A major obstacle for people since Descartes in getting a well-rounded understanding about religion´s modern role is the allure of scientific materialism. Many people simply don´t realize that science is actually a form of philosophy, as biologist turned philosopher M Pigliucci points out. Others don´t know about the Philosophy of Religion, nor the ability of Comparative Religious Studies to draw on multiple disciplines to provide the necessary and sufficient balance of understanding for insight. Heinrich Rickert contributed to defining science´s method and how it is different from historical methods. The following Venn diagram should actually have "science" within philosophy and containing the rest.
"As for the natural sciences, Rickert contends that Kant already provided a satisfactory definition of their logical structure. In the Prolegomena Kant stated: “Nature is the existence of things, insofar as [sofern] that existence is determined according to universal laws” (Kant 2002, 89; Rickert 1962, 5). Following Kant, Rickert defines the natural sciences as generalizing (Rickert 1986, 34; Rickert 1962, 46), that is, they form their concepts by way of moving away from the individual, unrepeatable occurrences encountered in experience. As Windelband already saw, the natural sciences view individual occurrences as mere examples of general laws. In this way, individuality “fixes the limits of natural scientific concept formation” (Rickert 1986, 40) and calls forth its logical complement: “individualizing concept-formation” (Rickert 1986, 62) as the method defining the historical sciences. The logical distinction between the sciences, then, has to be between the generalizing natural sciences and the individualizing historical sciences. In other words, while the natural sciences build their concepts by way of disregarding what is individual, the historical sciences build their concepts in order to grasp precisely what is individual."
"How are we to understand, then, historical individuality? Rickert’s definition unfolds in three stages (Rickert 1986, 98). (1) In the broadest sense, the individual is every single empirical reality in its uniqueness and distinctiveness. This, however, is not yet historically relevant individuality. (2) In a more specific and etymological sense, a historical individual is what “should not be divided” (Rickert 1986, 85), that is, it is an individual whose “uniqueness is related to a value” (Rickert 1986, 84). Rickert suggests to compare a lump of coal and the famous Koh-i-noor diamond. While the lump of coal can be split at any time without any significant loss, the Koh-i-noor ought not be spilt because it is a good, that is, a bit of reality related to a value and valued by any subject capable of carrying out valuations. (3) The historical individual as the object of the historical sciences has to be a good related to generally acknowledged values as opposed to merely personal values. In other words, while a certain item can be valuable to me as an individual (for instance, because a beloved person gave it to me), this is not enough to make it an object of historical interest. The Koh-i-noor, on the contrary, has a more than merely individual historical relevance because it is inextricably related to the historical vicissitudes of India and British colonialism."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heinrich-rickert/#TheSci
Rickert´s use of diamonds to illustrate the intersection of science and historical method is interesting. Thus, specific cut diamonds like the Indian Koh-i-noor in the British crown jewels and Hope diamond, along with the South African Cullinan I diamond have sociocultural histories that add to their characteristics. The blue Hope diamond was first called the Tavernier Blue diamond in its historical travel from India in contact with the European colonial powers to France and events during the French Revolution. All that is beyond science´s conceptual domain, its epistemology. The historical “sciences,” or disciplines and their epistemology build their concepts to understand individuals. Similar observations clearly might be made about many kinds of objects, including gold ones like Pharaoh Tut´s golden death mask, gold foil naming the Mesopotamian Naram-Sin who was the son of Sargon of Akkad, the misnamed Mycenaean Mask of Agamemnon,, Japanese kintsugi golden seam pottery repair, the South African golden rhinoceros of Mapungubwe, an Incan flat sheet mask of their Sun god Inti, the Belitung Arabian dhow shipwreck´s Tang dynasty Chinese gold cup, Koran with gold leaf, or gold coins from the Portuguese shipwreck Bom Jesus.
From this kind of basis, we might move to the Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Religious Studies with a little more understanding and insight. Earlier scholar F Schleiermacher had already advanced Biblical criticism by identifying religious experience and the relationship to God that Jesus taught as primary factors not dependent on creeds, literal interpretation of the Bible text, or rationalistic understanding. M Eliade later referred to the Sacred and the Profane in his discussion that included shamanism. CC Bonney´s Parliament of World´s Religions had created a pioneering rich context in 1893, no less in which Swami Vivekenanda had gained access as a Hindu monk. He quoted two lines from a stotram Hymn to Shiva, first "As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!" and second "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me.“
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