Universal Moral Standards Essay

Professor Victor J. Stenger pointed out the fact that religious codes and exemplars cannot literally be the origin of people's moral thoughts. These moral thoughts are remarkably similar in people with different religious concepts or without any such concepts. Even religious people's thoughts about morals are constrained by intuitions they share with other human beings, more than official codes and models. Religious nobles and preachers tell us that any universal moral standards can only come from one source - their particular God. Otherwise standards would be relative, depending on culture and differing across cultures and individuals. The data suggest that the majority of human beings from all cultures and religions or no religion agree on a common set of moral standards. So, universal moral norms do exist .

What is the source of universal morals? If we theorize that evolution, not religion, leads to common morals, then, our theory

Religious people also had lower scores when it came to seeing how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in other ways, such as in giving money or food to a homeless person and to non-believers. Other studies conducted in various countries found no relationship between faith and crime, rather the evidence surrounding the effects of religion on crime is found to be varied and inconclusive. Phil Zuckerman, in his book, “Society without God”, noted that Denmark and Sweden, are the least religious countries in the world, enjoy among the lowest violent crime rates, and the lowest levels of corruption in the world. Many other studies have been conducted on the subject as