Original scientific paper
Ethics and Religion
Maja Žitinski
; University of Dubrovnik, Croatia
Abstract
The paper aims to present the relationship of religion to morality in virtue of their distinctive purposes. Although for many people religious beliefs provide additional supportive motives for responding to moral reasons, the paper investigates whether morality is logically or epistemologically dependent on religion. Since the constitution of genuine knowledge is sometimes opposed to opinion and belief, the criterion for knowledge is not reducible to the constitution of belief. Both fields might be interrelated and mutually enriching, thus in cases when evidence is absent or insufficient for the degree of belief accredited to it religion appears to be the mode of communication that does not require the same sort of complex procedures to detect nonsense and avoid indoctrination. The defining purpose of ethics is to deepen moral understanding and contribute to moral development by strengthening person’s capacities for moral autonomy. It is particularly important in cases when people subconsciously adopt a social consensus about matters that are labeled immoral and thus prohibited in spite of the fact that their specific judgments are mistaken. Moral reasons make their own distinctive appeal to us not because God commands them, yet because God would approve them as they justify divine commands.
Keywords
piety or holiness; coercion; moral reason; justification; knowledge versus belief
Hrčak ID:
77877
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2011.
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