As I was thinking of moral compasses, I wanted to find out what the various religions had to say about that. As a start, I looked it up on Wikipedia.
I cut and pasted the trlrvant paragraph that I want to share with all of you.
Relationship between religion and morality
Within the wide range of ethical traditions, religious traditions co-exist with secular value frameworks such as humanism, utilitarianism, and others. There are many types of religious values. Modern monotheistic religions, such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and to a certain degree others such as Sikhism, define right and wrong by the laws and rules set forth by their respective gods and as interpreted by religious leaders within the respective faith. Polytheistic religious traditions tend to be less absolute. For example, within Buddhism, the intention of the individual and the circumstances should be accounted for to determine if an action is right or wrong.[9] A further disparity between the morals of religious traditions is pointed out by Barbara Stoler Miller, who states that, in Hinduism, "practically, right and wrong are decided according to the categories of social rank, kinship, and stages of life. For modern Westerners, who have been raised on ideals of universality and egalitarianism, this relativity of values and obligations is the aspect of Hinduism most difficult to understand".[10]
According to Stephen Gaukroger, "It was generally assumed in the 17th century that religion provided the unique basis for morality, and that without religion, there could be no morality."[11] This view slowly shifted over time. In 1690, Pierre Bayle asserted that religion "is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality."[12] Modern sources separate the two concepts. For example, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics says that,
For many religious people, morality and religion are the same or inseparable; for them either morality is part of religion or their religion is their morality. For others, especially for nonreligious people, morality and religion are distinct and separable; religion may be immoral or nonmoral, and morality may or should be nonreligous. Even for some religious people the two are different and separable; they may hold that religion should be moral and morality should be, but they agree that they may not be.[13]
Richard Paula and Linda Elder of the Foundation for Critical Thinking assert that "most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law". They separate the concept of ethics from these topics, stating that
The proper role of ethical reasoning is to highlight acts of two kinds: those which enhance the well-being of others—that warrant our praise—and those that harm or diminish the well-being of others—and thus warrant our criticism.[14]
They note problems that could arise if religions defined ethics, such as (1) religious practices like "torturing unbelievers or burning them alive" potentially being labeled "ethical", and (2) the lack of a common religious baseline across humanity because religions provide different theological definitions for the idea of sin.[14] They further note that various documents, such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights lay out "transcultural" and "trans-religious" ethical concepts and principles such as slavery, genocide, torture, sexism, racism, murder, assault, fraud, deceit, and intimidation which require no reliance on religion (or social convention) for us to understand they are "ethically wrong".[14]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_and_religion#Relationship_between_religion_and_morality
On Thursday, February 5, 2015 at 5:31:19 PM UTC+1, pol.science kid wrote:
I checked the etymology of religion... It makes even more suspicious of religion.. Why do most people confuse being a theist with being religious... Religion is just increasingly irritating.. I guess sometimes they overlap of course.. Theism and being religious.. But i am just thinking.. When these big religions were supposedly concieved their message must have been to people in general right. Not to hindus or muslims or christians etc... Right?
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to minds-eye+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
0 comments:
Post a Comment