Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I INTRODUCTIONS
- II MORAL OBLIGATION AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF
- 3 What Is the Relation between the Moral Dimension of Obligation and Religious Belief?
- 4 Does Religious Belief Necessarily Have Moral Content? Does Religious Belief Have any Necessary Moral Content?
- 5 What Are the Bases of Resistance to Religiously Grounded Morality?
- 6 Concepts of God, Scripture, and Revelation: The Meanings of “Divine Inspiration”
- 7 Modes of Religiously Grounded Moral Discernment
- III RELIGION AND SOME CONTEMPORARY MORAL CONTROVERSIES
- IV THE INTERACTION BETWEEN RELIGION AND THE SECULAR LAW
- V RESPONDING TO RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY
- VI RELIGIOUSLY GROUNDED MORAL DECISION-MAKING IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE
- Copyright Permission Acknowledgments
- Authors of Works Reprinted
- Scriptural Passages
- Index
4 - Does Religious Belief Necessarily Have Moral Content? Does Religious Belief Have any Necessary Moral Content?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I INTRODUCTIONS
- II MORAL OBLIGATION AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF
- 3 What Is the Relation between the Moral Dimension of Obligation and Religious Belief?
- 4 Does Religious Belief Necessarily Have Moral Content? Does Religious Belief Have any Necessary Moral Content?
- 5 What Are the Bases of Resistance to Religiously Grounded Morality?
- 6 Concepts of God, Scripture, and Revelation: The Meanings of “Divine Inspiration”
- 7 Modes of Religiously Grounded Moral Discernment
- III RELIGION AND SOME CONTEMPORARY MORAL CONTROVERSIES
- IV THE INTERACTION BETWEEN RELIGION AND THE SECULAR LAW
- V RESPONDING TO RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY
- VI RELIGIOUSLY GROUNDED MORAL DECISION-MAKING IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE
- Copyright Permission Acknowledgments
- Authors of Works Reprinted
- Scriptural Passages
- Index
Summary
Recall Bertrand Russell's eloquent account in the last chapter of the evolution of what he terms the “religious position”:
The savage, like ourselves, feels the oppression of his impotence before the powers of nature; but having in himself nothing that he respects more than power, he is willing to prostrate himself before his gods, without inquiring whether they are worthy of his worship…. But gradually, as morality grows bolder, the claim of the ideal world begins to be felt…. Some, though they feel the demands of the ideal, will still consciously reject them, still urging that naked power is worthy of worship. Such is the attitude inculcated in God's answer to Job out of the whirlwind: the divine power and knowledge are paraded, but of the divine goodness there is no hint. Such also is the attitude of those who, in our own day, base their morality upon the struggle for survival, maintaining that the survivors are necessarily the fittest. But others, not content with an answer so repugnant to the moral sense, will adopt the position which we have become accustomed to regard as specially religious, maintaining that, in some hidden manner, the world of fact is really harmonious with the world of ideals.
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- Religion in Legal Thought and Practice , pp. 66 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010