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The Relationship Between Religion and Ethics Essay

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To answer this question, we must first understand what both ethics and morality are. As ethics is defined as the philosophical study of morality, those who study religion get their moral precepts from what they believe God says should be done. This perspective is not at all unexpected, because all religions apply a perspective on morality. Morality is defined as beliefs concerning right and wrong, good and bad- beliefs that can include judgements, values, rules, principles, and theories. Morals are what help us guide our actions, define our values, and give us reason for being the person that we are. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2009, over 228 million Americans classified themselves as practicing some type of religion. Due to …show more content…

These religious codes of conduct, such as the Ten Commandments, are generally very broad statements, elucidating only general principles that may be inconvenient to apply to each specific case. Some religious moral codes may also contradict one another. These contradictions compel religious believers to decipher religious directives or to draw out the implications of particular views- this is otherwise known as doing ethics. When conflicts such as moral contradictions and inconsistencies arise, conversations including ethics and moral reasoning is the only way to solve these inconsistencies. Those who are genuine devotees of a certain religion may question if their religion’s moral instructions make sense according to one another. In these distinct cases, intelligent resolution of the claims can only be sorted out by putting in place an unbiased standard that can classify the competing viewpoints. This is where ethics comes in as the neutrality in the form of critical thinking, proficient arguments, and careful analysis. Any beneficial conversations about morality that occur between those who practice religion and those who do not, or those with different religions, must incorporate a common set of ethical concepts and a shared procedure for resolving issues and making judgments, all of which ethics provides. It is also understood that in these conversations moral positions on the issues

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