Question : If morality has to follow from religion, can there be rational justification for moral actions? Discuss
(2010)
Answer : According to theists moral order or moral law suggests a supreme moral authority who establishes the basis (objective basis) for moral law. Otherwise, we have the pressing question concerning an objective standard for our moral judgments. But we need the objective standard, or we are thrown into the moral chaos that extreme relativism brings with it. So we could consider these propositions: Simply by virtue of his belief in God, a person tends to moral excellence and people who believe in God agree among themselves as to what are morally good and what morally bad. Certainly it would be most difficult to defend these as being true general propositions. It is false It is even doubtful anyone’s moral beliefs are really based on the commands of a supernatural law-giver; i.e., the entire squadron of theologians and religious philosophers who argue the point have never made a rationally compelling case for their doctrinal assumption that a Deity exists, much less that this Deity is the ultimate, transcendent authority for all humanity’s moral beliefs. All that they can claim, with some rational justification, is that faith in the authority of a deity, as conceived and characterized by their religious tradition, is the basis for their moral beliefs. In short, their morality is based on their image of God. (And even this, only sometimes. In fact morality has noting to do with God. Morality and moral actions have their roots in society. But at the same time the existence of God does not create a hurdle before moral actions. Belief in God may prove to be complementary to moral actions without losing the freedom of free will.
Question : Property of religion without morality.
(2008)
Answer : Religionis a set of stories, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural quality, that give meaning to the practitioner’s experiences of life through reference to an ultimate power or reality. It may be expressed through prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art among other things. The term “religion” refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction. “Religion” is sometimes used interchangeably with “faith” or “belief system” but it is more socially defined than personal convictions, and it entails specific behaviors, respectively.
There are different views regarding how to deal with the relationship between religion and morality. There are those who argue for total inseparability. They say that there can no religion without morality or there can be no morality without religion. Then there are those who would say that religion and morality are so close in interest that they can’t be separated. The word dependent is frequently used by those arguing for inseparability. The words inseparable suggest more of a mutual dependence than just one completely dependent on the other.
A person of common religious faith wishes to show his love and gratitude to God to please God and do God’s will. This faith attitude leads naturally to morality, into being good person and doing what is considered good. Gratitude to God serves as the motive for being moral. Actually morality as one the major dimensions of religion has been noted. Religion without moral teachings is rare and probably non-existent. The definition of religion itself shows that morality forms an important dimension of religion. All religions have moral prescriptions that presuppose religious beliefs. All religious traditions display an intense interest in behavioral conformity with the expressed goals of tradition. A religion that fails to embrace and embody moral values lacks credibility. We use the word hypocrite to refer to people whose morality does not match their religious profession.
Question : There are two incompatible views regarding the relationship between religion and morality. According to one view morality requires some divine transcendental source in order that it be binding and objective. The second view argues in favour of purely secular, based entirely on human reason. Which one of these two views is correct in your opinion and why? Discuss.
(2007)
Answer : The divine command theory (DCT) of ethics holds that an act is either moral or immoral solely because God either commands us to do it or prohibits us from doing it, respectively. On DCT the only thing that makes an act morally wrong is that God prohibits doing it, and all that it means to say that torture is wrong is that God prohibits torture. DCT is wildly implausible for reasons best illustrated by the Euthyphro dilemma, which is based on a discussion of what it means for an act to be holy in Plato’s Euthyphro. Substituting “moral wrongness” for “holiness” raises the dilemma: Is torture wrong because God prohibits it, or does God prohibit torture because it is already wrong? If there is no standard of “being morally right” apart from God’s commands, then God could literally command us to do anything and it would be right for us to do it by definition. Whatever God commands becomes the standard of moral rightness, and there are no moral values external to God to constrain what he would or would not command. So if God commanded one person to kill another, DCT entails that that killing would be moral because “doing the right thing” is logically equivalent to “doing what God commands.” A highly implausible implication is that it is impossible to even imagine God commanding a wrong act. What counts as moral or immoral behavior on DCT is completely subjective dependent upon God’s fiat and thus arbitrary.
One frequent defense made on behalf of religion and theism is the claim that they are necessary for morality. This claim takes a variety of forms: people wouldn’t behave morally if it weren’t for religion or fear of gods, some god or gods are the authors of morality so we can’t be moral without following their commands, religion and gods provide reasons to be moral, the absence of religion or gods encourages immorality, a moral person is simply assumed to be religious, and so forth. Whatever the form, though, the principle is the same: religion generally, or some religion in particular, is equated with morality to the extent where they can’t be separated. Sometimes this will be offered as a pragmatic reason for adopting that religion by arguing that even if the religion seems implausible, it’s still useful by promoting morality, and this should be encouraged broadly in as many people as possible.
