INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS

ETHICS
Ethics, the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally
right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values
or principles.

How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the

creation of beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the
happiness of all? And what of the more particular questions that face us: is it right
to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere
in the world people are starving? Is going to war justified in cases where it is likely
that innocent people will be killed? Is it wrong to clone a human being or to
destroy human embryos in medical research? What are our obligations, if any, to
the generations of humans who will come after us and to the nonhuman animals
with whom we share the planet?

Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the
fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include
the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be
judged right or wrong.

The terms ethics and morality are closely related. It is now common to refer
to ethical judgments or to ethical principles where it once would have been more
accurate to speak of moral judgments or moral principles. These applications are
an extension of the meaning of ethics. In earlier usage, the term referred not
to morality itself but to the field of study, or branch of inquiry, that has morality as
its subject matter. In this sense, ethics is equivalent to moral philosophy.

Although ethics has always been viewed as a branch of philosophy, its all-
embracing practical nature links it with many other areas of study,
including anthropology, biology, economics, history, politics, sociology,
and theology. Yet, ethics remains distinct from such disciplines because it is not a
matter of factual knowledge in the way that the sciences and other branches of
inquiry are. Rather, it has to do with determining the nature of normative theories
and applying these sets of principles to practical moral problems.
1.1.1 describe meta-ethics;
META ETHICS:
Meta Ethics
Meta Ethics or “analytical ethics” deals with the origin of the ethical concepts
themselves. It does not consider whether an action is good or bad, right or wrong.
Rather, it questions – what goodness or rightness or morality itself is? It is
basically a highly abstract way of thinking about ethics. The key theories in meta-
ethics include naturalism, non-naturalism, emotivism and prescriptivism.
Naturalists and non-naturalists believe that moral language is cognitive and can be
known to be true or false. Emotivists deny that moral utterances are cognitive,
holding that they consist of emotional expressions of approval or disapproval and
that the nature of moral reasoning and justification must be reinterpreted to take
this essential characteristic of moral utterances into account. Prescriptivists take a
somewhat similar approach, arguing that moral judgments are prescriptions or
prohibitions of action, rather than statements of fact about the world.
Meta-ethics

It consists in the attempt to answer the fundamental philosophical questions about

the nature of ethical theory itself. To simply put, it concerned with questions about
what whether or not morality exists, and what it consists of if it does. According to
Garner and Rosen, it worried about question such as:

1. What is the meaning of moral terms or judgments? (What does the values such
as good, bad, right or wrong mean?)
2. What is the nature of moral judgments? (Are these judgments universal or
relative, or is it one kind or many kinds?)
3. How may moral judgments be supported or defended? (How can we know
something is morally right or wrong such as, is it from the Bible? Is it from a
famous educator?

Garner and Rosen also said that answers to these questions “are not unrelated, and
sometimes an answer to one will strongly suggest, or perhaps even entail, an
answer to another.”
1.1.2 describe moral relativism;
MORAL
Moral relativism
RELATIVISM

Moral relativism is the idea that there is no universal or absolute set of moral
principles. It’s a version of morality that advocates “to each her own,” and those
who follow it say, “Who am I to judge?”

Moral relativism can be understood in several ways.

Descriptive moral relativism, also known as cultural relativism, says that moral
standards are culturally defined, which is generally true. Indeed, there may be a
few values that seem nearly universal, such as honesty and respect, but many
differences appear across cultures when people evaluate moral standards around
the world.

Meta-ethical moral relativism states that there are no objective grounds for
preferring the moral values of one culture over another. Societies make their moral
choices based on their unique beliefs, customs, and practices. And, in fact, people
tend to believe that the “right” moral values are the values that exist in their own
culture.

Normative moral relativism is the idea that all societies should accept each other’s
differing moral values, given that there are no universal moral principles. Most
philosophers disagree however. For example, just because bribery is okay in some
cultures doesn’t mean that other cultures cannot rightfully condemn it.

Moral relativism is on the opposite end of the continuum from moral absolutism,
which says that there is always one right answer to any ethical question. Indeed,
those who adhere to moral relativism would say, “When in Rome, do as the
Romans do.”
1.2 Applied Ethics

Applied Ethics
Applied ethics deals with the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint,
of particular issues in private and public life which are matters of moral judgment.
This branch of ethics is most important for professionals in different walks of life
including doctors, teachers, administrators, rulers and so on. There are six key
domains of applied ethics viz. Decision ethics {ethical decision making
process}, Professional ethics {for good professionalism}, Clinical Ethics {good
clinical practices}, Business Ethics {good business practices}, Organizational
ethics {ethics within and among organizations} and social ethics.
It deals with the rightness or wrongness of social, economical, cultural, religious
issues also. For example, euthanasia, child labour, abortion etc.
1.2.1 define various types of Applied Ethics: bioethics, animal ethics,
environmental ethics, business ethics;

