Morality & God
Religious Studies: KS3, topic 2.5.8
Morality
Morality is a word that describes what is considered right and wrong. For religious people, morality is dictated by God.
Morality
- The word morality comes from the Latin word 'mores'.
- This refers to what is considered normal, or acceptable, in any culture or society.
- A Christian society, for example, is one that lives by Christian rules.
- The authority for these rules is that they come from God.
- This seems reasonable if you believe that God created you, and everything else, in the first place.
God as a lawgiver
- A belief in God as a lawgiver is one of the most important features of many religions.
- The Ten Commandments, for example, are important to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
- All three religions accept that God gave the commandments to Moses.
Religion and morality
- The Ten Commandments are perhaps the most famous religious rules, but there are also many more.
- Some of the rules describe how people should live their daily lives.
- For many hundreds of years people considered these rules from God to be the basis for a good life. Being good meant doing what God commanded.
- This begs the question of what happens to morality for those who do not believe in God?
Test yourself on Morality & God
For religious people, who is the moral lawgiver?
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all believe that God gave the Ten Commandments to who?