While these claims may be intuitively appealing to many religious theists, just how well-founded is the belief? One means for testing it is to look at the religions themselves. Are their gods moral? Are highly-regarded believers from the past or religious figures in scriptures moral? Are believers today especially moral? The answer to all of this is overwhelmingly negative, and this creates a reason to doubt the claims about religion being necessary for morality as well as the fundamental truth claims made on behalf of the religion generally and theistic claims in particular.
Religious belief systems usually include the idea of divine will and divine judgment and usually correspond to a moral code of conduct, and many religions claim that religion and morality are intimately connected. Most of the religionsmaintain that although morality can be derived from unaided reason as it is simply the “right ordering” of man’s actions, ultimately it derives from God because God created man and nature and that the ultimate sanction for immorality is the loss of a relationship with God. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of human nature, and that knowledge of right and wrong is based on our best understanding of our individual and joint interests, rather than stemming from a transcendental or arbitrarily local source, therefore rejecting faith completely as a basis for action. The humanist ethics goal is a search for viable individual, social and political principles of conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility, ultimately eliminating human suffering.
There are those who maintain, however, that even if God is not required as the author of the moral law, he is nevertheless required as the enforcer of it, for without the threat of divine punishment, people will not act morally. But this position is no more plausible than the Divine Command Theory itself. In the first place, as an empirical hypothesis about the psychology of human beings, it is questionable. There is no unambiguous evidence that theists are more moral than atheists. Not only have psychological studies failed to find a significant correlation between frequency of religious worship and moral conduct, but convicted criminals are much more likely to be theists than atheists. Second, the threat of divine punishment cannot impose a moral obligation, for might does not make right. Threats extort; they do not create a moral duty.
Thus, if our only reason for obeying God is the fear of punishment if we do not, then, from a moral point of view, God has no more claims to our allegiance than Hitler or Stalin. Moreover, since self-interest is not an adequate basis for morality, there is reason to believe that heaven and hell cannot perform the regulative function often attributed to them. Heaven and hell are often construed as the carrot and stick that God uses to make us toe the line. Heaven is the reward that good people get for being good and hell is the punishment that bad people get for being bad. But consider this. Good people do well because they want to do well - not because they will personally benefit from it or because someone has forced them to do it. People who do well solely for personal gain or to avoid personal harm are not good people. Someone who saves a drowning child, for example, only because he was offered a reward or was physically threatened does not deserve our praise.
Thus, if we only reason for performing good actions is we desire to go to heaven or your fear of going to hell - if all our other-regarding actions are motivated purely by self-interest - then we should go to hell because we are not a good person. An obsessive concern with either heaven or hell should actually lessen one’s chances for salvation rather than increase them. Fundamentalists correctly perceive that universal moral standards are required for the proper functioning of society. But they erroneously believe that God is the only possible source of such standards. Philosophers as diverse as Plato, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, and John Rawls have demonstrated that it is possible to have a universal morality without God. Contrary to what the fundamentalists would have us believe, then, what our society really needs is not more religion but a richer notion of the nature of morality.
Question : Distinguish between religious and secular ethics. Discuss, in this context the view that holds that secular ethics are superior to religious ethics because religious ethics are essentially based on rules without decisive regard for consequences, whereas secular ethics, as their best, aim at producing the best overall consequences.
(2006)
Answer : Ethics is a major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is “the good life”, the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct. Most religions have an ethical component, often derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance.
Secular ethics is a moral philosophy in which ethics are based solely on human faculties such as logic, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. Secular ethics can be seen as a wide variety of moral and ethical systems drawing heavily on humanism, secularism and freethinking. The majority of secular moral concepts are based on the acceptance of social contracts, and on a more individual scale of either some form of attribution of intrinsic value to things, ethical intuitionism or of a logical deduction that establishes a preference for one thing over another, as with Occam’s razor. Approaches like utilitarianism and ethical egoism are also considered. Every person who reads a long text will understand it differently, as each one of us is unique in character and experience of life. A person who reads a holy text will have to judge it, analyze it and think through it and in the process every person observes a different set of moral rules. Where text can appear to very definitely uphold one person’s opinions there are others who are sure it does not. Christianity, Islam and other religions with sacred texts proceed to splinter as people interpret the texts in different ways. It is impossible for two people to read anything but the most basic sentence without them forming differing opinions of what the text implies.