The ethical theorists have classified applied ethics into the four main sub-branches
of bioethics, animal ethics, environmental ethics, and business ethics.
1. Bioethics
It is a branch of applied ethics that deals with the application of ethics in
connection with human life and its well-being. We can also define it as the
application and implications of ethics to the field of medicine and healthcare
(health-related life science).
What are the ethical challenges related to the trial treatments and use of drugs?
Trial treatments and application of new drugs Involve human subjects which may
result in ethical issues such as to:
 ensure voluntary participation after taking informed consent.
 deal with side effects after the trial
 ensure the benefits of treatment as per patient needs.
 serve the health requirements of all, particularly the deprived sections of
society.
2. Animal ethics
Animal ethics is a branch of ethics that deals with the treatment of animals by
human beings. To put it in other words, it attempts to understand human-animal
relationships.
Some of the important ethical areas related to animal ethics are animal rights,
animal welfare, animal law, animal cognition, wildlife conservation, and animal
suffering.
One may ask if animals enjoy any moral status. Unfortunately, there is hardly any
state where animals exist at the core of moral values. They seem to exist at our
moral peripheries instead. In developed countries, some organizations seem to
accord animals strong ethical status, but a major part of the countries are least
bothered in this regard.
There is also a category of people in the world who exist in between. They are not
sure whether animals should enjoy a moral status given by human beings or they
should be taken for granted.
3. Environmental ethics
Environmental ethics is a branch of applied ethics that deals with the moral
relationship of human beings to their environment. In other words, it deals with the
value and moral status of the environment.
4. Business ethics
Business ethics deals with the ethical issues and moral dilemmas that different
businesses encounter in their conduct with customers. It involves a mechanism of
standards and norms that are instrumental in winning customer confidence.
Business ethics reflect in law e.g. minimum wage, harassment-free workplace,
environmental regulations, etc. are law embedded standards for companies to
follow. Similarly, the behavior of the company should also exhibit ethical values
in the treatment of its employees.
Organizational attitudes and behavior have a profound impact on the employees as
well as the smooth functioning of the company. To put it in simple words,
business ethics are all about how the company treats its employees and customers.
Why are business ethics important?
Business ethics are important because they have long-term effects on different
levels. For instance, if a company engages in immoral conduct, such as its failure
to put customer privacy safeguards in place which in turn may lead to a breach of
confidential data.
In this era of information technology and media, investor awareness on social,
political, governance and eco issues has increased. Hence, any company may
jeopardize its reputation by bypassing the basic business ethics that it ought to
follow.
With a tarnished image, the company may face a considerable trust deficit, a
decline in demand for its products/services, a decrease in the value of its shares,
etc.
Thus business ethics are very important to ensure that the production of services or
goods aligned with the customer’s needs. And that they have no or reduced impact
on the environment, societal norms, etc.
1.2.2 analyse the ethical dilemma from the perspective of:
a. Kantian’s philosophy (good will and moral duty)
b. Aristotle’s moral philosophy
c. Moral Relativism;

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is generally considered to be one of the most

profound and original philosophers who ever lived. He is equally well known for
his metaphysics–the subject of his "Critique of Pure Reason"—and for the moral
philosophy set out in his "Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals" and
"Critique of Practical Reason" (although "Groundwork" is the far easier of the two
to understand).

Morally speaking, Kant is a deontologist; from the Greek, this is the science of
duties. For Kant, morality is not defined by the consequences of our actions, our
emotions, or an external factor. Morality is defined by duties and one’s action is
moral if it is an act motivated by duty.

According to Kant the only thing that is good in itself is the “good will.” The will
is what drives our actions and grounds the intention of our act. It is good when it
acts from duty. To clarify, Kant thinks the good will is the only thing that is
intrinsically valuable. If we think about the other goods and things that we value,
such are not good without qualification. For example, we value knowledge, but
such can be used to commit atrocities in the world, so knowledge is good
sometimes. The same can be said of courage. We value courage, but a suicide
bomber also exhibits courage. So, courage can only be good sometimes. We can
think of other examples as well. This leads Kant to claim that the good will is the
only thing good without qualification–or the only thing that is intrinsically good.
Accordingly, the will is a good will provided it acts from duty.

Kant recognizes that it is difficult to determine one’s intentions, so he makes a

distinction between acting in conformity with duty and acting from duty. To
illustrate this distinction, let’s take the example of three young men who see an
elderly woman needing help across the street. Man A decides he will help the
woman across the street because if he didn’t he would feel guilty all day. Man B
decides he will help the woman across the street because he recognizes her as his
neighbor, Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Wilson makes the best cookies in the
neighborhood. So, Man B helps her because he reasons that he will be rewarded.
Man C decides he will help the woman across the street because it is the right thing
to do; he understands that he has a moral obligation to help others in need when he
can.

The results of all three individuals are the same–the woman is helped across the
street. If we were looking at this from a utilitarian perspective, all three of the
young men would be morally praiseworthy because in all three cases, happiness or
well-being is increased (or pain is relieved). However, for Kant, only one of the
young men’s actions have moral worth and it is Man C; he understands what his
moral duty is and he acts from it. The other two act only in conformity with
duty–they are driven by some other goal or desire aside from duty itself.

Duties are principles that guide our actions. Duties are imperatives in the sense that
they tell us what to do. Kant recognizes that there are different types of imperatives
in his distinction between a hypothetical and a categorical imperative. An
imperative is essentially a ought; something I ought to do. Hypothetical
imperatives are the oughts that direct my actions provided I have certain goals or
interests. In fact, these oughts are entirely dependent upon my goals or interests.
For example, if I want to be a good basketball player I ought to practice free
throws or if I want to go to law school I ought to take a logic class. If I change my
goal and decide to be a baseball player or a welder instead then my oughts may
also change. Hypothetical imperatives have nothing to do with morality. However
a categorical imperative does not depend upon my desires or wants. These are
necessary and always binding and are the oughts that determine what our moral
duties are. Even if I don’t want to help the elderly person across the street, if I have
a duty to do so, my ought is binding. We should all be familiar enough with feeling
we must do something even if we’d rather do something else.

Kant’s moral theory has three formulas for the categorical imperative. So, if you’re
facing a moral dilemma you must determine whether or not your action is
permissible according to the formulas. Simply put, think of the formulas as tests
that have to be passed in order for a principle or act to be moral.

