ABSTRACT
This chapter makes an argument on behalf of religious ethics, therefore, by starting with a distinction between state and society and then explaining what the effects of believing in God are for the believer. To a religious believer, the universe is moral and may be experienced as a sacred place, even if in an obscure manner. The religious believer inhabits a universe peopled as it were by spirits— of places, of the dead, of manifestations and avatars of divine intent. This manner of seeing the universe as impenetrated by spiritual, nonmaterial influences manifests divinity not only in particular cases, but throughout the universe as a whole. The religious believer tends to experience the universe as a whole, to live and act in a universe that is in a word integrated, in which separable elements of morality, spirit, and scientific law combine in a complex manner.