Most monotheistic gods are given “omniscient” status; they are all-knowing or at least very clever. As they are also the ones responsible for creating mankind, it is apparent that deities too realize that Human Beings can only interpret life subjectively, and that no text will mean the same thing for any two people. Therefore any sacred text can only contain “guidelines” or pointers to moral codes of behaviour, and no actual absolutes. To try and write an absolute into a text that can only ever be interpreted subjectively is pointless, especially in theoretical matters such as morality, where scientific investigation is fruitless.
Now question arise how can a theist be moral? Simply obeying rules, tradition and dogmatic answers to moral questions do not make a person moral. Morality requires choices and the more that a person relies on a “text book of morality” or dogmatic pre-laid rules, the less they are acting as a moral person. Obeying rules because you think you should is not the same as making moral choices; therefore at best such people are morally neutral, amoral.
If we threatened into behaving in a good manner then we are at best amoral, because we are not acting with free will. If we believe that a supreme god is going to punish us or deny you life if you misbehave, it is like being permanently threatened into behaving well. In addition, if we believe there is some great reward for behaving well, then our motives for good behavior are potentially more selfish. An atheist who does not believe in heaven and hell is potentially more moral, for he acts without these added factors.
Most atheists who do not believe in divine judgment, and most theists who do, act moral. Some of both groups act consistently immorally. The claim that belief in God is essential or aids moral behavior is wrong, and any amusing theistic claim that they have “better” morals, despite acting under a reward and punishment system, is deeply questionable. Who is more moral? Those who act for the sake of goodness itself, or those who do good acts under the belief that failure to do so results in hell? The natural impulse of the vigorous person of decent character is to attempt to do good, but if he is deprived of all political power and of all opportunity to influence events he will be deflected from his natural course and will decide that the important thing is to be good. It led to a conception of personal holiness as something quite independent of beneficent action, since holiness had to be something that could be achieved by people who were impotent in action.
Question : "Secular ethics cannot satisfactorily answer the question, 'why should I be moral all the time?"
(2004)
Answer : One argument often said trying to prove the existence of their God is as follows: If God does not exist, and then there are no objective moral values.There are objective moral values.Therefore, God exists. Those who use this argument also claim that Atheists cannot have any basis for acting morally; they grudgingly admit that Atheists can act morally, but insist that we have no rational, secular grounds for doing so. Craig a western philosopher has said that there is no God, and then there can be no Objective Moral Values.He interprets this to mean that, without Objective Values, there is no reason to have any values at all: the death of God means the death of meaning.
In response to his arguments it has been said that there is no reason why objective moral laws must exist. That is not to say that people who do not believe in God cannot live moral lives; the question is, are there objective moral standards without God?The answer is no: without God, there is no reason to believe in objective moral standards.Yet we all (or most of us) recognize that there are objective moral standards: rape, murder, etc. are morally wrong.
Precisely speaking, it is said;
In other words human beings need a code of good and evil to live by and it has convinced most of the world that morality belongs to religion.Witness the historical split between science and ethics, recognized by most thinkers. As long as religion maintains its virtual monopoly on morality, it will be a significant force and as long as we have religion, two things will keep taking place in the name of God: fraud and destruction. What can we say about this argument?The claim that morality can only come from God, that there are no rational secular grounds for morality, is a large claim. It is true that through God we do believe in good code of conduct but there are human reasons and considerations which also prompt us to be moral even if we do not believe in God.
Question : Are God and religion necessary presuppositions of morality? Elucidate your answer following Kant. Also consider critically in this context the possible ground(s) of morality for an atheist.
(2003)
Answer : Ethics or morality is a major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct. Most religions have an ethical component, often derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. Morality without Religion addresses the question of whether religion is necessary for moral behavior. Even though societal norms of morality and virtue are universal elements of all religions, acceptable moral behavior may differ from religion to religion. In smaller societies, religion-inspired social forces are often sufficient to maintain societal order. In larger more secular societies, some kind of law enforcement and judicial systems are necessary to maintain order. The subject of morality without religion is dealt with by several prominent scholars.
Some scholars are of opinion that where morality is divorced from religion, reason will, it is true, enable a man to recognize to a large extent the ideal to which his nature points. But much will be wanting. He will disregard some of his most essential duties. He will, further, be destitute of the strong motives for obedience to the law afforded by the sense of obligation to God and the knowledge of the tremendous sanction attached to its neglect motives which experience has proved to be necessary as a safeguard against the influence of the passions. And, finally, his actions even if in accordance with the moral law, will be based not on the obligation imposed by the Divine will, but on considerations of human dignity and on the good of human society.
