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Ethics and morality

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Explanation:

When many people see the word "morality," their first thought often relates to sexual activity of some type. Many individuals and groups use much broader definitions. They might define a moral act or state in many different ways.

It may:

	Move society towards the principle of "equal liberty and justice for all."
	Promote an individual's personal growth to become all that they are capable of becoming: emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically.
	Follow the dictates of God (or other deity/deities).
	Be in harmony with a holy book (e.g. Torah, Bible, Qur'an, etc).
	Be in harmony with one's faith tradition or secular system of morality.

There are an enormous number of topics that we hope to be covered eventually in this section. We have just begun to scratch the surface.

Introductory topics:

	Diversity of worldviews
	Truth: is it absolute or relative?
	Truth in religion
	Morality: sources, diversity, commonalities, Ethic of reciprocity
	How religions established, changed, and continue to change their teachings on slavery, the role of women, sexual orientation, and other topics

Specific topics covered:

	Bible: Bible passages that are immoral by today's religious & secular standards The status of women in the Bible and early Christianity God's genocides Changing holy books in order to modify beliefs and alter behaviors
	Business ethics: Salaries paid to religious leaders of para-church groups in the U.S. Future Shop.ca� in Canada Hoover� in Canada People with disabilities, by the Canadian banking system
	Children: Preventable child deaths from unclean water and lack of sanitation Hitting children as a form of discipline Children being used as soldiers Shootings in public schools Safe haven laws for abandoned newborns Satanic Ritual Abuse
	Cloning: Ethical aspects of cloning Therapeutic cloning (creation of artificial organs)
	Denial of human rights of: People living in dictatorships Gays and lesbians seeking marriage Gays, Atheists, Agnostics and others in the Boy Scouts
	Employment discrimination against: Women seeking ordination Gays and lesbians People with disabilities, by the Canadian banking system
	Environment: Global warming and other environmental concerns
	Government: Moral and religious aspects of the 2004 presidential election Moral aspects of the 2006 budget and state of the nation speech
	Human sexuality Homosexuality and bisexuality The HPV vaccine and cervical cancer Christian attitudes on sex and gender (Masturbation, homosexuality, abortion, ordination of women, status of women) Youth sexuality: sex-education, access to condoms, & pre-marital sex Rape in wartime
	Medical and mental health topics: Abortion -- religious and ethical aspects Emergency contraception Will Catholic hospitals make EC available to rape victims? Ethical aspects of human organ harvesting and transplanting Human embryo & stem cell research Marijuana availability Medical treatment of pain: who gets it and who doesn't Physician assisted suicide Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT) Roman Catholic instructions in bioethics, 2008 "Dignitatis Personae" Treatment of burns with fetal skin tissue
	Native peoples: The extermination of Canada's Innu people Suicide among Canada's Native people
	Polls: Activities that Canadians feel are immoral
	Racism: Racism surfacing in 2009-SEP, directed against President Obama
	Slavery: Past, recent & current slavery in Nazi Germany, Japan, Sudan, U.S., etc Financial compensation for Nazi slave laborers Japanese sex slaves

	War: Land mines Financial compensation for Nazi slave laborers Governments' complicity in the Nazi holocaust Rape in wartime Japanese sex slaves When is killing a human permitted? The principle of tattarrus in Islam
	Other material: Capital punishment; the death penalty Hate crime legislation Religious urban legends - contemporary beliefs that are hoaxes Do convicts have a right to access samples for DNA testing?

See our "Hot" religious topics menu for additional essays with a moral component.

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