Religion and Morality(a) Examine the reasons for the view that morality is based upon religion.Many people believe that morality is based upon religion and based on the rules written in the Bible and other holy books. Although, some say that religion is completely opposed to morality and it is wrong to mix the two. Dostoevsky argued that ‘religion provides people with a reason to be moral because if there were no God everything would be permitted.’ Meaning that there is no point to morality if God didn’t set the moral values in the first place. But we could also say that we only behave morally because we are scared of God: ‘responsibility and guilt point to God’ which is not the right way to think about doing good. We shouldn’t behave well in the hopes of a reward or because we are scared, we should do good things because we want to. The Divine Command Theory tells us that our morals are set by a divine power: God. This means everything that God tells us is moral and that we should not judge this as it is the word of God, and God’s word is good. But
Join now!
surely, if we are just doing what God says, this takes away our free will, which God gave us, and it undermines the basis of Christianity, when God has said he wants us to choose him rather than to be forced to follow him.Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma also questions whether or not morality is dependent on religion. ‘Is ‘x’ good because God commands it is or does God command ‘x’ because it is good?’ If ‘x’ was already good before God commanded it then all God is doing is pointing out the good things rather than being the authority that says ...

This is a preview of the whole essay