Religion and Morality

[icehorse]

From the OP...

"Ultimately, we see and foresee no pithily characterizable relationship between religion and morality. "

Do you agree or disagree with that?

Ha! It seems they buried the lead!

 

[syo]

The relationship between religion and morality is a deep and emotive topic.

emotive? yup, if we are talking cults.

 

[shunyadragon]

There is a problem of equating morality with religion by definition. Religion should be equated with Divine Law and not morality. Morality is a much more broader overlapping subject of human conventions that are cultural and evolved over time. Religions do make claims of "goodness" or "rightness," but in terms of Divine Law and teachings in scripture. There is abundant evidence that morals and ethics are universal in human history, and even exist in simpler forms in primates and other intelligent animals.

From: Morality - Wikipedia

Morality (from Latin: moralis, lit. 'manner, character, proper behavior') is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper.[1] Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion or culture, or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal.[2] Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness" or "rightness".

Moral philosophy includes metaethics, which studies abstract issues such as moral ontology and moral epistemology, and normative ethics, which studies more concrete systems of moral decision-making such as deontological ethics and consequentialism. An example of normative ethical philosophy is the Golden Rule, which states that: "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself."[3][4]

Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e. opposition to that which is good or right), while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any particular set of moral standards or principles.

 

[We Never Know]

There seems to be confusion I'm guessing from not reading the study. The study doesn't support morality is from religion. The study clearly states..

"Ultimately, we see and foresee no pithily characterizable relationship between religion and morality. "

 

[Terry Sampson]

I see many arguments/debates about religion and morality.

And then there's this: 'food for thought' or 'wood for your fire." https://portalconservador.com/livros/Peter-Kreeft-A-Refutation-of-Moral-Relativism.pdf

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

It's a long study with lots of information.


From the OP...

"Ultimately, we see and foresee no pithily characterizable relationship between religion and morality. "

Do you agree or disagree with that?

No kidding. As I said, it will take me a bit to read through it.

Not certain what a 'pithily characterizable' relationship would be, or why it should be of any importance...in the social sciences, relationships are usually not 'pithily characterizable,' but are often complex and include indirect as well as direct effects that only partially characterizable.

I don't yet agree or disagree with the statement of the authors. But while they may not see any simple relationship in the data they collected and analyzed, to say that "we...foresee no' such relationships from other data and methods is to go beyond whatever data and methodology they have.

But, I will have to reserve further comment until I finish with the article.

 

[whirlingmerc]

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I stand corrected
Seems to be a common mistake

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I see many arguments/debates about religion and morality. Here is a good but lengthy study on them.

I'm only posting the conclusion. You can read the whole lengthy study with sources, references, and footnotes here.

Religion and Morality

Conclusion
The relationship between religion and morality is a deep and emotive topic. The confident pronouncements of public commentators belie the bewildering theoretical and methodological complexity of the issues. In the scholarly sphere, progress is frequently impeded by a series of prevailing conceptual limitations and lacunae. Many contemporary investigations employ parochial conceptions of “religion” and “morality,” fail to decompose these categories into theoretically grounded elements, and/or neglect to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. The tendency to adopt a sanitized conception of prosocial behavior has hampered efforts to test theories of the extraordinary cultural dominance of “moralizing god” concepts—as we have seen, behaviors that allow religious groups to survive and expand may be anything but “nice.”

We have set out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. Our view is that cultural representations—concepts, dogmas, artefacts, and practices both prescribed and proscribed—are triggered, shaped, and constrained by a variety of foundational cognitive systems. We have sought to identify the most currently plausible conjectures about biologically evolved connections between these systems, and have reviewed and evaluated the most prominent published debates in the cultural evolutionary domain. Ultimately, we see and foresee no pithily characterizable relationship between religion and morality. First, to the extent that the terms “religion” and “morality” are largely arbitrary and do not refer to coherent natural structures (as we have suggested), efforts to establish connections between religion and morality, conceived as monolithic entities, are destined to be facile or circular (or both). Second, under the pluralistic approach we advocate, which fractionates both religion and morality and distinguishes cognition from culture, the relationship between religion and morality expands into a matrix of separate relationships between fractionated elements. Thus some aspects of “religion” may promote some aspects of “morality,” just as others serve to suppress or obstruct the same, or different, aspects. In short, in discussing whether religion is a force for good, we must be very clear what we mean by “religion” and what we mean by “good.”

Although we eschew a simplistic story, we live in a very exciting time for psychological research on this topic. A key avenue for future work is to establish which biologically endowed cognitive structures and preferences are truly foundational where “religion” and “morality” are concerned. The aim should be to settle upon a parsimonious set of culturally and historically widespread cognitive predispositions that exhibit developmental and comparative evidence of innate preparedness, and that jointly account for the great bulk of culturally distributed items falling under the umbrella of religion and morality. In the meantime, taking into consideration data from non-WEIRD populations (Henrich et al., 2010), empirical work seeking to clarify relationships between religious and moral concepts and behaviors should capitalize on this fractionating approach by expanding the domain of relevant variables (for recent studies that have delineated a range of moral outcomes in accordance with MFT, see Cavrak & Kleider-Offutt, 2014; Gervais, 2014a). In particular, researchers should seek to characterize the range of “prosocial” outcomes (including outgroup aggression and hostility) more comprehensively, and when possible, should distinguish between parochial and more generalized variants of altruistic behaviors (e.g., Reddish, Bulbulia, & Fischer, 2013; Smith, Aquino, Koleva, & Graham, 2014). Research on “religion” and “morality” proceeds apace, but to capitalize on the gains that have been made, we must adopt higher standards of conceptual precision—a hallmark of maturation in any field of science.

My problem with all such arguments is simply this: I can think about my relationships with others based on our shared humanity, and our shared human nature, and base my morality on that...or I can accept some dogma about "right and wrong," written decades, centuries or millenia ago, by people who had far less knowledge than we (and I) possess today. Religion actually means "binding" yourself to ideas, notions, beliefs, without really thinking about them. After all, if you are willing to think about (or dispute) religious beliefs, how can you be said to be binding yourself to them. (The root of the word religion is religare which means "to tie" or "to bind.")

 

[RedDragon94]

I meant the general subject of religion and morality or is religion and morays meant or overlap?

Did you mean to quote @Rival ?

 

[Skwim]

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Beat me to it. But

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