What Ethics Is Not, Part 4

Italicized text is quoted from Peter Kreeft.

7. Ethics is not Religion

“You don’t need religious faith to do ethics, though it may help you to do it. Philosophy and religion may be synthesizable, but they are different. Philosophy is based on reason, religion is based on faith… or on fear. But religious fear is very different than practical fear. The fear of God or a spirit is very different from the fear of a tiger or a bullet… The religious instinct is to believe in or aspire to or to worship that transcendent mysterious something. The moral instinct is to feel obligated in conscience to avoid evil.”

The religious act is to obey a Spirit being due to loyalty. The ethical act is to do good for good’s sake. The act may be the same, but the reasoning is different.

“We might confuse these two things with each other, especially in the West where in the three major monotheistic religions That which is worshipped is also supremely moral. God is righteous and commands us to be righteous. But the religious instinct and the moral instinct can be found separated from each other, more in Eastern religions than in Western where morality does not go all the way up to ultimate reality, to a God who is a person with a moral will. And religion and morality is separated much more in pagan religions which are not only often amoral but also immoral. And, of course, it is separated in atheistic and secularist humanism, which reject religion but not morality. Atheists have ethics, too.”