by Shawn Kew

Created on: March 04, 2009   Last Updated: April 07, 2009

It was Socrates who pointed out that what pleases god(s) cannot be the same as what is by necessity good. This is not to say that everything in every religious dogma is not good, but rather that being religious is not a necessary condition to being good. If the former claims are true than a battle between being good and being religious comes down to which is the better course, in which case it becomes very circular.

Socrates made the argument that the whims of the gods are not suitable as grounds for laws. His point was that gods are fickle and could not agree upon what is good in every case. Of course most people do not believe in polytheism anymore, so unless the god you happen to be discussing is crazy this disagreement on the subject of what is good does not appear. However it still must be considered wether or not religions are in fact the best source for ethics. So the question is does being good require being religious.

For being good to require that we also be religious, religous faith must be a virtue or religion contain some ethical knowledge which we could not otherwise receive. Virtues are ussually habits which tend to produce favorable overall results for the majority of people around you. On the one hand since the majority of people are religious being faithful to their religion tends to avoid arguments. However those arguments may have improved one or many people's understanding about their religion.

So its tendency to keep everyone calm cannot make faith a virtue. It is said of faith that it can act as a well of inner strength;, however, there is no indication that the object of that faith needs to be religious in nature. Faith in oneself can be as useful as faith in religion. At this time I can find nothing by which religious faith qualifies as a virtue.

Does religion contain some ethical truths which we cannot know except by being religious? If there is a tacit knowledge of ethics which being religious grants then what experience would it come from that is inallienably religious? Everyone can go to church whether religious or not, and furthermore not all religions require going to a church or other gathering place, so this cannot be the experience which is foreign to people who are not religious. Reading the holy books can be performed by any one to any degree, again regardless of religion. Prayer requires a belief in the thing to which you pray, and is therefore our most likely candidate as the source of this tacit knowledge.

Does prayer then have any witnesses to suggest that it is unique to religion and can provide understanding of an ethical nature? If the guidance gained from these prayers truly is only aquirable through prayer, then there must be a being or beings which answer these prayers.

Now given that more than one religion practices prayer as a means to gain guidance, there must be more than one being who answers these prayers, if the prayers are answered. If there are multiple different opinions then they cannot be equally the most good. There is no religion which agrees with every other religion on every single point of its ethics. Therefore prayer cannot be a means to ethical enlightenment.

Since ethics is concerned with what is the greatest good, there can be no more than one greatest good in a given circumstance, and there is more than one religion each providing its own moral dogma. Religious faith is not a virtue. Being religious does not provide an ethical insight that cannot be found outside of itself. Therefore, being good is better than being religious.

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