Philippine Democracy Online

Dr. Romulo G. Bautista                                       Quasi-Religious/Quasi-Secular Ethics maybe described as a hybrid of religious and of secular ethics, a middle ground between the religious and the secular ethics. In other words, a “quasi” ethics is in part secular, in part religious. As such, its middle ground is not exactly the center or equidistant to both extremes; rather the middle ground maybe leaning more toward religion (right-of-center) or leaning more toward autonomy (left-of-center). If it leans more toward religion, then it either leans more toward a religious ethics or more toward an anti-religious ethics. It must be stressed, though, that both the religious ethics and the anti-religious ethics recognized and acknowledge the existence of God, but they have opposing beliefs about the essence of God. For instance, the religious ethics might say “God exists and He is a gre...

Dr. Romulo G. Bautista                                        What is “moral” is always “ethical”, but what is “ethical” is not necessarily “moral”. “Moral” and “ethical” are similar in that both have to do with the difference between right and wrong. But they are also dissimilar in that “ethical” tends to refer to a system, theory, or code of judging rightness or wrongness; whereas “moral” tends to refer to more concrete choices and issues that arouse strong feelings. We might say that “ethical” refers to right and wrong”, while “moral” refers to good and evil. Thus, for example, the behavior of a professor who plagiarizes a writing of another professor without acknowledging the latter as the original author is unethical because it violates the code of ethics against plagiarism.