Ethics is the branch of philosophy that explores the nature of moral virtue and evaluates human actions. Philosophical ethics differs from legal, religious, cultural and personal approaches to ethics by seeking to conduct the study of morality through a rational, secular outlook that is grounded in notions of human happiness or well-being. A major advantage of a philosophical approach to ethics...

This paper examines relationships between religion and two forms of homonegativity across 43 European countries using a bivariate response binary logistic multilevel model. The model analyzes effects of religious believing, belonging and practice on two response variables: a) a moral rejection of homosexuality as a practice and b) intolerance toward homosexuals as a group. The findings indicate...

What is the relationship between religious affiliation and conceptions of moral domain? Putting aside question whether people from different religions agree about how to answer questions, here we investigate a more fundamental question: How much disagreement there across which issues count as in first place? That is, do conceptualize scope morality differently? Using new methodology map out ind...

Morality and religion have evolutionary and cultural roots in the social behavior of our ancestors . Fundamental precursors and major features of morality and religion appear to have changed gradually in concert with social transitions in our history. These correlated changes involve trends toward increased breadth and complexity of social interaction, leading to a stepwise extension of the sco...

Robert S. Olick, JD, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at State University of New York, Upstate Medical University, [email protected]. Eli A. Braun, BA, served as a Research Associate at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University when this article was written. Joel Potash, MD, is Professor Emeritus at the Center for Bioeth...