Religion and Morality

Religion and Morality

Morality is closely associated with religion in the minds of many people. When religious leaders speak out on moral topics, their opinions are often treated with special deference. They are regarded as moral experts. This raises the question of whether morality depends in some way on religion. Many philosophers have held that it does. John Locke, for example, argued that atheists could not be trusted to be moral because they would not consider themselves obliged even by solemn oaths, much less by ordinary promises. The answer to this question may be of considerable practical importance. If morality does depend on religion, the process of secularization, in the course of which religious belief and practice wither away, seems to pose a serious threat to morality. At one time many social theorists were confident that secularization was inevitable in modern and postmodern societies. Experience has undermined this confidence. Secularization no longer appears to be an inevitable consequence of modernization. Moreover, the process seems to occur at different rates in different modern societies. Thus secularization is more advanced in some Western European societies than it is in the United States. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to be concerned about whether morality will decline to the extent that modern societies become more secular if it is the case that morality depends on religion.

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