ETHICS AND

RELIGION GROUP 8
JONAS ESPANOL • MARC NAGERA • PRINCESS PATARAY
JOHNFERSON FRIA • JAKE TOLIN
Religion is the belief in
and worship of a
superhuman controlling
power, especially a
personal God or gods.
The origin of religion is uncertain. According to
anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just,
"Many of the great world religions appear to have
begun as revitalization movements of some sort, as
the vision of a charismatic prophet fires the
imaginations of people seeking a more
comprehensive answer to their problems than they
feel is provided by everyday beliefs.
The development of religion has taken
different forms in different cultures. Some
religions place an emphasis on belief, while
others emphasize practice. Some religions
focus on the subjective experience of the
religious individual. Some religions claim to
be universal, believing their laws and
cosmology to be binding for everyone.
A global 2012 poll reports that 59% of
the world's population is religious, and
36% are not religious, including 13%
who are atheists, with a 9 percent
decrease in religious belief from 2005.
On average, women are more religious
than men.
Rank Religion Members
1. Christianity 2.3 billion
2. Islam 1.8 billion
3. Unaffiliated 1.2 billion
4. Hinduism 1.1 billion
5. Buddhism 500 million
6. Folk religions 400 million
7. Other religions 100 million
8. Judaism 10 million
Ethics involves systematizing, defending,
and recommending concepts of right and
wrong behavior. 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 traditional moral conduct (Singer,
1993)
 Most religions have an ethical component,
often derived from purported supernatural
revelation or guidance. Some assert that religion
is necessary to live ethically. Blackburn states
that there are those who “would say that we can
only flourish under the umbrella of a strong
social order, cemented by common adherence to
a particular religious tradition.
 Ethics and religion are cornerstones
in society. The importance of Ethics is
becoming recognized in all aspects of
everyday life. A strong background in
Ethics and Religion is important for
many careers today, as well as a crucial
discipline for all people.
 Ethics is universal decision-making
tools that may be used by a person of
any religious persuasion, including
atheists. While religion makes claims
about cosmology, social behavior and
the “proper” treatment of others, etc.
Ethics is based on logic and reason
rather than tradition or injunction.
 As Burke suggests that the “hortatory Negative” of the
“Thou Shalt Not’s” found in many religious traditions that
tell people how to behave by “moralizing,” ethics includes
no such moralizing.
If something is bad, ethics tells us we should not do it,
if something is good, obviously there is no harm in doing it.
The tricky part of life, and the reason that we need ethics, is
that what is good and bad in life are often complicated by
our personal circumstances, culture, finances, ethnicity,
gender, age, time, experience, personal beliefs, and other
variables.
 There is a spectrum of views about
how religion and ethics are related from
the view that religion is the absolute
bedrock of ethics to one that holds
ethics is based on humanistic
assumptions justified mainly, and
sometimes only, by appeals of reason.
 The relationship between religion and
ethics is about the relationship between
revelation and reason. Religion is based in
some measure on the idea that God (or
some Deity) reveals insights about life and
its true meaning. These insights are
collected in texts (the Bible, the Torah, the
Koran, etc.) and presented as “revelation.”
 Ethics from a strictly humanistic
perspective, is based on the tenets of
reason: Anything that is not rationally
verifiable cannot be considered
justifiable. From this perspective, ethical
principles need not derive their authority
from religious doctrine.
 Religious and secular ethics don't
derive their authority from the same
source, which is why we must find a
way to establish common ground
between them; otherwise we're
condemning ourselves to live amidst
social discord and division.
 According to Aristotle, cultivating
qualities he called them "virtues" like
prudence, reason accommodation,
compromise, moderation, wisdom, honesty,
and truthfulness among others would enable
us to enter the discussion and conflicts
between religion and ethics where
differences exist with a measure moderation
and agreement.
 A central aspects of ethics is the "good
life", a life worth living or life that is simply
satisfying, which is held by many philosophers
to be more important than traditional moral
codes.
The ancient Greeks called it eudaimonia or
happiness, they believed that it was brought
about by living one's life in accordance with
virtue positive trait of character.
 Immanuel Kant defended the idea of God as a
basic requirements of ethics.
Kant believed virtue should be rewarded by
happiness, and it would be intolerable if it were not so.
The soul must be immortal, since it's clear that
virtue often does go unrewarded in the present life.
The existence of a God and the immortality of the
soul were what Kant called the postulate of practical
reason, the assumption without which, so he claimed,
ethics and moral life would not be possible.
 If religion has a role in decision making,
then what should be that role?
