Almost all of the religions
of the world have strong moral standards.
Usually these patterns of behavior were
said to be based on divine authority.
God was believed to be the source of
instructions about right and wrong behavior.
And often these specific sets of moral
prohibitions and requirements
were put into writing several centuries
ago.
In the Judeo-Christian
tradition,
the Ten Commandments are often thought
to be the basic moral code.
But most people raised as Jews or Christians
cannot name all 10 commandments.
Rather, they affirm their own morality
based on these commandments.
As a matter of historical
fact, the various denominations
of Judaism and Christianity do have systems
of morality,
which have developed over the centuries
within each religious community
—sometimes
loosely based on the Bible.
Morality based on established
rules often becomes very technical
because of the difficulty of applying
ancient moral codes
to problems never imagined by the creators
of those systems.
A fundamentally different
approach to morality
bases decisions on reasoned consideration
of the alternatives.
Rational ethics does not begin
with a set of defined standards.
All facts and opinions are relevant in
the rational discussion of ethics,
including (paradoxically) moral beliefs
based on religious authority.
When a culture must
create laws for public order,
the law-makers often take religiously-based
morality into account.
But the law-makers have a responsibility
for the whole society,
not just the followers of a particular
religious system.
So they often do make laws that are not
approved by some religious groups.
However, when laws contradict a certain
moral system,
the adherents of that system are sometimes
permitted an exception.
We will explore these
two fundamentally different bases
for moral behavior: rules and
reason.
Those who attend this discussion will
decide which specific moral issues
to examine thru the lens of rule-morality
and rational ethics.
James Park is an existential
philosopher.
He is an advocate of rational ethics,
which he applies to his own life.
Professionally he applies reason in the
area of medical ethics,
which often encounters religiously-based
rule-morality.
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