Morality And Religion Are Not Related

Nyein Chan Thu
Professor Dan Meier
ESL 33B # Monday- Wed (12:30~3:00)
20 October, 2014
Morality and Religion Are Not Related
Morality refers to a set of principles that guide an individual on how one evaluates right and wrong. People believing in religion consider morality is shaped by religion because they believe that morality can be understood only in the context of religion; therefore, those religious people insist if there were no religion, people would be out of control. However, religious beliefs give people a wrong definition of moral value, indeed, morality is shaped only by instinct and environment.
Regardless of religion, morality comes from instinct. Human beings are social creatures; they have to live in groups for reproduction
Therefore, people instinctively have to keep their relationship between each other, and morality is formed to maintain the relationship. Consequently, every human being has morality regardless of religious beliefs. If the religious people insist that religions shape morality, non-religious people or atheists shouldn`t have morality. However, those people do have morality and they can judge the things right or wrong like other people who believe in religion. Furthermore, people who believe in religion said that the religion shapes morality, yet there are so many different religions around the world. Some people believe in Christianity, other believes in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam etc. Each religion worships different Gods, and has difference belief systems. Christians, for instance, believe in Jesus Christ while Buddhists venerate Gautama. Even though the same religion, there are different branches. Christianity, for instance, has Catholics and Protestants; on the other hand, Buddhism separate to Mahayana and Theravada. Therefore, if the morality is formed base on religion, the definition of morality should vary since there are many different regions. However, morality that people use in an attempt to do the
Religion controlled its believers, and people believing in religion tend to believe whatever the rules that religion lay down. For instance, sky burial, which is take place in Tibetan Buddhism, is the most gross burial way if we think from our common sense of morality. Human corpses are placed on a mountaintop as a prey for birds such as vultures, eagles and other scavengers. Buddhist monks are subjected to the sky burial funerary. They go to the mountaintop by themselves to conduct the funeral ceremony. However, that is normal for people who believe in Tibetan Buddhism because religion teaches the believers “Humans are part of nature. (People) arrive in the world naturally and they leave it naturally. Life and death are part of a wheel of reincarnation. Death is not to be feared.” (Xinran 159). Therefore, they were controlled by religion to believe conducting sky burial is the way to return the body back to the nature. On the other hand, religious belief ignite the people`s competitive spirit that lead to break morality. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is one of the examples that easy to understand for how religious belief stir the people`s competitive spirit. ISIS, the biggest Islamic terrorist group, attempts to create a new Islamic country in Middle East. ISIS has rapidly expanded by taking over Iraq and Syria territories. ISIS has killed so many innocents who do not follow Islam. This immoral behavior