AS Religious Studies Revision: Religion and Morality AO1 Material: i.e. what goes in part a)?

Read Chapter 11 of Bowie for more detail. You must be able to explain what the relationship between religion and morality is. Your explanation might cover the following ideas: God is omnibenevolent; perfectly good: by definition therefore God is the origin of goodness (and therefore morality) in the universe. In the Bible, God performs actions which can be said to be moral: he performs miracles to help those he favours for example. In scripture, God reveals a moral plan for human beings through propositions such as the 10 Commandments or through the lives of holy people such as Jesus or Muhammed. Morality is therefore very clearly related to religion. Religions promise an afterlife where good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds are punished. Conformity with religious morality results in reward. Religious traditions have developed moral systems: Natural Moral Law for example. These systems often take the existence of God as a prerequisite. God is needed as the ultimate upholder of morality: as Ivan Karamazov said, without God all is permitted. With no supreme judge, justice cannot be upheld. The Euthyphro Dilemma: This dilemma attempts to show that it is irrational to link morality to God (or the gods) because either way it is flawed: Does (a) God will things because they are good, or (b) are things willed by God good, because God wills them? (a) Makes God subject to objective realities that even God cannot change, which limits Gods power. (b) If something willed by God is good simply because God wills it, this raises the possibility of evil acts becoming good because God chooses so. For example, The Ban in Deuteronomy 20. Statement (b) is also known as Divine Command Theory: this is where things are good simply because God (who is objectively good) wills them. This fits in with the thinking of people like Thomas Aquinas, who argue that God is perfectly good and cannot do anything that is not good as this would contradict Gods nature.

The Moral Argument: Immanuel Kant. Kant wondered why people strive to achieve the summum bonum: the highest good, where virtue and happiness come together. He argued that virtue and happiness do not come together in this life. As a result, Kant suggested that pursuit of the summum bonum postulates (suggests) that people believe three things: human moral freedom, eternal life where happiness and virtue come together and the existence of a God to make all this happen. For Kant, belief in the existence of God is most clearly shown by the desire to be moral. Look at other versions of this argument too. AO2: Critical evaluation i.e. what do I put in part b)? Remember to regurgitating. read the question first before just

Problems with linking morality to religion. It is possible to be moral and not be religious: there are ethical systems such as Kantian ethics and Utilitarianism that do not require the existence of God to uphold ideas of goodness. There are many examples of people doing immoral things in the name of religion: for example the Westboro Baptist Church (godhatesfags.com). The Bible contains many moral statements that are either out of date (e.g. concerning Temple worship) or immoral to many: the prescription of the death penalty for homosexuality and The Ban in Deuteronomy 20:10. If we say that God can only command good things because God is perfectly good by nature, this overlooks many of the objections to this statement, such as the giving of free will to humans and the creation of a world that contains things hazardous to human happiness. There are many modern moral issues that are not covered by religious statements; stem cell research for example. If moral behaviour is motivated by fear of punishment in the afterlife, this seems to be an extraordinarily selfish (an unreligious) motivation for moral behaviour. The rewards and punishments are also impossible to verify: how for example, do we know whether or not Hitler was punished for his crimes? Many people who claim that morality is religious, claim that religious morality is objective. Some would argue that morality is clearly relative and subjective: how else can we account for different moral practices?

 Which religious Christian?

morality

is

right?

Buddhist?

Hindu?

Sikh?

Benefits of linking morality to religion. By using God as the basis for morality, this gives morality an objective, eternally true nature. Many would argue that the only way to uphold moral standards is to make morality objective. Objective morality is found in many non-religious philosophies: Platos Form of the Good for example. If morality is underwritten by God, this means that we can guarantee justice either in this life or the next as God punishes and rewards those who do evil. Because many statements of religious morality are considered absolute, this means that they can also be thought of as universal and applicable to all humans. Without God, there is no reason to be moral as there is nothing to ultimately enforce morality and moral behaviour.