Does love require us to kill him or to refrain from killing him?
other major religious rules of conduct are usually vague, laying out general principles that may be difficult to apply to specific cases. (Sec- ular moral codes have the same disadvantage.) For example, we may be commanded to love our neigh- bor, but what neighbors are included— people of a different religion? people who denounce our reli- gion? the gay or lesbian couple? those who steal from us? the convicted child molester next door? the drug dealers on the corner? the woman who got an abortion? Also, what does loving our neigh- bor demand of us? How does love require us to behave toward the drug dealers, the gay couple, or the person who denounces our religion? If our ter- minally ill neighbor asks us in the name of love to help him kill himself, what should we do? Does love require us to kill him—or to refrain from killing him? And, of course, commandments can conflict—as when, for example, the only way to avoid killing an innocent person is to tell a lie, or the only way to save the life of one person is to kill another. All these situations force the believer to interpret religious directives, to try to apply gen- eral rules to specific cases, to draw out the implica- tions of particular views—in other words, to do ethics.
When Conflicts Arise, Ethics Steps In Very often moral contradictions or inconsistencies confront the religious believer, and only moral reasoning can help resolve them. Believers some- times disagree with their religious leaders on moral issues. Adherents of one religious tradition may disagree with those from another tradition on whether an act is right or wrong. Sincere devotees in a religious tradition may wonder if its moral teachings make sense. In all such cases, intelligent resolution of the conflict of moral claims can be achieved only by applying a neutral standard that helps sort out the competing viewpoints. Moral philosophy supplies the neutral standard in the form of critical thinking, well-made arguments,
Islam—provide to their believers commandments or principles of conduct that are thought to con- stitute the moral law, the essence of morality. For millions of these adherents, the moral law is the will of God, and the will of God is the moral law. In the West at least, the powerful imprint of reli- gion is evident in secular laws and in the private morality of believers and unbelievers alike. Secular systems of morality—for example, those of the ancient Greek philosophers, Immanuel Kant, the utilitarians, and others—have of course left their mark on Western ethics. But they have not moved the millions who think that morality is a product exclusively of religion.