Objective morality, that is to say a morality based on reality (instead of subjective beliefs, desires, whims, etc), is usually claimed to be the province of religion. Atheism, on the other hand, is supposed to have nothing to offer but evolutionary or emotionalist explanations. It is important to understand that the skeptic answer can be seen as simply absurd and hypocrite. Most atheists would not accept subjectivist answers in any other area (except perhaps some nihilists), especially things like science. We rightly blame many religions for holding Creationist positions on faith and subjective appreciation, because their position is not based on reality. But we must put the same blame on the shoulders of the subjectivist position in morality.
To argue that morality is not knowledge and that therefore any belief or whim is acceptable, is not any more acceptable than saying that biology is not knowledge and that Creationist is true by default. One may claim that in the absence of a possible objective morality, we must fall back on subjectivism. But that is unacceptable: in the absence of objective evidence for a proposition, we must remain silent. We must go to the extent that a rational evaluation of the evidence will take us, and no further. To do otherwise is to indulge in fantasy, which can be very good in art but a detriment in philosophy as well as in our daily experience.
The standard skeptic and humanist answer to morality is evolutionary adaptation. But evolution does not give us objective morality, but rather explains why people hold the moral positions they do. It explains why the whim exists, but not what reality actually indicates. Evolutionary adaptations are based on a non-directed process, and are based on the human species and environment as it existed millions of years ago. Even if the evolutionary process was flawless from our perspective, it would hardly make the moral instincts of a tribal, status-based species living in an ancestral environment, devoid of almost all technology, applicable to today's world. Whatever the moral system upheld by the individual, we can express the general value-judgment process simply in the following manner:
One frequent defense made on behalf of religion and theism is the claim that they are necessary for morality. This claim takes a variety of forms: people wouldn't behave morally if it weren't for religion or fear of gods, some god or gods are the authors of morality so we can't be moral without following their commands, religion and gods provide reasons to be moral, the absence of religion or gods encourages immorality, a moral person is simply assumed to be religious, and so forth. Whatever the form, though, the principle is the same: religion generally, or some religion in particular, is equated with morality to the extent where they can't be separated.
Sometimes this will be offered as a pragmatic reason for adopting that religion by arguing that even if the religion seems implausible, it's still useful by promoting morality, and this should be encouraged broadly in as many people as possible. Morality though are also based on human considerations and reason needs some subjective reasons too that may force an individual to act in a manner that is righteous in nature. God or divine power is a force that works a motivating force for the believers to obey the morals attached to the concept of God or religion.
Question : There are two incompatible views regarding the relationship between religion and morality. According to one view morality requires some divine transcendental source in order that it be binding and objective. The second view argues in favour of purely secular, based entirely on human reason. Which one of these two views is correct in your opinion and why? Discuss.
(2001)
Answer : The divine command theory (DCT) of ethics holds that an act is either moral or immoral solely because God either commands us to do it or prohibits us from doing it, respectively. On DCT the only thing that makes an act morally wrong is that God prohibits doing it, and all that it means to say that torture is wrong is that God prohibits torture. DCT is wildly implausible for reasons best illustrated by the Euthyphro dilemma, which is based on a discussion of what it means for an act to be holy in Plato's Euthyphro. Substituting "moral wrongness" for "holiness" raises the dilemma: Is torture wrong because God prohibits it, or does God prohibit torture because it is already wrong? If there is no standard of "being morally right" apart from God's commands, then God could literally command us to do anything and it would be right for us to do it by definition. Whatever God commands becomes the standard of moral rightness, and there are no moral values external to God to constrain what he would or would not command. So if God commanded one person to kill another, DCT entails that that killing would be moral because "doing the right thing" is logically equivalent to "doing what God commands." A highly implausible implication is that it is impossible to even imagine God commanding a wrong act. What counts as moral or immoral behavior on DCT is completely subjective dependent upon God's fiat and thus arbitrary.
One frequent defense made on behalf of religion and theism is the claim that they are necessary for morality. This claim takes a variety of forms: people wouldn't behave morally if it weren't for religion or fear of gods, some god or gods are the authors of morality so we can't be moral without following their commands, religion and gods provide reasons to be moral, the absence of religion or gods encourages immorality, a moral person is simply assumed to be religious, and so forth. Whatever the form, though, the principle is the same: religion generally, or some religion in particular, is equated with morality to the extent where they can't be separated. Sometimes this will be offered as a pragmatic reason for adopting that religion by arguing that even if the religion seems implausible, it's still useful by promoting morality, and this should be encouraged broadly in as many people as possible.
