Module 5: Lesson 2

THE ORDER OF RELIGION IN ETHICS

 Religion is a social-cultural system of
designated behaviors and practices that
relates humanity to supernatural,
transcendental, or spiritual elements.
 The study of religion encompasses a wide
variety of academic disciplines including
theology, comparative religion, and social
scientific studies. 
 Theories of religion offer various
explanations for the origins and workings of
religion, including the ontological
foundations of religious being and belief.
 In most Ethics courses, including this one,
there is heavy emphasis on the traditions of
the West to train students to think about the
ethical way of existence.
 However, there is another tradition of
thinking about the good that is worth
considering for a fuller understanding of
how people orient their lives to the good.
This traditions comes from the great
civilizations of the East particularly from
India and China.
 There are six identified common themes
which can be drawn from the great Asian
spiritual and intellectual traditions.
First Theme

One can immediately notice that religious

thought is intertwined with philosophical and
ethical thinking. There is no real separation
of beliefs about the transcendent and the
cosmos, including the traditional mythical
belief.
Second Theme

The essential elements that binds the

intellectual traditions is love and
compassion.
Third Theme

The correctness of personal cultivation and

social responsibility.
Fourth Theme

Each of the great Asian traditions, more or

less, outlines a path to enlightenment.
Fifth Theme

These traditions gives human beings a

path to awareness of the true order of all
things.
Sixth Theme

These great teachings offer paths of

harmony with oneself, with others, with
nature, and with the Transcendent.
Buddhism

One of the well-known religion of

eastern and central Asia growing out of
the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama.
 The basic doctrines of early Buddhism,
which remain common to all Buddhism,
include the  four noble truths:
 existence of suffering (dukhka)
 suffering is cause by craving and
attachment (trishna)
 there is a cessation of suffering
 suffering can be eliminated
through the eightfold path
 The  Eightfold Path

 Right views
 Right speech
 Right action
 Right livelihood
 Right livelihood
 Right effort
 Right mindfulness
 Right concentration
 Experience is analyzed into five
aggregates, namely: the first, form (rupa),
refers to material existence; the following
four, sensations (vedana), perceptions
(samjna), psychic constructs (samkara), and
consciousness (vijnana).
 The central Buddhist teaching of non-self
(anatman) asserts that in the five aggregates
no independently existent, immutable self, or
soul, can be found.
 Buddhism accepts the pan-Indian
presupposition of samsara, or rebirth
provided by one's previous physical and
mental actions. The release from this cycle of
rebirth and suffering is the total
transcendence called Nirvana.
 HINDUISM
is the world’s oldest existing
religion. It embraces many
religious ideas. For this reason,
it’s sometimes referred to as a way
of life or a family of religions, as
opposed to a single, organized
religion.
 Most forms of Hinduism are henotheistic,
which means they worship a single deity,
known as Brahman, but still recognize other
gods and goddesses. Followers believe there
are multiple paths to reaching their god.
 Hindus believe in the doctrines of samsara
- the continuous cycle of life, death, and
reincarnation, and karma - the universal law
of cause and effect.
 One of the key thoughts of Hinduism is
atman, or the belief in soul. This philosophy
holds that living creatures have a soul, and
they’re all part of the supreme soul.
 The goal is to achieve moksha, or
salvation, which ends the cycle of rebirths to
become part of the absolute soul.
 One fundamental principle of the religion
is the idea that people’s actions and thoughts
directly determine their current life and
future lives.
 Hindus strive to achieve dharma, which is
a code of living that emphasizes good
conduct and morality.
 The primary sacred texts, known as the
Vedas, were composed around 1500 B.C.
The Vedas are made up of:

 The Rig Veda

 The Samaveda
 Yajurveda
 Atharvaveda
 Hindus believe that the Vedas transcend all
time and don’t have a beginning or an end.
Confucianism

It is often characterized as a
system of social and ethical
philosophy rather than a religion.
 In fact, it was built on an ancient religious
foundation to establish the social values,
institutions, and transcendent ideals of
traditional Chinese society
 It is was called a civil religion because of
its sense of religious identity and common
moral understanding at the foundation of a
society's central institutions.
 It is also called a diffused religion because
its institutions were not a separate church,
but those of society, family, school, and state;
its priests were not separate liturgical
specialists, but parents, teachers, and
officials.
 One side of Confucianism was the
affirmation of accepted values and norms of
behavior in primary social institutions and
basic human relationships.
 Confucius taught that humanity exists in
an inter-relationship between heaven and
earth.
Christianity

It is a religion that is primarily based on the birth, life, death,

resurrection and teaching of Jesus Christ.
 The beginning of the Christian religion
and the Christian church began with Jesus
Christ and His apostles.
 Christianity began in the 1st century AD
after Jesus died, as a small
group of Jewish people in Judea, but quickly
spread throughout the Roman empire.
 Despite early persecution of Christians, it
become the largest of the world’s religions
and, geographically, the most widely diffused
of all faiths.
 It has a constituency of more than two
billion believers. Its largest groups are
the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern
Orthodox Church, and the Protestant Church.
 At its most basic, Christianity is the faith
tradition that focuses on the figure of Jesus
Christ. In this context, faith refers both to
the believers’ act of trust and to the content
of their faith.
 As a tradition, Christianity is more than a
system of religious belief. It also has
generated a culture, a set of ideas and ways
of life, practices, and artifacts that have been
handed down from generation to generation.
Globalization

It is the connection of

different parts of the world
resulting in the expansion of
international cultural,
economic, and political
activities.
 It is the movement and integration of
goods and people among different countries.
There are three main classifications of
globalization, political, social, and economic.
Political Globalization

It refers to the amount of political co-

operation that exists between different
countries.
Social Globalization

It refers to the sharing of ideas and

information between and through different
countries.
Economic Globalization

It refers to the inter-connectedness of

economies through trade and the exchange of
resources.