Village Journals
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Morality and Religion
By Alija Ali Izetbegovic
Morality can be based only on religion, but morality and religion are not one. Morality as a principle does not exists without religion even thought morality as a practice, as a particular case of behavior, is not dependant directly on religiousness.
A common argument that connects them both is the other, superior world. Because it is the other world, it is a religious world; because it is a superior world, it is a moral world. This shows both the interdependence of religion and morality as well as their independence of each other. There is a certain inner consistency that is not automatic, mathematical, or logical but rather practical; divergencies are possible but sooner or later the dependence is reestablished.
Atheism, after all, ends up as a negation of morality, and every true moral transformation starts with a religious renewal. Morality is a religion transformed into rules of behavior - that is, into man's attitude toward other man in accordance with the fact of God's existence. To have to fulfill our duties regardless of the difficulties and risks we face (this being moral behavior as distinguished from behavior motivated by interest), such a demand can be justified only if this world and this life are not the only world and the only life. This is the common starting point of morality and religion.
Morality was born by prohibition and has remained a prohibition until today. A prohibition is religious by nature and by origin. Out of the Ten Commandments, eight of them are prohibitions. Morality is always a restrictive or prohibitive principle which opposes the animal instincts in human nature. The Christian ethic can serve here as an example - not as the only but as the most famous and the most evident.
The history of religion is full of seemingly meaningless prohibitions. However, from the point of view of ethics, there are no meaningless prohibitions. Of course, a prohibition can have a rational meaning too, but utility is never its primary aim.
Morality is not " life in harmony with nature" as the Stoics defined it. It is rather life against nature, provided that the word "nature" is understood in its true sense. Like man, morality is also irrational, non-natural, supernatural. Natural man and natural morality do not exist. Man within the limits of nature is not man; he is, at best, an animal endowed with reason. Morality within the limits of nature is not morality but rather a form of selfishness, a form of wise and enlightened selfishness.
Morality can be based only on religion, but morality and religion are not one. Morality as a principle does not exists without religion even thought morality as a practice, as a particular case of behavior, is not dependant directly on religiousness.
A common argument that connects them both is the other, superior world. Because it is the other world, it is a religious world; because it is a superior world, it is a moral world. This shows both the interdependence of religion and morality as well as their independence of each other. There is a certain inner consistency that is not automatic, mathematical, or logical but rather practical; divergencies are possible but sooner or later the dependence is reestablished.
Atheism, after all, ends up as a negation of morality, and every true moral transformation starts with a religious renewal. Morality is a religion transformed into rules of behavior - that is, into man's attitude toward other man in accordance with the fact of God's existence. To have to fulfill our duties regardless of the difficulties and risks we face (this being moral behavior as distinguished from behavior motivated by interest), such a demand can be justified only if this world and this life are not the only world and the only life. This is the common starting point of morality and religion.
Morality was born by prohibition and has remained a prohibition until today. A prohibition is religious by nature and by origin. Out of the Ten Commandments, eight of them are prohibitions. Morality is always a restrictive or prohibitive principle which opposes the animal instincts in human nature. The Christian ethic can serve here as an example - not as the only but as the most famous and the most evident.
The history of religion is full of seemingly meaningless prohibitions. However, from the point of view of ethics, there are no meaningless prohibitions. Of course, a prohibition can have a rational meaning too, but utility is never its primary aim.
Morality is not " life in harmony with nature" as the Stoics defined it. It is rather life against nature, provided that the word "nature" is understood in its true sense. Like man, morality is also irrational, non-natural, supernatural. Natural man and natural morality do not exist. Man within the limits of nature is not man; he is, at best, an animal endowed with reason. Morality within the limits of nature is not morality but rather a form of selfishness, a form of wise and enlightened selfishness.