While these claims may be intuitively appealing to many religious theists, just how well-founded is the belief? One means for testing it is to look at the religions themselves. Are their gods moral? Are highly-regarded believers from the past or religious figures in scriptures moral? Are believers today especially moral? The answer to all of this is overwhelmingly negative, and this creates a reason to doubt the claims about religion being necessary for morality as well as the fundamental truth claims made on behalf of the religion generally and theistic claims in particular.
Religious belief systems usually include the idea of divine will and divine judgment and usually correspond to a moral code of conduct, and many religions claim that religion and morality are intimately connected. Most of the religions maintain that although morality can be derived from unaided reason as it is simply the "right ordering" of man's actions, ultimately it derives from God because God created man and nature and that the ultimate sanction for immorality is the loss of a relationship with God. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of human nature, and that knowledge of right and wrong is based on our best understanding of our individual and joint interests, rather than stemming from a transcendental or arbitrarily local source, therefore rejecting faith completely as a basis for action. The humanist ethics goal is a search for viable individual, social and political principles of conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility, ultimately eliminating human suffering.
There are those who maintain, however, that even if God is not required as the author of the moral law, he is nevertheless required as the enforcer of it, for without the threat of divine punishment, people will not act morally. But this position is no more plausible than the Divine Command Theory itself. In the first place, as an empirical hypothesis about the psychology of human beings, it is questionable. There is no unambiguous evidence that theists are more moral than atheists. Not only have psychological studies failed to find a significant correlation between frequency of religious worship and moral conduct, but convicted criminals are much more likely to be theists than atheists. Second, the threat of divine punishment cannot impose a moral obligation, for might does not make right. Threats extort; they do not create a moral duty.
Thus, if our only reason for obeying God is the fear of punishment if we do not, then, from a moral point of view, God has no more claims to our allegiance than Hitler or Stalin. Moreover, since self-interest is not an adequate basis for morality, there is reason to believe that heaven and hell cannot perform the regulative function often attributed to them. Heaven and hell are often construed as the carrot and stick that God uses to make us toe the line. Heaven is the reward that good people get for being good and hell is the punishment that bad people get for being bad. But consider this. Good people do well because they want to do well - not because they will personally benefit from it or because someone has forced them to do it. People who do well solely for personal gain or to avoid personal harm are not good people. Someone who saves a drowning child, for example, only because he was offered a reward or was physically threatened does not deserve our praise.
Thus, if we only reason for performing good actions is we desire to go to heaven or your fear of going to hell - if all our other-regarding actions are motivated purely by self-interest - then we should go to hell because we are not a good person. An obsessive concern with either heaven or hell should actually lessen one's chances for salvation rather than increase them. Fundamentalists correctly perceive that universal moral standards are required for the proper functioning of society. But they erroneously believe that God is the only possible source of such standards. Philosophers as diverse as Plato, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, and John Rawls have demonstrated that it is possible to have a universal morality without God. Contrary to what the fundamentalists would have us believe, then, what our society really needs is not more religion but a richer notion of the nature of morality.Question : Religion and Morality.
(1997)
Answer : Religious belief systems usually include the idea of divine will and divine judgment and usually correspond to a moral code of conduct, and many religions claim that religion and morality are intimately connected. Although morality can be derived from unaided reason as it is simply the "right ordering" of man's actions, ultimately it derives from God because God created man and nature and that the ultimate sanction for immorality is the loss of a relationship with God. Morality has three principal meanings. In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. Morals are created by and define society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience.
An example of the descriptive usage could be "common conceptions of morality have changed significantly over time." In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, under specified conditions. In this "prescriptive" sense of morality as opposed to the above described "descriptive" sort of sense, moral value judgments such as "murder is immoral" are made. To deny 'morality' in this sense is a position known as moral skepticism, in which the existence of objective moral "truths" is rejected. In its third usage, 'morality' is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain. Then what is the relationship between religion and morality? Humanists and atheists see no connection between religion and ethics, arguing that it is possible to be ethical without being religious.
However, others contend that ethics and religion are inseparable, a common view held by Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Jews. An atheist would hold the view that morals are independent of God (autonomy.) Humanists hold strong ethical beliefs, however, deny the existence of a supernatural being. A key question here is, do morals come from God? If not, where do they come from? Do religious people stand a better chance of being moral than non- religious people? Of course not! Logically it is always possible to be moral without being religious though religion does strengthen your faith in morality.
