Secular Ethics
Main article: Morality without religion See also: Secular ethicsSecular ethics is a moral philosophy in which ethics are based solely on human faculties such as scientific reason, sociobiological composition, or ethical intuition, and not derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. Secular ethics comprise a wide variety of moral and ethical systems including consequentialism, freethinking, humanism, secular humanism, and utilitarianism, among others.
The majority of secular moral concepts are based on the acceptance of natural rights and social contracts, and on a more individual scale of either some form of attribution of intrinsic value to things, Kantianesque ethical intuitionism or of a logical deduction that establishes a preference for one thing over another, as with Occam's razor. Approaches such as ethical egoism, moral relativism, moral skepticism, and moral nihilism are also considered.
Read more about this topic: Ethics In Religion
Famous quotes containing the words secular and/or ethics:
“but as an Eagle
His cloudless thunderbolted on thir heads.
So vertue givn for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seemd,
Like that self-begottn bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
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A secular bird ages of lives.”
—John Milton (16081674)
“If you take away ideology, you are left with a case by case ethics which in practise ends up as me first, me only, and in rampant greed.”
—Richard Nelson (b. 1950)