What's the difference between secular and religious morality?

Question

I was thinking of skewering this question by using emotive terms like religious prejudice and reasoned morality, but then, what would that leave you to think about?

Quote: "If there is no God, then ....... there is no right or wrong," --- Questioner


I did read a little further into that answer before I realised you weren't kidding. Questioner, You should never answer another question, on any subject, ever, for the whole of the rest of your life. Trust me on this. You have nothing worthwhile to say about anything.

Answer 1

I guess that religious morality gives place to a divine system that intervenes directly in the affairs of men. So one respects his fellow human being because of fear of punishment from a deity.

Secular morality, on the other hand, is one that assumes a priori the dignity and worth of the human. Therefore, one is moral in dealings with fellow humans not because it has been mandated by a religious belief but from a position of humanism.

Answer 2

With the question phrased the way it is, there are only two answers: 1. Huh? What does that mean? 2. Of course! All jokes aside, religious morality is fear based but i wouldn't consider it brainwashing. It has to do with the fact that humanity had just removed itself from a Hobbesian state-of-nature, where there were no rules. People realized that the temptation to revert to a Hobbesian state-of-nature must be huge, and so to make sure society won't self-destruct, they invented a God that creates rules. To be honest, religion more likely stemmed from ignorance (the fact that most primitive religions had gods of thunder/lightning - Indra, Zeus, Thor - points to this), and a way to order it... But some religions, the Abrahamic ones especially - i find it hard to ascribe to ignorance. The fact that they are monotheistic, and extremely punitive. i find it more likely they were invented up by a genius. Yes a genius. Said genius looked upon how society teetered on the brink of a reversion to a s.o.n, and decided that the only way to keep people in line was with a punitive God. He hated it, knew the atrocities that were to come, but knew that one time, when men were pure enough, they would free themselves from the brainwashing. Religious morality was created to prevent a reversion to a state of nature. Secular morality was created to pull society forward. Needless to say, now that we are nowhere near a s.o.n scenario, I believe religious morality is now obsolete.

Answer 3

Morality is morality. What some people claim is morality is not.

When I read something I don't accept it on blind faith. Nor do most other people. (that includes Christians)

Today the media has man-made the word morality synonymous with tolerance for almost everything and anything--In reality that's the opposite of morality.

If morality were something made up by society or religion no child would have any idea between right and wrong. If you think they don't then you don't spend much time around children.

Answer 4

I think the difference isn't with what someone believes is right or wrong. Someone who has no religion may think that abortion is wrong, just like someone who bases that thought on their religion. I think the difference is with where someone gets the thought of what is wrong or right, and who or what the person is trying to please. Someone who is religious is ultimately trying to follow the religious guidelines and please the god or gods that they are worshipping. Someone who isn't religious is really following their own path and has no reason to please anyone outside of what THEY think is right or wrong. They base it on what they believe and have concluded over the years. Granted, some people in both groups mesh the two and you end up with a different semi-religious, semi-secular group that gets an opinion and uses a holy book to back it up by taking something out of context (example, people who use the Bible to believe that you aren't supposed to marry anyone of a different race).

Answer 5

This is no trivial, insignificant question. If there is no God, then there is no Supreme Being to which we must give an account—no Judgment Day, no heaven or hell. There is no right or wrong, no good or evil. We should live by the saying, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” If this is just a great cosmic accident, then there is no such thing as "morality."

But if there is a God—well, that’s a different story. Are we an accident, or the image of God? Are we without purpose, or have an eternal goal? Do we live like an animal, or like a child of God? In the end, is it dust, or eternity?

There is an interesting anthropological argument that is known as the “moral argument” that is sort of connected to what you are asking. The argument is this: Man has within him a moral nature, a sense of “oughtness”; where did it come from?

You see, there arises in all of us, in any culture, universal feelings of right and wrong. Wherever you go, people in every place and every walk of life, say things like: “That’s not fair.” “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” “That’s my seat, I was there first.” “Come on, you promised.” When people say things like that, they are appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which they expect the other person to know.

The other person doesn’t say, “forget your standard,” but almost always tries to make an excuse to show that they really didn’t go against the standard. As C.S. Lewis said about this standard, “...the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm.” You know, there are reasons why you should be let off the hook. That time you were unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money came when you were very hard-up. You never would have promised that if you would have known how busy you were going to be. And then comes the argument between these two people. It is clear that they both believe in a standard or they couldn’t argue about it. You can’t argue that a football player committed a foul unless there is some agreement about the rules of football.

If morality is simply something learned from our culture, as they want us to believe, then why are the moral teachings of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Indians, Greeks and Romans so very similar? C. S. Lewis talked a lot about this. Has there ever been a culture where people were admired for running away in battle? Or admired for being selfish (even though they might differ about who you should be unselfish to)? Men have differed on things like whether you should have one wife or four, but they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. In the words of Thomas C. Mayberry, “There is broad agreement that lying, promise breaking, killing, and so on are generally wrong.”

And whenever you find someone who says they don’t believe in right or wrong, you will find them going back on it a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you break one to him, he will immediately be complaining “It’s not fair!” Even a thief gets upset and feels wronged when someone steals from him. As it has been said, “If there is no God, no atheist can object on moral grounds if I want to kill him.”

I had an atheist friend some years back that I would always argue creation/evolution with. One day he came in and told me how mad he got from watching a documentary on the Holocaust. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I thought, “Why are you so mad; it’s just survival of the fittest, right? You don’t even believe there is such a thing as right and wrong.” You see, no matter how much he denies it, he feels that standard as well as I do.

So, where did it come from? We don’t see it in animals. A dog doesn’t feel guilt from stealing another dog’s bone. Apes don’t sit down and talk about morals and ethics. If an ox gores a man to death, it is not arrested, tried, and condemned to the electric chair. We recognize its inability to make moral judgments and so we might just confine it in a sturdier pen and warn people to stay away. If we evolved from animals, how did we come to be moral creatures?

Could non-moral matter combined with time and chance be an adequate cause for this? If people are merely products of physical evolution and “survival of the fittest,” why do we sacrifice for each other? Where does courage, dying for a cause, love, dignity, duty, and compassion come from? This seems to be the opposite of what evolution would produce; in a struggle for survival, will the existence of a conscience help or hinder survival? As John Adam has said, “...according to the evolutionary principle of survival of the fittest, a loving human with a conscience is at a great disadvantage and would be unlikely to have survived the evolutionary process.”

Answer 6

Religious morality is 'centered' on the Bible. Secular morality is focused on the law and doing what society things is right or wrong.

Answer 7

Secular morality is based on socially acceptable behaviour. Religious morality is based on an old book. Secular morality can be shapen to reflect changes in society. Religious morality holds morality constant and unchanging. That means no miniskirts. What kind of primitive world would we live in with no miniskirts? Secular morality means that majority rules. Religious morality means that since the Bible never says slavery is bad, slavery must be ok. However, virtue is higher than both.

Answer 8

Religious morality is based on appeasing a supposedly angry deity. Secular morality is grounded more firmly in ethics.

Answer 9

One is based on Philosophy; the other is based on Religious Commandments. Many aspects are commonly held to be true.

Answer 10

Theists get their morality from a book, whereas atheists get theirs from their hearts.

Theists simply obey a written morality without question whereas atheists morality is much more varied as it is individual. There is nothing to suggest that either system contains 'better' morality than the other.