I shall first consider the implications in studies of religion. Suppose a person were living in contentment with knowledge that there exists only one religion that defines his or her life. It can be Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or whichever belief they have been acquainted with since the start. This person would live in peace knowing that they believe in the true religion. However, as this person grows up and comes of age, he or she will realize that that religion need not be the only possible belief system that exists in the world, and that there are so many more systems that different people from different parts of the world choose to believe. At this point, two general scenarios can happen. Either they reject the knowledge that other people of different religions choose to believe in and continue to believe in the knowledge that they have, or, alternatively, they would begin to doubt their own religion and begin considering the beliefs found in other, completely separate, religious systems. Thus, it can clearly be seen that as knowledge about religious belief systems increases, it is possible that doubts about the knowledge that they have believed was truth for a long duration of time will arise and the confidence that they have claimed to have in believing in a religion amongst the persons own ignorance will shatter. Consequently, they will begin to form contradictions within their own mind about the abstract nature of religion. This includes the way of life they have been inclined to live in as a result of the teachings they learned in their religion and the ideal nature of a God or of Gods found uniquely within
a belief system. For example, Christianity offers belief in one God, Islam offers belief in one as well, however religions such as Hinduism and Greek mythology offer contradictory polytheistic beliefs to the nature of divine beings. This supports the statement that increase in knowledge leads only to doubt and confusion. It seems that ignorance is bliss in this case, as lacking knowledge leads to a more confident, peaceful life.
Furthermore, conflicts in knowledge may exist within a single belief system as well. Suppose the case of Christianity. Within Christianity, there exist multiple denominations of the same belief. For example, fundamentalist Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Evangelism, Protestantism and many other forms of belief. Hence, it can be seen that having knowledge about the abstract nature of one religion itself is insufficient in claiming to have confident knowledge about it. The person will have to be faced with a choice in deciding what denomination they want to lead their lives in, not to mention the contradiction found in having multiple belief systems as well. For these reasons, I believe that it is clear that in studies of religion and the abstract nature of this subject, the statement that knowing little leads to confidence and knowing more leads to doubt is strongly supported. Of course, one may choose simply not to believe in any religious system due to the plethora of complications that exist in choosing to believe, and thus they may turn to atheism or agnosticism as a source of their knowledge and henceforth live in confidence that what they chose to believe in is the truth and nothing less.