Formula one states that we ought to act in a way such that the maxim, or principle,
of our act can be willed a universal law. If your maxim cannot be universalized
then that act is morally off limits. For example, if I am considering stealing a loaf
of bread, I have to ask myself if my maxim can be made a universal law. This
would look something like this: Is it okay for all people to steal all the time? The
answer is no; the maxim itself would be self-defeating because if everyone stole all
the time there would be no private property and stealing would no longer be
possible.
The second formula states that we ought to treat humanity (self and others) as an
end and never as a mere means. Essentially, this entails that I treat all persons with
respect and dignity; I help others achieve their goals when possible, and I avoid
using them as tools or objects to further my own goals. For Kant, since humans
have the capacity for autonomy and rationality, it is crucial that we treat humans
with respect and dignity.

The third formula states that we act on principles that could be accepted within a
community of other rational agents. The third formula, “the kingdom of ends,”
moves us from the individual level to the social level.

In brief, Kant’s moral philosophy focuses on fairness and the value of the
individual. His method rests on our ability to reason, our autonomy (i.e. our ability
to give ourselves moral law and govern our own lives), and logical consistency. He
also offers an objective sense of morality in the form of absolute duties–duties that
are binding regardless of our desires, goals, or outcomes.
For more details visit :
What You Should Know About Kant's Ethics in a Nutshell (thoughtco.com)
Aristotle: Ethics
Standard interpretations of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics usually maintain
that Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) emphasizes the role of habit in conduct. It is
commonly thought that virtues, according to Aristotle, are habits and that the good
life is a life of mindless routine.
These interpretations of Aristotle’s ethics are the result of imprecise translations
from the ancient Greek text. Aristotle uses the word hexis to denote moral virtue.
But the word does not merely mean passive habituation. Rather, hexis is an active
condition, a state in which something must actively hold itself.
Virtue, therefore, manifests itself in action. More explicitly, an action counts as
virtuous, according to Aristotle, when one holds oneself in a stable equilibrium of
the soul, in order to choose the action knowingly and for its own sake. This stable
equilibrium of the soul is what constitutes character.
Similarly, Aristotle’s concept of the mean is often misunderstood. In
the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle repeatedly states that virtue is a mean. The
mean is a state of clarification and apprehension in the midst of pleasures and pains
that allows one to judge what seems most truly pleasant or painful. This active
state of the soul is the condition in which all the powers of the soul are at work in
concert. Achieving good character is a process of clearing away the obstacles that
stand in the way of the full efficacy of the soul.
For Aristotle, moral virtue is the only practical road to effective action. What the
person of good character loves with right desire and thinks of as an end with right
reason must first be perceived as beautiful. Hence, the virtuous person sees truly
and judges rightly, since beautiful things appear as they truly are only to a person
of good character. It is only in the middle ground between habits of acting and
principles of action that the soul can allow right desire and right reason to make
their appearance, as the direct and natural response of a free human being to the
sight of the beautiful.

Fore more details visit:

https://iep.utm.edu/aristotle-ethics/
Moral Relativism
Moral relativism is the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to
some particular standpoint (for instance, that of a culture or a historical period) and
that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others. It has often been
associated with other claims about morality: notably, the thesis that different
cultures often exhibit radically different moral values; the denial that there are
universal moral values shared by every human society; and the insistence that we
should refrain from passing moral judgments on beliefs and practices characteristic
of cultures other than our own.
Relativistic views of morality first found expression in 5th century B.C.E. Greece,
but they remained largely dormant until the 19th and 20th centuries. During this
time, a number of factors converged to make moral relativism appear plausible.
These included a new appreciation of cultural diversity prompted by
anthropological discoveries; the declining importance of religion in modernized
societies; an increasingly critical attitude toward colonialism and its assumption of
moral superiority over the colonized societies; and growing skepticism toward any
form of moral objectivism, given the difficulty of proving value judgments the way
one proves factual claims.

For some, moral relativism, which relativizes the truth of moral claims, follows
logically from a broader cognitive relativism that relativizes truth in general.
Many moral relativists, however, take the fact-value distinction to be fundamental.
A common, albeit negative, reason for embracing moral relativism is simply the
perceived untenability of moral objectivism: every attempt to establish a single,
objectively valid and universally binding set of moral principles runs up against
formidable objections. A more positive argument sometimes advanced in defense
of moral relativism is that it promotes tolerance since it encourages us to
understand other cultures on their own terms.
Critics claim that relativists typically exaggerate the degree of diversity among
cultures since superficial differences often mask underlying shared agreements. In
fact, some say that there is a core set of universal values that any human culture
must endorse if it is to flourish. Moral relativists are also accused of inconsistently
claiming that there are no universal moral norms while appealing to a principle of
tolerance as a universal norm. In the eyes of many critics, though, the most serious
objection to moral relativism is that it implies the pernicious consequence that
“anything goes”: slavery is just according to the norms of a slave society; sexist
practices are right according to the values of a sexist culture. Without some sort of
non-relative standard to appeal to, the critics argue, we have no basis for critical
moral appraisals of our own culture’s conventions, or for judging one society to be
better than another. Naturally, most moral relativists typically reject the
assumption that such judgments require a non-relativistic foundation.

Fore more details visit :

https://iep.utm.edu/moral-re/
1.3 Religion and Science
Religion and Science
The relationship between religion and science is the subject of continued debate in
philosophy and theology. To what extent are religion and science compatible? Are
religious beliefs sometimes conducive to science, or do they inevitably pose
obstacles to scientific inquiry? The interdisciplinary field of “science and religion”,
also called “theology and science”, aims to answer these and other questions. It
studies historical and contemporary interactions between these fields, and provides
philosophical analyses of how they interrelate.
This entry provides an overview of the topics and discussions in science and
religion. Section 1 outlines the scope of both fields, and how they are related.
Section 2 looks at the relationship between science and religion in five religious
traditions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Section 3
discusses contemporary topics of scientific inquiry in which science and religion
intersect, focusing on divine action, creation, and human origins.

