by Matthew Blackmon

Created on: October 22, 2009   Last Updated: October 29, 2009

"Why should I be moral?: Religious versus Secular Reasons for morality"

Most of the religious reasons for being moral come down to the improvement of the human life in some fashion, whether through enhancement in this life, or even in an afterlife. The religious reasons however are truly not distinguished from the secular reasons for being moral because the secular reasons offer the same rationale: which is to enhance the quality of life for the freely acting moral agent. The question then comes to are religious reasons valid and if so is it more applicable than valid secular reasons? In human experience, religious reasons for being moral typically introduce non-temporal elements that alter a person's temporal decision making and reasoning. In effect, religious reasons for morality distort the secular reasons, even if it guides a person to the same choice. The best secular reasons for morality are logically valid reasoning which can be transferred consistently between people and validity justified between all freely acting rational agents, while religious reasons would have to first prove the underlying assumptions behind the need for non-temporal basis for their decisions.

Since human decision making is about interaction between each other and the environment, it seems morality is more justified through secular arguments, than purely religious ones. Ideally religion would necessarily embrace secular reasons for morality because an ideal religion would not distort the reasoning of its followers when it came to the natural world. Rational beings can place a value to their decisions, since their values are derived from considerations of their sensory perception of the natural world. Because the value of human decisions is based upon natural sensation of the world, the justification for a moral decision then is based secularly on the object of the action to be taken, relevant environmental conditions that influence the action, and desired end of their actions, all of which is fully contained within the secular world.

Any religious reason for morality would be at best complementary to the rationale of the secular value ascribed to a moral decision. The secular reason for morality then is the best reason for morality, because it is the minimal reasoning required to convince a person to choose be moral. This then brings us back to ask, this time albeit qualified "why choose to be moral? It is valid from a secular viewpoint to choose be moral because it is a decision

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