Masuma Begum
FIQWS 10105 HSK1- Killer Writing- Fall 2021
Professor Metenko
9/19/21
How Religion Evolves With Social Morals
As George Washington once said “religion is as necessary to reason, as reason is to religion. One cannot exist without another.” Over time, religion has been established to keep humanity in line. It has given many people the reason for their existence within the world. By beginning to understand the world thoroughly, people would believe that there are roles given to more than one divine being or a single divine being. However, as time had progressed, religions began to evolve. It can start off as being part of a belief system where people go to their places of worship to using religion for politics as well as different issues (sexual orientation, homosexuality, pornography etc.). Even though religion is supposedly associated with practicing rituals, praying, and respecting God, gods, goddesses, or other divine forms, it also has something to do with morality. It can range from how society must be structured, how human beings must maintain their lifestyles, how they must behave, and creating laws. Due to different rules and practices , there are a variety of thoughts and opinions that lead to the creations of other sects of the same religion or different religion. Therefore, even though religion is there to bring positive changes within society, it can also come along with negative changes based on how people act upon it from their perceptions of morality.
As religion begins to evolve with different time periods in many centuries, so does the thinking of morality. The question that many people think of, is whether religion does more good for society than bad or bad rather than good? This all depends on how people perceive the framework on how they believe what religion does to them based on their experiences. It can be shown through the actions of a person, which can be observed to believe it is associated with the way they practice their own religion. For instance, there are people who believe that religions with intended positive effects may have a dark side that can lead to a negative effect through their beliefs and practices. According to a study by Myers (qtd. in BLOOM), such actions may include: “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile free inquiry, contemptuous of women, and coercive towards children.” Through this perception, religion is believed to have a negative effect on society. It creates more problems in the world than it already should. If religion is claimed to be associated with moral values, then there would be less conflicts. On the contrary, there is another belief that religion will provide morals that will bring positive effect for society. An example of this are being kind, compassionate, and caring. According to Brooks (qtd. in BLOOM), he quotes that “controlling for education, age, gender, income, and politics, religious people care more. They donate money to charities, including non religious charities; they are between religious and altruism. Data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) indicate that more religious states give more to charity than non religious states.” This indicates that in these important settings of our life, religion has been associated with influencing people to do good deeds that benefit society rather than harm them. Even though there are differences in religious beliefs, most religions stress on the belief that the good that you have done for others may be returned back to you. For this purpose of having different thoughts about how religion affects perceptions, it affects the moral judgement and criteria of what is between right and wrong. This is due to different issues that our society are tackling such as social problems such as drug abuse, suicide, divorce, and crime.
Morality has been in human minds in different societies and cultures. Religion has played a role within it as it allows humans to behave differently based on how the justification for their actions may impact them and others. Every action that a human does may determine what will happen to them in the afterlife or in this life. For instance, most religions believe that the universal truth is that everyone dies. Namely, in 2009, Kastenbaum (qtd. in Bassett, Jonathan F, and Mel L Bussard) studied that “It is possible to conceptualize that religion as both a source of comfort, for allowing the possibility that death is not the extinction of self, and an extra source of worry, because of uncertainties about the nature of post death experience and concerns about potential punishment in the afterlife.” To illustrate, by thinking about death and the afterlife, people may consider their actions. It can be shown through the beliefs of how a person may be judged or perceived in the afterlife, with the systems of reward and punishments. Hence, it brings them closer to the afterlife, by having them believe that they must do good deeds to gain rewards. Since human life is short, religious duties may be performed to please God, gods, goddesses, or any divine being. That is also another way to enter the afterlife properly. This may be a form of psychological escape, as living people don’t know what death feels like. Hence, by being able to think of what the afterlife looks like in different religions, it leads to the questioning of how much our positive actions or negative actions outweigh each other.