 1. Science, religion, and how they interrelate

o 1.1 A brief history
o 1.2 What is science, and what is religion?
o 1.3 Taxonomies of the interaction between science and religion
o 1.4 The scientific study of religion
 2. Science and religion in various religions
o 2.1 Christianity
o 2.2 Islam
o 2.3 Hinduism
o 2.4 Buddhism
o 2.5 Judaism
 3. Central topics in the debate
o 3.1 Divine action and creation
o 3.2 Human origins
 Bibliography
o Works cited
o Other important works
 Academic Tools
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries
1.3.1 define the terms ‘theology’ and ‘religion’;

What is Theology?

A.H. Strong described it as "The science of God and of the relations between
God and the universe." Charles Hodge wrote that it is "The science of the facts of
divine revelation so far as those facts concern the nature of God and our relation to
Him, as His creatures, as sinners, and as the subjects of redemption." 2 Timothy
2:15 records:

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does
not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

Paul points out that there is an element of work involved in handling the word
of truth. Theology is the word that describes that work of handling the word of
truth.

For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of
Yahweh, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. (Ezra 7:10)

Theology can be defined simply as "the study of God". Freshman college

students usually define it with one word: "boring." This is rarely a fault in the
student; the common way of teaching theology as a list of facts about God hardly
seems to bear much relevance to everyday life. How is getting a job or mowing the
lawn aided by knowing about supralapsarianism? Isn't the Bible alone enough? All
we need to know is how to be saved, and how to give the gospel to others, right?
Why should we know anything more?

Religion,

human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute,
spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It is also commonly regarded as
consisting of the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their
fate after death. In many traditions, this relation and these concerns are expressed
in terms of one’s relationship with or attitude toward gods or spirits; in
more humanistic or naturalistic forms of religion, they are expressed in terms of
one’s relationship with or attitudes toward the broader human community or the
natural world. In many religions, texts are deemed to have scriptural status, and
people are esteemed to be invested with spiritual or moral authority. Believers and
worshippers participate in and are often enjoined to perform devotional or
contemplative practices such as prayer, meditation, or particular rituals. Worship,
moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are among
the constituent elements of the religious life.

The subject of religion is discussed in a number of articles. For treatment of major

and historical religious traditions, see African religion; Anatolian religion; ancient
Iranian religion; Arabian religion; Baltic religion; Buddhism; Calvinism; Celtic
religion; Christianity; Confucianism; Daoism; Eastern Orthodoxy; Eastern rite
church; Egyptian religion; Finno-Ugric religion; Germanic religion and
mythology; Greek religion; Hellenistic
religion; Hinduism; Islam; Jainism; Judaism; Mesopotamian religion; Middle
Eastern religion; Mormon; mystery religion; Native American religions; Neo-
Paganism; new religious movement; Old Catholic church; Orphic
religion; prehistoric religion; Protestantism; Protestant Heritage, The; Roman
Catholicism; Roman religion; Shintō; Sikhism; Slavic religion; Syrian and
Palestinian religion; Vedic religion; Wicca; Zoroastrianism. For discussion of
perspectives on the existence or role within human life of a supreme God or
gods, see agnosticism; atheism; humanism; monotheism; pantheism; polytheism; th
eism. For cross-cultural discussion of religious beliefs, phenomena, and
practices, see angel and demon; ceremonial object; covenant; creed; dietary
law; doctrine and dogma; dualism, religious; eschatology; ethics; evil, problem
of; feast; Five Ways, the; heaven; hell; Last
Judgment; meditation; millennialism; miracle; monasticism; Moon
worship; mysticism; myth; nature
worship; prayer; priest; priesthood; prophecy; Providence; purgatory; purification
rite; reincarnation; religious dress; religious symbolism and iconography; rite of
passage; ritual; sacrament; sacrifice; sacred; sacred
kingship; saint; salvation; scripture; shamanism; sin; soul; Sun
worship; theology; worship. For a review of the efforts to systematically study the
nature and classify the forms of religious behaviour, experience, and
phenomena, see religion, phenomenology of; religion, philosophy of; religion,
study of; religions, classification of; religious experience.
1.3.2 describe Edward Burnett Tylor, James George Frazer, Rudolf Otto’s views
on religion;

Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) may not be a household name today, but during
the second half of the nineteenth century the Victorian anthropologist and scientific
naturalist was a figurehead for anthropology throughout the British Empire. At his
seventy-fifth birthday in 1907, his former student and friend Andrew Lang (1844-
1912) argued that ‘he who would vary from Mr. Tylor’s ideas must do so in fear
and trembling (as the present writer knows from experience)’ (Lang, 1907, p.1).

Tylor had an illustrious academic career. Credited as the first social scientist to
define the term ‘culture’, he was a pioneer in sending his students into the field for
ethnographic data, and an innovator, who devoted his career to the scientific study
of human culture. In 1884 he was appointed Keeper of the Natural History
Museum and Reader in Anthropology at Oxford, where he became a professor in
1896.

