does a moral enterprise have to be religious?

thought i would get it out there as a pre class disscussion....

I don't believe a moral enterprise needs to be religious in order to be considered moral at all.

Morality and religion, while closely linked, are not necessarily inseparable. A moral act does not need to have religious undertones, but (hopefully) a religious act will have a strong moral structure.

If a person helps a child who has fallen on the playground and tends to their wound, therefore performing a moral act, does that automatically classify them as religious? Absolutely not. It simply means that this person has a certain level of morality that they maintain, and helping the hurt child on the playground helps them maintain that sense of morality.

Also, let us not forget that our education system is a moral enterprise in the sense that it strives to give the children of our country a way to gain the opportunity to be successful in life, and in theory a school (according to US law) cannot be a religious enterprise because of the separation of church and state.

I think morality and religion can walk along the same line, but they can also be distinctly separate from each other. There are plenty of religious customs or beliefs that we may not consider morale, and there are plenty of morals/moral acts that have nothing to do with religion (like Jon said). You don't have to be religious to be morale, and plenty of religious people don't have the morals they claim to have. While the two may be related, I don't think it's necessary. So no, I don't think a moral enterprise has to be religious. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. You can look at it like a charity organization or something. They do good for people. We would consider the organization as a moral organization. But there are plenty of charities without a religious affiliation.

I agree that you don't have to be religious to have morals. I have a good friend that is Agnostic and she has morals. She doesn't believe in organized religion, but she is going to be a teacher. I thought she would be the best example for this topic. Morals are not only taught through religious experiences, they are learned by daily activities, and some people believe they are discovered through self discovery. Everyone has their own set or morals.

I also agree that you do not have to be religious to have morals. I am also friends with the girl that Heather metioned in her post. I agree that even though she does not beliee in organized religion she does have morals and she supports the things she does believe in. A person's morals are something that a person has to discover for themselves through religion or without religion.

I greatly agree with all that has been said. I am an agnostic and I consider myself a very moral person. I try not to lie and to be honest for the most part and I hold myself to very high standards as someone who will be a role model for adolescents. I don't know if it is because of organized religion in my past that I have certain morals that I follow or if I just consider those morals to be signs of a good person. I'm not sure, but I think that you do not have to be religious at all to be moral. Being moral means doing the right thing most of the time, it doesn't mean that because the Bible says not to lie you don't lie, if you are moral you don't lie because it could hurt others or yourself.

I don't think that a moral enterprise has to be religious. I think that morals are based a lot off of upbringing, and in some cases can be very religious but they don't necessarily have to be. There are definitely people out there who know right from wrong, understand following the laws and setting their morals high but would hate the idea of being labeled religious because of it. I think that being religious does have a lot to do with having morals, but having morals doesn't mean they have to be religious morals.