Similarities

People identify themselves with what they believe to be important; this is often a set of values or morals. Morality is concerned with what is right and wrong. People behave in different ways when confronted with moral choices, and their personal set of beliefs or values helps them work out what is ‘right’.

We develop our personal sets of beliefs throughout our lives. At the moment, you probably get a lot of your ideas about what is right and what is wrong from your family, friends and school.

To a large extent, our lives are shaped by the decisions we make. When we make decisions, we make moral choices. We take into consideration a number of factors:

• Rules and laws (religious or civil). In Christianity, for example, there are the Ten Commandments.
• Our experience of similar situations – we learn from our own and other people’s behaviour and actions.
• The predicted consequences of our actions.
• Our conscience (if we do something we instinctively know is wrong, we often feel guilty) and our love of others.