Especially in parts of the world that draw their cultural inspiration from the European Enlightenment (and other developments within that civilization), we tend to associate moral behavior with religious belief. Even among those in the west who have shucked off the religious dimension of life, there is still a tendency to look to the religious teachings of the Western World (which, in fact, arose in what we call the Middle East and subsequently spread to Europe) when discussing the idea of moral valuation and to see this as an outgrowth of Western religious beliefs.

Indeed, those who reject religion and its traditions for a more secular sense of moral rightness, an increasingly common phenomenon in what may still be called the "Western" world, tend to associate the idea of moral goodness as such with the teachings of spiritual growth which are often taken to be the better elements of religion per se. Dispensing with such outmoded ideas as “faith” and various doctrinal narratives about the nature and origin of the world itself, many still cling to the idea of an intrinsic link between religion and moral value. An examination of religious traditions from other parts of the world shows that even in these non-Western ways of thinking about the world, the idea of what’s right or wrong, that is, of what we take to be moral, connects with the religious enterprise. This connection between religious belief systems and moral valuation is not something solely limited to the "West." . . .