Religion, Values & Ethics (DP IB Theory of Knowledge): Revision Note

Religion, values & ethics

• Religious knowledge claims are often associated with values, because religions typically make claims about what matters and how people ought to live

Moral frameworks

• A moral framework is a shared set of ideas used to decide what counts as right and wrong

• Religions can provide moral frameworks by setting out how people should behave

• Moral rules may be treated as objective within a religious community because they are often believed to be grounded in the divine

• Different interpretations can produce different moral conclusions, even when communities rely on the same sources

Ethical action and responsibility

• Ethical action is what people do when they apply knowledge about morals to real choices

• Religion can connect ethical action to responsibility by teaching that moral choices are not just personal preferences, but rules that believers are expected to follow and be held accountable for

  • Responsibility may include accountability to the community as well as accountability to the divine

• Tension can arise when different knowledge sources point to different actions, such as religious teaching versus personal experience

Conflicts between religious knowledge and secular knowledge

• Conflicts can arise when religious sources and secular sources support different answers to the same question, so a person must decide which knowledge claim to trust

  • E.g. a religious teaching says an action is wrong, while a law or medical advice says it is acceptable or beneficial

• The disagreement may be about sources, such as revelation and scripture versus observation and reason, or standards of justification, such as faith-based authority versus public opinion

• Ethical conflicts can be especially difficult because both sides may claim strong justification for an ethical action, but they rely on different sources and standards for deciding what is right

Social influence of religious values

• Religious values can influence wider society when religious groups take part in public debate and argue that their moral teachings should shape secular laws and social norms

• When religious values are used to argue for laws or social rules, a key knowledge question is whether religious authorities, such as sacred texts, should be treated as a legitimate justification in secular society

  • Disagreement is common in plural societies, because the same policy can be supported by one religious value system and rejected by another, or by non-religious reasoning