The problem with building ethical systems on religious revelation

¶ … Revelation Ethics

Religion, by definition, is a matter of faith rather than logic. This is not to say that religion cannot employ logic, and indeed all serious theologians use logic regular in deciding what it is their particular religion wants. But at the heart of any religion is an essential leap of faith; a belief in something that cannot be logically proven. One way in which this faith is inspired is through revelation, where people see (or claim to see) God or other proofs of divinity, often accompanied by instructions specific to the individual or to the people they represent at large. When the serious and huge impact that religion has had on the history of the world is considered, the fact that faith is inherently making a logical leap, and that revelation is so supremely subjective, ought to give one pause when considering a sstem of ethics based on revelation.

Mass revelations are not a commonly recorded occurrence. To be frank, neither are individual ones. But there are far more accounts concerning individual revelations of God's will than there are accounts of whole groups receiving ethical commands en masse, so to characterize revelation as an individual experience is not too presumptive. For that reason, it should be plain to see the major problem with a system of ethics built in revelation. Any system built completely on the subjective claims (or even the subjective interpretation of a true revelation) will necessarily be biased by that subjectivity. An ethical system ought to consider everyone fairly; is that is not the goal of ethics, than ethics have no real reason to exist at all.