Sean Virgil J.

Auxtero

IR258

Does Morality Depend on Religion

Man’s ability to understand is not limited to a specific idea that would be the primal juncture to
the entirety of its belief. The broad perspectives of people-binding ideologies, such as religion, have
already been part of every man’s culture and history. The realm of morality, continuing to a question on
whether it depends on religion, can be assumed that it has been a paramount dependant to religion.
However, one must have to understand what morality really is.

Religion cannot exist without morality, but morality can exist without religion. To explain the
said claim, with the custom of cultural relativism, for instance, an individual must understand that every
religion has its own “morality” that cannot be considered the same to other religion. However, it is also
true that some morality were derived from religions such as Christian-based morality. But the question
is, does the said morality can still exist even if we take away its primary source which is religion in this
case? If it can, therefore, it does not depend on religion.

To further elaborate the answer for this question, religion can be projected as people-binding
perspective that believes to the existence of supreme beings so it can be justified as subjective rather
than objective. God as a social construct, for example, can be used to restrict the idea that morality
depends on religion. This is for the reason that if gods and goddesses were created by man, therefore, it
is limited only to the idea of man. If it is subjective, it is interchangeable in a way that it must fit in to
contemporary phenomenon. Love, in this case, can be considered as a social construct. Based on other
religions, love should be practiced by the idea of heteronormativity. Hence, homosexual relationship is
still a taboo in other religion. However, since not everyone believes to a limited and conventional
religions, love can be changed based on what the people of that society need. Therefore, love is no
longer limited to male-female relationship, but it also now includes homosexual couples, families, and
friends.

In other words, morality can be morally accepted in a society but does not guarantee the same
acceptance in other societies. Hence, morality does not depend on religion, but religion can be a basis
for morality that still upholds its dependency from religion.