Tylor was one of the leading secularists within the British scientific community
during the nineteenth century. His most famous book, Primitive Culture (1871),
was an evolutionary study that traced the developmental history of cultural
attributes among the races of the world. In Primitive Culture, Tylor did not use a
Darwinian model based on the mechanism of natural selection as outlined in
Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). Rather, building on the positivism of the
French philosopher August Comte (1798-1857), Tylor argued that humans
progressed through three stages: ‘savagery’, distinguished by hunting and
gathering; ‘barbarism’, distinguished by pastoralism and agriculture; and
‘civilisation’, distinguished by industrialism. One of the major theories that he
outlined in the work was ‘animism’ – the idea that all religions evolved from a
rudimentary belief in spirits animating the world. By locating the supposed laws
that governed the development of religion, Tylor attempted to plot all forms of
worship onto an evolutionary scale, showing how religious beliefs transformed
from basic understandings of the world being animated by spirits, to what he
believed to be complex religious systems such as Christianity. Central to his
purpose was an attempt to naturalise all religions and explain their ontologies using
scientific theories. He was not trying to reconcile science and religion, but rather
he wanted to bring religion under the domain of scientific understanding. Tylor’s
works on the evolution of religion were widely read, and they influenced a whole
generation of scholars including the renowned Cambridge anthropologist James
George Frazer (1854-1941) and the science populariser Edward Clodd (1840-
1930).

Although Tylor was forwarding an explanation of religious beliefs using a type of

evolutionary theory, his work was not embroiled in any major conflict with either
the Church or religious figures. This was a marked difference to how the writings
of other scientific naturalists, such as ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ Thomas Huxley (1825-
1895), were received by religious communities during the same period. Despite his
clear aim to replace religious explanations of the world with scientific ones, a close
examination of Tylor’s book exposes a complex and strenuous relationship
between science and religion. Many of the sources that he used to exemplify extra-
European religious practices came from the travel reports of missionaries and other
types of travellers with strong religious convictions. Tylor was reliant on these
first-hand accounts to substantiate the credibility of his writings. Even though he
wanted to push religion to the margins of anthropological research, he was unable
to completely avoid religiously influenced sources for his data. This raises some
interesting questions about the alleged boundaries between the two spheres of
science and religion, and is a wonderful example of how the conflict thesis, or
clash narrative model, does not provide an adequate framework for understanding
the history of this relationship during the Victorian era.

Sir James George Frazer

Sir James George Frazer (born Jan. 1, 1854, Glasgow, Scot.—died May 7,
1941, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.) was a British anthropologist, folklorist,
and classical scholar, best remembered as the author of The Golden Bough.

From an academy in Helensburgh, Dumbarton, Frazer went to Glasgow University

(1869), entered Trinity College, Cambridge (1874), and became a fellow (1879). In
1907 he was appointed professor of social anthropology at Liverpool, but he
returned to Cambridge after one session, remaining there for the rest of his life.

His outstanding position among anthropologists was established by the publication

in 1890 of The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (enlarged to 12
vol., 1911–15; abridged edition in 1 vol., 1922; supplementary
vol. Aftermath, 1936). The underlying theme of the work is Frazer’s theory of a
general development of modes of thought from the magical to the religious and,
finally, to the scientific. His distinction between magic and religion (magic as an
attempt to control events by technical acts based upon faulty reasoning, religion as
an appeal for help to spiritual beings) has been basically assumed in much
anthropological writing since his time. Although the evolutionary sequence of
magical, religious, and scientific thought is no longer accepted and Frazer’s broad
general psychological theory has proved unsatisfactory, his work enabled him
to synthesize and compare a wider range of information about religious and
magical practices than has been achieved subsequently by any other single
anthropologist.

The Golden Bough directed attention to the combination of priestly with kingly
office in the “divine kingships” widely reported from Africa and elsewhere.
According to Frazer, the institution of divine kingship derived from the belief that
the well-being of the social and natural orders depended upon the vitality of the
king, who must therefore be slain when his powers begin to fail him and be
replaced by a vigorous successor.

In making a vast range of primitive custom appear intelligible to European thinkers

of his time, Frazer had a wide influence among men of letters; and, though he
traveled little himself, he was in close contact with missionaries and administrators
who provided information for him and valued his interpretation of it. His other
works include Totemism and Exogamy (1910) and Folk-Lore in the Old
Testament (1918). He was knighted in 1914.

Rudolf Otto
Rudolf Otto (born Sept. 25, 1869, Peine, Prussia—died March 6, 1937, Marburg,
Ger.) German theologian, philosopher, and historian of religion,
who exerted worldwide influence through his investigation of man’s experience of
the holy. Das Heilige (1917; The Idea of the Holy, 1923) is his most important
work.
Early life and academic career.
Otto was the son of William Otto, a manufacturer. Little is known of Otto’s early
life, except that he was educated at the gymnasium in Hildesheim before becoming
a student of theology and philosophy at the University of Erlangen and, later, at
the University of Göttingen, where he was made a Privatdozent (“lecturer”) in
1897, teaching theology, history of religions, and history of philosophy. In 1904 he
was appointed professor of systematic theology at Göttingen, a post he held until
1914, when he became professor of theology at the University of Breslau. In 1917
he became professor of systematic theology at the University of Marburg and for
one year (1926–27) served as rector of the university. He retired from his
university post in 1929, though he continued to live in Marburg the rest of his life.

Otto took time from his scholarly pursuits, more out of a sense of duty than of
preference, to participate in community and public affairs. He was a member of the
Prussian Parliament from 1913 to 1918 and a member of the Constituent Chamber
in 1918, where he asserted a liberal and progressive influence. And he was later to
concern himself with the political questions of the Weimar Republic. Otto also
participated widely in Christian ecumenical activities, both as they related to
divisions within the Christian community and as they concerned relations between
Christianity and other religions of the world.
Scholarly pursuits.
What initially prompted Otto’s inquiry into man’s experience of the holy was a
specifically Christian, even Protestant, concern that had awakened in him while
studying the life and thought of Martin Luther. This concern—to elucidate the
distinctive character of the religious interpretation of the world—is reflected in his
first book, Die Anschauung vom heiligen Geiste bei Luther (1898; “The Perception
of the Holy Spirit by Luther”). He was to expand his inquiry in his
book, Naturalistische und religiöse Weltansicht (1904; Naturalism and
Religion, 1907), in which he contrasted the naturalistic and the religious ways of
interpreting the world, first indicating their antitheses and then raising the question
of whether the contradictions can be or should be reconciled.

