Thursday, 22 September 2016

Religion and Ethics

Religion and Ethics:
·         Religion is an old concept and predominantly the action of human being is defined through religion.
·          It is defined through a theory called divine command theory or theological voluntarism. It is believed that whatever the religious scripture says had been said by god and whatever god says is ethical.
·          Thereby according to this view, ethical action is something which god prescribes and unethical which god restricts.
·          Religious scriptures carry do’s and don’ts and become the basis of ethical action but this theologians world consists of not only theist/ atheist and also agnostic.
·          World inhabited not only by individual of single religion but multiple religion with progressive secularisation of society with no. of atheist and agnostic are increasing in post modern era.
·         By this they are trying to ask that if someone does not believe in god. Does that mean all their action is unethical?
·          Theist is going to interact with atheist and agnostic both.
·         If the interaction has to take place both has to believe in mutually agreed norms with increasing secularisation of society, the interaction between the two require mutually agreed norms which cannot be described through religious scriptures.
·          World is populated by people from different beliefs and god cannot prescribed difference ideas for different people while god is one.
Argument
·          If god promotes killing, speaking lie, will all these become ethical, our intuition knows that these are unethical. In this context, we argue that ethics cannot be arbitrarily.
·         Therefore what god say is not ethical always (example. our behaviour towards females is discriminating in some religion).
·         So ethics is autonomous somewhat of religion.
·         Ethics is not arbitrary and have independent identity. This view growing with increasing secularism and cosmopolitanism of society.
·         Therefore religion alone cannot define ethics.


No comments:

Post a Comment