Ethics and Religion
There is no religion without ethics, and for many people, there is no ethics without religion.
Please do some general research on religious principles. Religious principles are the basics upon which a religion is founded. The Christian Ten Commandments’ “Thou shalt not kill” is a religious principle, as is the Five Pillars of Islam’s Shahadah. There are many, many more sets of religious principles across history. You can start with Google, but you should end up narrowing your search in our online library.
Think about this as you browse: What commonalities do you notice between most or all sets of religious principles? What do scholars say about connections between them? When something stands out as unique among religious principles, why is that? Take notesboth for informational and for citations.
After you’ve gotten the lay of the land, please choose and summarize, simply and in your own words, one religious principle that you see occurring in most or all of the religions you’ve researched. This principle may be worded differently in different religions, but its core meaning will be universal. Why do you think that this principle is so important to human interaction that it has been codified many times, across many centuries and cultures?
This paper will have the following in this order.
A one-paragraph introduction with a one-sentence thesis laying out the paper’s guiding idea and the main points supporting it (the main points occur in items 2 and 3, below).
Two body paragraphs, one per religion, that explain your chosen religious principle as it shows up in two religions of your choice. These paragraphs should have in-text citations for all quotes, paraphrases, and outside information that you use as support for your explanation.
A third body paragraph (the fourth paragraph including the introduction) that explores why you think this principle is so important to human interaction that it is one of the basics of these two different religions.
A conclusion that reflects upon your thesis and how you’ve supported it.
You should use quality sources from our library as support. Wikipedia, “About” sites, and the like are for getting a quick (and sometimes unreliable) picture of a topic, not for citing in college-level papers. Do not use big chunks of outside information to share someone else’s argument; rather, reflect on well-chosen nuggets of outside information that define, clarify, and support your argument.
This paper should be in APA format. It should be two to three pages long with in-text citations as needed and a bibliography.