Otto resisted an easy reconciliation between the world view offered by the sciences
and the religious interpretation but opposed equally the religionist’s hostility
toward science and the scientist’s disregard of religion. The two perspectives, he
insisted, are to be embraced and heeded for what they purport to disclose
concerning the world in which men live. It was clear, however, that Otto’s
principal concern was to justify and to clarify what it is that the religious
interpretation of the world, even within its rational aspect, conveys to man as a
distinctive dimension of understanding beyond the discoveries of the sciences and
the generalized knowledge following from them. Five years later came his
work, Kantische-Fries’sche Religionsphilosophie (1909; The Philosophy of
Religion Based on Kant and Fries, 1931), a discussion of the religious thought of
the German philosophers Immanuel Kant and Jacob Friedrich Fries, in which he
sought to specify the kind of rationality that is appropriate to religious inquiry.

During 1911–12 Otto undertook an extended journey, visiting many countries of

the world, beginning with North Africa, Egypt, and Palestine, continuing to India,
China, and Japan, and returning by way of the United States. These experiences
were to set his problem in a worldwide context, turning him to an extended and
searching exploration of the diverse ways in which the religious response
had manifested itself among various religions of the world. He proved to be
remarkably well equipped for such an exploration, both in his mastery of languages
and his knowledge of the history of world religions. In addition to being at home
with the languages of Near Eastern religions, he had mastered Sanskrit sufficiently
to translate many ancient Hindu texts into German as well as to write several
volumes comparing Indian and Christian religious thought.
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Influence of Schleiermacher
Otto’s initial mentor guiding his inquiry into the specific character of the religious
response was the eminent German philosopher and theologian
Friedrich Schleiermacher. It was Schleiermacher’s early work, specifically his
book Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebilden unter ihren Verächtern (1799; On
Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, 1893), to which Otto gave particular
attention. What appealed to him in this work was Schleiermacher’s fresh way of
perceiving religion as a unique feeling or awareness, distinct from ethical and
rational modes of perception, though not exclusive of them. Schleiermacher was
later to speak of this unique feeling as man’s “feeling of absolute dependence.”
Otto was deeply impressed by this formulation and credited Schleiermacher with
having rediscovered the sense of the holy in the post-Enlightenment age. Yet he
later criticized the formulation on the grounds that what Schleiermacher had
pointed up here was no more than a close analogy with ordinary, or “natural,”
feelings of dependence. For “absolute dependence” Otto substituted “creature-
feeling.” Creature-feeling, he said,

Is itself a first subjective concomitant and effect of another feeling element, which
casts it like a shadow, but which in itself indubitably has immediate and primary
reference to an object outside of the self.
Otto called this object “the numinous” or “Wholly Other”—i.e., that which
utterly transcends the mundane sphere, roughly equivalent to “supernatural” and
“transcendent” in traditional usage.
The Idea of the Holy. of Rudolf Otto
Various influences had played upon Otto’s reflections through the years, aiding
him in reformulating the religious category that was to carry him beyond
Schleiermacher. His early teacher at Göttingen, Albrecht Ritschl, had
located religion in the realm of value judgments, whereas, more significantly, his
theological colleague at Göttingen, Ernst Troeltsch, sought for a religious a priori
as the ground of religious interpretation and judgment. Otto was impressed
by William James’s shrewd insights in The Varieties of Religious
Experience (1902), yet he found James’s empirical method inadequate for
interpreting such phenomena. Otto was particularly attracted to the thought of
J.F. Fries, already mentioned, whose notion of Ahndung (obsolete form
of Ahnung; literally, “presentiment,” or “intuition”), a yearning that yields the
feeling of truth, opened up to him a way of dealing with religious phenomena
sensitively and appropriately. These “feelings of truth” Otto sought to schematize
in his The Idea of the Holy.

In that work, however, Otto was conscious of moving beyond his previous efforts,
exploring more specifically the nonrational aspect of the religious dimension, for
which he coined the term numinous, from the Latin numen (“god,” “spirit,” or
“divine”), on the analogy of “ominous” from “omen.” The numinous, the awe-
inspiring element of religious experience, Otto contended,

Evades precise formulation in words. Like the beauty of a musical composition, it

is non-rational and eludes complete conceptual analysis; hence it must be
discussed in symbolic terms.
Thus, The Idea of the Holy, while benefiting from earlier studies, represented for
Otto a new venture and a radical shift in the nature and ground of his inquiry. The
concern here was to attend to that elemental experience of apprehending the
numinous itself. In such moments of apprehension, said Otto,

We are dealing with something for which there is only one appropriate
expression, mysterium tremendum. . . . The feeling of it may at times come
sweeping like a gentle tide pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest
worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul,
continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away
and the soul resumes its “profane,” non-religious mood of everyday experience. . .
. It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may
be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the
hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence
of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and
above all creatures.
Although the mysterium, which Otto represents as the form of the numinous
experience, is beyond conception, what is meant by the term, he insists, is
something intensely positive. Mysterium can be experienced in feelings that
convey the qualitative content of the numinous experience. This content presents
itself under two aspects: (1) that of “daunting awfulness and majesty,” and (2) “as
something uniquely attractive and fascinating.” From the former comes the sense
of the uncanny, of divine wrath and judgment; from the latter, the reassuring and
heightening experiences of grace and divine love. This dual impact of awesome
mystery and fascination was Otto’s characteristic way of expressing man’s
encounter with the holy.
Later works.
Otto employed the method he had developed in The Idea of the Holy in three major
publications that followed: West-Östliche Mystik (1926; Mysticism East and
West, 1932); Die Gnadenreligion Indiens und das Christentum (1930; India’s
Religion of Grace and Christianity, 1930); and Reich Gottes und
Menschensohn (1934; The Kingdom of God and Son of Man, 1938). Of the three
books, the latter is especially important for glimpses of new insight that seem to
point beyond the earlier, more widely acclaimed volume; it renders the hint of
ultimacy that appears in present history.

