  The term ‘morality’ as used in this entry will not be distinguished from ‘ethics.’ Philosophers have drawn various contrasts between the two at various times (Kant for example, and Hegel, and more recently R.M. Hare and Bernard Williams). But etymologically, the term ‘moral’ comes from the Latin mos, which means custom or habit, and it is a translation of the Greek ethos, which means roughly the same thing, and is the origin of the term ‘ethics’. In contemporary non-technical use, the two terms are more or less interchangeable, though ‘ethics’ has slightly more flavor of theory, and has been associated with the prescribed practice of various professions (e.g., medical ethics, etc.). In any case, this entry will assume that morality is a set of customs and habits that shape how we think about how we should live or about what is a good human life. The term ‘religion’ is much disputed. Again, we can learn from the etymology. The origin of the word is probably the Latin religare, to bind back. Not all uses of the term require reference to a divinity or divinities. But this entry will use the term so that there is such a reference, and a religion is a system of belief and practice that accepting a ‘binding’ relation to such a being or beings. This does not, however, give us a single essence of religion, since the conceptions of divinity are so various, and human relations with divinity are conceived so variously that no such essence is apparent even within Western thought. The ancient Greeks, for example, had many intermediate categories between full gods or goddesses and human beings. There were spirits (in Greek daimones) and spiritual beings like Socrates's mysterious voice (daimonion) (Apology, 31d1–4, 40a2–c3). There were heroes who were offspring of one divine and one human parent. There were humans who were deified, like the kings of Sparta. This is just within the culture of ancient Greece. If we included Eastern religions in the scope of the discussion, the hope for finding a single essence of religion would recede further. Probably it is best to understand ‘religion’ as a term for a group of belief/practice amalgams with a family resemblance to each other, but no set of necessary and sufficient conditions tying them together (see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 65–7).