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Essay on how religious beliefs affect individuals behaviour in society
Influence of religion on the individual
Influence of religion on the individual
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Morality and ethics have always been a large source of debate and contention between different factions of various interests, beliefs, and ideals due to its centrality and foundational role in society and civilization and incredible importance to everyday life and decision making. In many of these disputes religious belief, or a lack thereof, serves as an important driving force behind one or both sides of the argument. In the modern world, one of the bigger instances of this can be seen in the many debates between Atheistic and religious individuals about the implications of religious belief on morality. One of the most famous Atheists, Christopher Hitchens, asserts that religion is not only unnecessary for morality, but actually impedes it. In his work God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens challenges religious believers to “name an ethical statement or action, made or performed by a person of faith that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer”, and proudly states afterwards that many have made the attempt but no one has given him a satisfactory answer. However, the best response to this challenge is to point out the inherent flaws in his logic, the unfairness of his challenge, and the fact that Hitchens is asking the wrong question in the first place. The first issue with Hitchens’ challenge is that the question he is asking is in reality a very unfair one. An atheist and a religious individual’s cosmology will naturally have vast differences causing similar rifts in what one deems ethical, moral, “good” and “evil”, and whether or not the last two concepts even exist. If one holds a view of reality that is dependent on creation from a higher being, then that individual’s belie... ... middle of paper ... ...iefs. This leads to the declaration of challenges such as Hitchens’ when in reality these are the wrong questions to ask (“Center Update”). The pertinent question is not to ask whether religion or atheism is the cause of either morality or immorality, but to ask in what environments and conditions faith, or a lack thereof, contributes to those decisions. Works Cited "Center Update: Case Studies on Religion and Conflict." The Berkley Center. Georgetown University, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2012. Hitchens, Christopher. "An Atheist Responds." The Washington Post. N.p., 15 July 2007. Web. 20 Oct. 2012. Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007. Print. Slezak, P. "Gods of the State: Atheism, Enlightenment and Barbarity." Politics and Religion in the New Century: Philosophical Reflections (2009): 20. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.
It is crucial that every belief must be thoroughly explored and justified to avoid any future repercussions. Clifford provides two examples in which, regardless of the outcome, the party that creates a belief without comprehensive justification ends up at fault. It is possible to apply the situations in The Ethics of Belief to any cases of belief and end up with the conclusion that justification is of utmost importance. Justifying beliefs is so important because even the smallest beliefs affect others in the community, add to the global belief system, and alter the believer moral compass in future decisions.
Religion is a part of society that is so closely bound to the rest of one’s life it becomes hard to distinguish what part of religion is actually being portrayed through themselves, or what is being portrayed through their culture and the rest of their society. In Holy Terrors, Bruce Lincoln states that religion is used as a justifiable mean of supporting violence and war throughout time (Lincoln 2). This becomes truly visible in times such as the practice of Jihad, the Reformation, and 9/11. The purpose of this essay is to show that as long as religion is bound to a political and cultural aspect of a community, religious war and destruction will always occur throughout the world. A historical methodology will be deployed in order to gain
Contrary to popular belief, there is not so much a “war on Christianity” as there is a war on the first amendment by the religious and atheists. However, if we are to have this discussion properly, we must assert which is better for moral and ethical teaching. Paul Kurtz in his article, Atheism Teaches Morality and Ethics, argues from the view that—though it is quite obvious from the title—atheism is the best source for these teachings; Stephen J. Pope argues from the opposite view in his article, Only Religion Can Teach Morality and Ethics. Although I do not believe either writer quite gets it right, these two present quality perspectives from both sides of the aisle.
Meynell's strategy in his chapter on the relevance of theism, he begins by arguing that belief in God does have specifically moral effects upon those who have. It enables us to act upon our beliefs about what it is right for us to do, and enables us to correct our pressing and depressing tendencies toward self-deception and self-interest. And he then argues that philosophical challenges to this view of the relations between theism and right action fail. The principal challenge he has in mind is the claim that Socrates' question in the Euthyphro-whether the gods love what is good because it is good, or whether what they love is good merely because they love it- cannot be answered. The main point of the chapter is not that theists are better people than atheists. It is concluded that theists do not agree to abandon their belief that theism is relevant to moral beliefs and actions.
In Iris Murdoch’s “Morality and Religion” the author questions whether or not religion is necessary for morality. She is very ambivalent with her answer as she explains the similarities and differences between morality and religion but never specifically choosing one side. Many writers extend and complicate Murdoch’s arguments but only for readers to get a better understanding of both concepts. This is significant because it helps readers better understand morality and religion and they can decide for themselves whether religion is necessary for morality or if morality is just natural.
Religion and morality exist together in parallel according to Alan Keyes. Alan Dershowitz stated that if religion and morality are not separated, it could have negative discourse. James Fowler followed Piaget, Kohlberg, and Erickson when selecting the stages to his development of faith across the life span. These three men all selected different ways to look at religio...
... middle of paper ... ... But as long as the Church and State have anything to do with one another, the struggle will continue. Bibliography:..
...iberties. Ed. Noël Merino. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Government Neutrality Is Not 'Anti-Religion'." Psychology Today (3 Oct. 2011). Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
In his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens dissects and criticizes the various claims of religions and the tragic events that have been caused by various religions. The title of the book sums up the arguments of Hitchens in this book in the fact that he makes many arguments of why “religion poisons everything.” The majority of the chapters in this book discuss why he believes religion to be a manmade notion that has led to more trouble than anything else in the world. Most of his focus is on the three Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism but he does fit in criticism of other religions as well. The topics he chooses to discuss range from the sketchy origins of Mormonism to the problems with circumcision. Through his various arguments, Hitchens not only claims that religion is manmade, but also that the idea of any type of divine being is absurd.
Archer, J. E. (2004). USA: 15 Principles of Atheism. Retrieved February 03, 2016, from http://www.unitedstatesatheists.com/cgi-bin/page_display.cgi?page_nav_name=atheism101fK5
Religion is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods, a particular system of faith and worship or a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion (Oxford Dictionary, 2014). From religion, many new groups, communities and further derived religions have formed. Closely related to religion and with endless controversies surrounding it’s classification as a religion is the concept of Atheism- which is defined as the disbelief or rejection of a deity. Descending from this is a social and political movement in favour of secularism known as New Atheism. Understanding the historical content concerning the emergence of atheism, this essay will then address how various aspects within the field inclusive the goals, structures and approaches have emerged and developed over time in comparison to the original atheist ideals.
The author argumentatively explains his opinion as to why the concept of god and religion is erroneous, why religion contradicts every fundamental aspect of...
In today’s modern western society, it has become increasingly popular to not identify with any religion, namely Christianity. The outlook that people have today on the existence of God and the role that He plays in our world has changed drastically since the Enlightenment Period. Many look solely to the concept of reason, or the phenomenon that allows human beings to use their senses to draw conclusions about the world around them, to try and understand the environment that they live in. However, there are some that look to faith, or the concept of believing in a higher power as the reason for our existence. Being that this is a fundamental issue for humanity, there have been many attempts to explain what role each concept plays. It is my belief that faith and reason are both needed to gain knowledge for three reasons: first, both concepts coexist with one another; second, each deals with separate realms of reality, and third, one without the other can lead to cases of extremism.
Schick, Theodore, Jr. "Morality Requires God... or Does It? The Council for Secular Humanism. 17 July 2002. Article from Free Inquiry Magazine, vol.17, number 3. www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/schick_17_3.html
6. Bohdan R. Bociurkiw and John W. Strong, Religion and Atheism in the U.S.S.R. and