Otto’s concern with experiencing the numinous also gave rise to experimenting
with new forms of liturgy designed to give urgency and vividness to such
experiences in Protestant services of worship under critically controlled conditions.
Here he employed a “Sacrament of Silence” as a culminating phase, a time of
waiting comparable to the Quaker moment of silence, which he acknowledged to
have been the stimulus to his own innovation.

Otto took all religions seriously as occasions to experience the holy and thus
pressed beyond involvement in his own historical faith as a Christian to engage in
frequent encounter with people of other religious traditions. He had much respect
for the distinctive characteristics of the various religions and thus resisted
universalizing religion in the sense of reducing all to the lowest common
denominator. Yet he strongly argued for a lively exchange between representatives
of the various religions. It was this concern that led him to create in Marburg the
Religious Collection of religious symbols, rituals, and apparatus on a worldwide
basis for purposes of inspection and study and to advocate establishing an Inter-
Religious League as “a cultural exchange in which the noblest . . . of our art and
science and of our whole spiritual heritage would be mutually interpreted and
shared.”
 1.3.3 elaborate the scientific process of research, i.e. observation, examination,
experiment, testing, validation;

What are the six steps of the scientific method?

The six steps of the scientific method include: 1) asking a question about
something you observe, 2) doing background research to learn what is already
known about the topic, 3) constructing a hypothesis, 4) experimenting to test the
hypothesis, 5) analyzing the data from the experiment and drawing conclusions,
and 6) communicating the results to others.
What is a scientific method example?
A simple example of the scientific method is:

 Ask a Question: Why does Greenland look so large on a map?

 Background Research: Learn that Greenland is a quarter the size of the United
States in land mass. Also learn that Mercator projection maps are made by
transferring the images from a sphere to a sheet of paper wrapped around the
sphere in a cylinder.
 Hypothesis: If I make a Mercator projection map, then the items in the middle of
the map will look their true size and the items at the poles will look larger than
they really are.
 Experiment: Use a sphere with 1-inch by 1-inch squares at each pole and the
equator to make a Mercator projection map. Measure the squares on the Mercator
projection map.
 Analyze Data and Make Conclusions: The middle-of-the-map squares average
1 inch per side while the squares at the poles average 3 inches per side. In
conclusion, the projection process used to make Mercator projection maps creates
distortion at the poles, but not at the equator. This is why Greenland, which is close
to the North Pole, looks larger than it is.
 Communicate: Make a video, write a report, or give a presentation to educate
others about the experiment.

Who invented the scientific method?

The scientific method was not invented by any one person, but is the outcome of
centuries of debate about how best to find out how the natural world works. The
ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was among the first known people to promote
that observation and reasoning must be applied to figure out how nature works.
The Arab Muslim mathematician and scientist Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (known in
the western world as Alhazen) is often cited as the first person to write about the
importance of experimentation. Since then, a large number of scientists have
written about how science should ideally be conducted and contributed to our
modern understanding of the scientific method. Those scientists include Roger
Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, John
Hume, and John Stuart Mill. Scientists today continue to evolve and refine the
scientific method as they explore new techniques and new areas of science.
1.3.4 discuss different models of relationships between religion and science
(conflict, discussion, interdependence, independence);
Science and Religion, Models and Relations

A number of categories have been proposed for classifying diverse views of how
science and religion can be related to each other. John Haught has suggested the
categories of Conflict, Contrast, Contact, and Confirmation. A more detailed
eightfold classification has been offered by Ted Peters. This article uses a fourfold
typology proposed by Ian Barbour: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and
Integration.

Conflict

The trial of the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1633 is often cited as the first
prominent example of the conflict of religion with modern science. However,
several factors in this trial were not typical of conflicts in subsequent
centuries. Galileo challenged the respected authority of Aristotle who had held that
the sun and planets revolve in orbits around the earth. Galileo also challenged the
authority of the Catholic church at a time when it felt threatened by the Protestant
Reformation. He did indeed challenge the literal interpretation of scripture, but this
was not crucial in his day because metaphorical and allegorical interpretations of
scriptural passages had been widely accepted since the writings of Augustine of
Hippo in the 5th century.

Responses to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) provide examples

of Conflict, but also examples of alternative responses. A long, gradual process of
evolution clearly conflicts with the seven days of creation in Genesis, which some
theologians interpreted literally. Some religious conservatives accepted a long
evolutionary history, but insisted on the special creation of the human soul,
whereas liberals were soon speaking of evolution as God's way of creating. The
evolutionary origins of humanity seemed a threat to human dignity, especially
when "the survival of the fittest" was used by several social philosophers to justify
ruthless economic competition and colonialism. After all, the idea of an impersonal
process of variation and natural selection challenged the traditional idea of
purposeful design. Darwin himself did not believe that every species had been
specifically designed by God, but he did believe that God had designed the whole
process through which differing species had evolved.

