Ethics (Religion)

by dhw, Saturday, October 04, 2008, 13:44 (5892 days ago) @ Carl

Some extracts (my numbering) from an article in the Guardian, reporting on research done by psychologists, at least one of whom is based at the University of British Columbia, Canada: - 1) "Religion makes people more helpful, honest and generous but only when they think it will enhance their reputation or when they think about the possibility of a god..." - 2) "The study...supports the notion that in early societies religion helped foster social cohesion...by encouraging cooperation." - 3) "Religion appears to foster trust between people". - 4) "Religious people also profess to be more charitable than non-religious folk. But a 'Good Samaritan' experiment found religious and non-religious participants were equally likely to stop and offer help." - One wonders how extensive the study was, but since it offers scope for discussion, I thought a few comments might be in order. - 1) You don't need religion to motivate you if you think your actions will enhance your reputation. The "possibility of a god" argument is directly contradicted by 4). - 2) Of course religion would help foster social cohesion. Any group activity would do the same by encouraging cooperation. - 3) People are social animals, and that entails belonging to a group, whether religious, social, tribal, national, racial etc. It's natural to trust your group more than other groups ... if you didn't, you wouldn't belong. However, does religion foster trust between, say, Christians and Muslims? - 4) You don't need religion to empathize with your fellow humans. - On a different subject, may I correct a slight misinterpretation by Carl (quoted by BBella) of my attitude towards capital punishment. In the context of causing "minimal harm to humanity and to other forms of life", I wrote that in my view morality was "not served by the execution of criminals, especially bearing in mind the many miscarriages of justice that keep coming to light." Carl wrote: "Focusing only on executed persons in this way is too narrow....The issue of execution should not be combined with the issue of miscarried justice." The reference to innocent parties being executed was not meant as a focal point, but only as an additional (nightmarish) argument. As I wrote later in the same posting, "society does not need to kill criminals in order to protect itself", and so in my view, and in the context of my "minimal harm" precept, there is absolutely no ethical justification for the death penalty.