There are many different people of different religious backgrounds that intermingle with each other within their own societies and communities. On one hand, you see people stay within their religious community as a way to keep themselves connected to one another without outside influence from people of another religious group. On another hand, there are people who choose to be around their own society as a whole, where it is different from them, to keep their minds open and learn about other religions different from their own. By looking at different communities and societies, we see different mindsets that are unique to one and another based on their perceptions of religions other than their own. This can be both positive and negative in all aspects. Namely, Graham and Haidt in 2010, (qtd. in BLOOM) have shown that “many of the religious commandments to treat others compassionately and fairly are limited to the treatment of other individuals within the religious community. For instance, the Hebrew’s Bible’s “love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) was intended to apply to other Israelites…The Quran commands “Do not take the Jews and Christians as allies: they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them—God does not guide such wrongdoers.” (5:51; see also 29:68-69)”. As a result, people from different religious groups may perceive another religious group differently, having the feeling that they are superior to each other. In contrast to this belief, it has been shown in different studies by Waldron and Wright (qtd. in BLOOM), that “religious primes increase moral behaviors such as generously towards strangers and reduce immoral behaviors such as cheating.” To explain, by bringing on the consequences of actions, it may incline people to perform positive deeds. This is through being told that they are being watched by God and being greatly rewarded for it, which may become their motivation. On both sides, we can see that as people from different religious groups interact with each other or in their own communities, there are ways they can be perceived. Firstly, people of the same religious groups intermingle, they may judge each other based on morality, religious rules, or how religious an individual may be. Secondly, people of different religious groups may see that they are different. Due to the differences of how they practice their religion, morality, and beliefs, they may either show curiosity or feel that they are superior since they believe their religion is a true religion. Even so, each religious group is different, yet can have similar views with one another.
Over time, as religion has a lot of influence in our everyday lives, it also influences and contradicts our culture. Even though values by religion and culture may be different, it can be similar. People over time, try to bring their culture and religion together, as a way to preserve their lifestyle and traditions. This can range from moral judgement, being religious, how one individual sees themselves, and society as a whole. For example, studies shown by Markus, Kitayama, and Triandis (qtd. in Cohen), have shown that “Collectivistic cultures encourage people to develop interdependent selves, which people fundamentally see themselves as interconnected in important ways with close others, and to prioritize good relationship functioning over their own, idiosyncratic goals. In individualistic cultures, people are encouraged to develop independent senses of self, in which it is normative to think of oneself as relatively distinct even from close others, and to develop one’s own goals, motivations and personality.” To specify, in different countries such as the United States and China, society and culture plays a role with each other based on their views that they developed through the condition of their values. These values are considered the norm and the “right way of life” as a way to survive. Moreover, even though culture plays a role, religion may have impacted the transformation of cultures and keeping the traditions. As Cohen, Rankin, and Rozin have studied in 2003, 2004, and 2001 (qtd. in Cohen) , they observed that “To a Protestant, we would expect that thoughts would be just as morally important as actions. In the Book of Matthew in the New Testament, Jesus claims that lusting after a woman in your heart is equal to committing adultery. But, in contrast to this point of view, Judaism seems to care more about how an individual acts, rather than how an individual thinks or feels, which can be a collectivistic view of morality because it looks at the social consequences of one’s behavior.” Thus, by showing differences in values amongst different religions, which can be either individualistic or collectivist, it impacts the way a person may perceive another person based on the criteria of judgments, morality, and impression. Altogether, even though culture and religion may share different values, they may also be similar and come together to adjust to how one perceives something based on their society and what is considered acceptable or not acceptable.
On the whole, while social morals may evolve, so does religion, depending on different centuries that may impact the way people think. As religion brings rules and moral ethics, it can have both a positive and negative effect on society. It comes with how people perceive them and become influenced to commit certain actions based on their justifications. Hence, by being able to understand religion, you understand the society as a whole or part of it, since it is different in different countries.
Bibliography:
- BLOOM, Paul. “Religion, Morality, Evolution.” Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 63, no. 1, Annual Reviews, 2012, pp. 179–99, doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100334.
- Mills, R. J. W. “Lord Kames’s Analysis of the Natural Origins of Religion: The Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (1751).” Historical research : the bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 89.246 (2016): 751–775. Web.
- Knill, Christoph et al. “Religious Tides: The Time‐variant Effect of Religion on Morality Policies.” Regulation & governance 14.2 (2020): 256–270. Web.
- Bassett, Jonathan F, and Mel L Bussard. “Examining the Complex Relation Among Religion, Morality, and Death Anxiety: Religion Can Be a Source of Comfort and Concern Regarding Fears of Death.” Omega: Journal of Death and Dying 82.3 (2021): 467–487. Web.
- Serfontein, Bernice. “Imagination, Religion and Morality : an Interdisciplinary Approach.” Hervormde teologiese studies 75.1 (2019): 1–8. Web.
- Cohen, Adam B., et al. “Religion and Culture: Individualism and Collectivism in the East and West.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 47, no. 9, SAGE Publications, 2016, pp. 1236–49, doi:10.1177/0022022116667895.