The Conflict thesis is represented today by two views at opposite ends of the
theological spectrum: creation science and scientific materialism. Each gains a
following partly by its opposition to the other. The popular image of "the warfare
of science and religion" is perpetuated by the media, for whom controversies
provide dramatic stories.

Creation Science. Fundamentalism, started as a movement in the United

States since early in the twentieth century that took a strong stand defending
biblical inerrancy. In the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925,
fundamentalists argued that the teaching of evolution in the schools should be
forbidden because it is contrary to scripture. Beginning in the 1960s, proponents
of creation science have claimed that there is scientific evidence against
evolutionary theory and evidence for the sudden appearance of creatures in their
present forms. Several state legislatures passed laws requiring that creationist
theory be given equal time with evolutionary theory in public high school biology
classes. But in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that creation science does not
constitute legitimate science and that it has been promoted in order to support a
particular religious viewpoint, which is prohibited by the separation of church and
state in the U.S. Constitution.

More sophisticated critiques of Darwinism have appeared in recent years, focusing

on the rarity of transitional forms between species in the fossil record, and pointing
to the sudden burst of new species in the early Cambrian period. According to the
biochemist Michael Behe, the complex sequences of molecular reactions in
organisms today could not have arisen gradually because if even one step were
missing the sequence would not fulfill an adaptive function. Proponents
of intelligent design, such as William Dembski, assert that such complexity could
only be the product of purposeful intelligence. A number of biologists have replied
that there are plausible Darwinian explanations for many of these phenomena, and
that where such explanations are lacking one should seek more adequate testable
hypotheses rather than positing supernatural intervention, which would inhibit
rather than encourage further research.

Scientific materialism. Materialism is the assertion that matter is the fundamental

reality in the universe. Materialism is a form of metaphysics (a claim concerning
the most general characteristics and constituents of reality). Scientific materialism
makes a second assertion: The scientific method is the only reliable path to
knowledge. This is a form of epistemology (a claim concerning inquiry and the
acquisition of knowledge). The two assertions are linked; if the only real entities
are those with which science deals, then science is the only valid path to
knowledge.

In addition, many forms of materialism express reductionism. Epistemological

reductionism claims that the laws and theories of all the sciences are in principle
reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry. Metaphysical reductionism claims
that the behavior of any system is determined by its component parts, which alone
are causally effective.

Two well-known sociobiologists have explicitly defended scientific materialism.

Richard Dawkins argues that evolution provides proof that there is no purpose in
the universe. He holds that our actions are determined by our genes, which are the
product of deterministic laws and chance events. He asserts that religion has
always been harmful to human welfare. Edward O. Wilson believes that all human
behavior can be explained by biological origins and genetic inheritance. He
acknowledges that religious traditions served a useful function in the past by
uniting groups around common loyalties, but he argues that this function can be
better served today by loyalty to science. Critics suggest that scientific materialism
is an interpretive philosophical position that conflicts only with other philosophical
and religious positions, not a scientific theory that is part of science itself.

Independence

Conflicts between science and religion can be avoided if they are taken to be
inquiries in separate domains. They employ differing languages fulfilling
contrasting functions in human life. Science asks about lawful regularities among
events in nature, whereas religion asks about ultimate meaning and purpose in a
wider interpretive framework. If both science and religion are selective, neither can
say that its account of reality is complete.
1.3.5 identify areas where scientific approach and religious approach could differ.

Science and religion: Reconcilable differences

With the loud protests of a small number of religious groups over teaching
scientific concepts like evolution and the Big Bang in public schools, and the
equally loud proclamations of a few scientists with personal, anti-religious
philosophies, it can sometimes seem as though s​ cience and religion are at war.
News outlets offer plenty of reports of school board meetings, congressional
sessions, and Sunday sermons in which scientists and religious leaders launch
attacks at one another. But just how representative are such conflicts? Not very.
The attention given to such clashes glosses over the far more numerous cases in
which science and religion harmoniously, and even synergistically, coexist.

In fact, people of many different faiths and levels of scientific expertise see no
contradiction at all between science and religion. Many simply acknowledge that
the two institutions deal with different realms of human experience. Science
investigates the n​ atural world, while religion deals with the spiritual
and s​ upernatural — hence, the two can be complementary. Many religious
organizations have issued statements declaring that there need not be any conflict
between religious faith and the scientific perspective on evolution.

Furthermore, contrary to stereotype, one certainly doesn’t have to be an atheist in

order to become a scientist. A 2005 survey of scientists at top research universities
found that more than 48% had a religious affiliation and more than 75% believe
that religions convey important truths.2 Some scientists — like Francis Collins,
former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and George
Coyne, astronomer and priest — have been outspoken about the satisfaction they
find in viewing the world through both a scientific lens and one of personal faith.

This is not to suggest that science and religion never come into conflict. Though
the two generally deal with different realms (​n​ atural vs. spiritual), disagreements
do arise about where the boundaries between these realms lie when dealing with
questions at their interface. And sometimes, one side crosses a boundary in its
claims. For example, when religious tenets make strong claims about the natural
world (e.g., claiming that the world was created in six days, as some literal
interpretations of the Bible might require), faith and science can find themselves in
conflict.
Though such clashes may garner print, airwave, and bandwidth headlines, it’s
important to remember that, behind the scenes and out of the spotlight, many cases
exist in which religious and scientific perspectives present no conflict at all.
Thousands of scientists busily carry out their research while maintaining personal
spiritual beliefs, and an even larger number of everyday folks fruitfully view the
natural world through an ​evidence-based, scientific lens and the supernatural world
through a spiritual lens. Accepting a scientific worldview needn’t require giving up
religious faith.