For many individuals, their religion is a
centrally defining characteristic of who they
are, such that they would be nearly incapable
of making ethical decisions independently of
their religious beliefs.
 Some of our most basic moral
sentiments are directly connected to
religious ideology.
We regard religion as a good
source of basic moral guidance,
making it unwise to argue that there
ought to be no connections between
religion and ethics.
 The link between religion
and morality is best illustrated
by the Golden Rule.
This is the basic ethics that
guides all religion.
 THE
INSEPARABLENESS
OF ETHICS AND
RELIGION
•Are ethics and religion separable?
•Is ethics separable from religion?
•Can we have a set of ethical
judgments and a coherent ethical life
without grounding in religion?
• There is an old philosophical view that if
there’s no God, there is no morality.
• As children, many of us learn about ethics
in the context of religious instruction. And as
adults, the ethical or moral judgments are often
shaped by our religious background, whether
consciously or not.
• Sometimes, religion is even given as the
justification for our ethical ideas.
• In the parlance of contemporary
philosophy, ethical properties have a certain
special or queer status. That is, we cannot
see wrongness in killing in the way that we
see the whiteness of a stone.
• If killing is wrong, it can only be
because God or some divine order regards it
as wrong (Mackie, 1977).
• There is also the view attributed to
Dostoevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov
saying that, if God does not exist,
everything is permitted.
• Senator and Democratic candidate in
2000 for U.S. Vice President Joseph
Lieberman also denied that morality can be
maintained without religion.
• The 19th century German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche also
thought that morality, which he
understood it as a mode of valuation
rooted in the contrast between good and
evil, is intimately bound to the belief in
a transcendental realm (Weberman,
2013).
 RELIGION AND
ETHICS IN
DECISION-MAKING
 When making an ethical decision, no one stands
outside a social and cultural world.
Religion is a multicultural society bound
together by a professed faith. The earliest known
creed in Christianity is the “Jesus is Lord,” which
serves as a statement of religious practices and
allegiance to Jesus Christ, whom the Christians
acknowledged as Lord. This fundamental identity
determines, to a great extent, an approach to ethics.
 THE ART OF
CHOOSING WELL
 Ethics depends on that human habit of
reflection that takes into account our interests and
values, as well as those of others, which include
the process of deciding and doing.
Fortunately, we do not need to re-create the
ethical wheel in every new situation. What we,
instead, do is that we systematize our ethical
insights and share them with others, for we are
inherently conservative creatures.
 A careful weighing of the practical
outcomes of people’s choices leads to
the elucidation of moral norms. Moral
laws are established and enforced by
members of the social order because
of their perceived truth and
applicability for the common good.
 In a world marked by rapid
innovation, ethical judgments
allow us to sift the evidence,
name our values, and choose our
means of achieving the best
possible results.
 Established law does not afford an
efficient answer to every moral dilemma,
precisely because new situations oblige us
to imagine and enact new moral laws – or at
least to make new applications of existing
moral certitudes about such issues as dignity
of human life, the value of honesty and
fairness, and the protection of the weak.
 In this never-ending process,
circumstances force us to choose
between competing claims on our will.
How do we orient ourselves in order
to judge cases well? What ought we
retrieve from the past? And under
what form? This is where faith comes
in.
 Faith is, in its most
elemental and universal
form, a trust in some
absolute standard, some
transcendent reality.
 Faith-based ethics considers the moral
challenges of our times against the
background of those fundamental norms and
values that undergird our lives. The natural
law tradition from Scholastic theology
provides a means (among others) of placing
these values in dialogue with new problems
and new challenges.
Natural Law Theory - a theory asserting that the
morally right action is the one that follows the
dictates of nature.
According to the most influential form of this
theory (traditional natural law theory), the natural
world, including humankind, exhibits a rational
order in which everything has its proper place and
purpose, with each thing given a specific role to
play by God.
 It insists that humans can
discover what is natural, and thus
moral, through reason. God has
created a natural order and given
humans the gift of rationality to
correctly apprehend this order.
 Everyday millions and millions of people
interact with each other, socially, physically,
and mentally. To some extent, the choices and
decisions we make on a day-to-day basis are
all in some aspect subconscious, especially the
tiny things. Humans have free will, but the
question is how much religion affects our
decision and choice making skills?
 Religion and choices both play big
roles in our everyday life, without some
type of idea about spirituality, whether it be
the lack-thereof or the idea of a certain of
God and religion, humans would be lost.
It's the same thing with choices, without
making important choices in life, and even
to some extent small choices, you won't get
anywhere.
THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING!!!