Differences Between Religion And Morality: The link between religious perspectives and morals is explored at the intersections of morality and religion. Value frameworks for personal behaviour are ubiquitous in religions, and they serve to help members in identifying what is good and wrong.
Morality and religion are not synonymous. Though religion may be dependent on morality and may even grow alongside morality, morality is not always dependent on religion, despite some people’s “near reflex assumption” to the contrary. Prior to the contemporary age of philosophy, it was widely accepted that religion is the undeniable foundation of morality, indicating that there can be no morality without religion.
This widely held and deeply ingrained belief that religion is a precondition for morality continues to be promoted today by scholars, who claim that “morality is impossible without belief in God,” and, who claim that “declining moral standards are at least partly attributable to the rise of secularism and decline of organized religion.”
Because several other modern and contemporary academics have argued with evidence that many religious ideas and behaviours have failed the test of morality, the argument that religion is neither required nor sufficient for morality no longer appears to be particularly strong.
This viewpoint challenges the long-held belief that morality has a divine origin: either God created man with moral sense or man learned about good and evil, right and wrong via religious teachings. Despite the diversity of various faiths, the moral dilemma that our modern society is experiencing creates a stronger objection to religion’s effect on morality.
If religion has such a strong impact on morality, one could wonder why moral standards are being disregarded in our modern society, despite the extremely loud, clear, and consistent preaching of countless religious denominations in nearly every corner of our modern civilization.
