be factors in determining, or at least, focusing experience. This latter view sees reality, at least in part, as a construction. If God, insofar as we might place 'him' at the centre of spiritual experience, or perhaps as a metaphor for spirituality, is a human construction, it might still be appropriate to talk of pupils 'discovering' him as an objective reality just as one 'discovers' the music of Beethoven during one's musical education. Alternatively one might wish to see pupils as constructing their own 'vision' or 'concept' in the context of what others have said about 'him'.

There is then a strong cultural context to people's ideas about God and the qualities that are attributed to him. In this context the question becomes one of how far God is an independent reality that is a source of experience for believers and how far 'he' is a human construction based on some vague sense of a non material reality along with a collection of cultural, social and moral beliefs. Whether God is an external reality, or a human construction, does not necessarily make his 'reality' any less objective. God may have objective reality in the same way as we might assert objective meaning to a work of art.

Human figures and animals in the round began to be used as decorative motifs on the bronzes around 500 B. c. The human figures were first carved in the kneeling position, molded in strict conformity with the law of frontality, but the art soon freed itself to portray action. In general, the human figures are short and stubby, rendered with little feeling for modeling, but the animal forms show keen and subtle touches of the chisel, based on careful observation of nature.