Ethical Concerns?

When I first considered the ethical concerns or questions that are extant in my big question, I found myself thinking that my entire question (does everything happen for a reason?) was an ethical question in itself. I feel that to even discuss possible ethical concerns, the question needs to be answered first. To elaborate, if the answer is yes, everything happens for a reason, is it ethical for people to act however they want because it is out of their control? Is it ethical to expect people to excuse terrible life circumstances as something that was “for a reason”? Similarly, if the answer is no, is it ethical for people to use this phrase as a way to provide empty comfort to people? As you can see, the ethical questions continue to form as the many layers of this question are uncovered. 

In terms of religion or spirituality (astrology, tarot cards, etc), there are definitely ethical concerns or questions to consider as well. For instance, there is faith-based ethics which asks questions like is it ethical to force people to make choices based on beliefs in religion? Alternatively, is it ethical to profit off of people’s curiosity about spirituality if there isn’t any scientific proof? Or is it unethical to place expectations on people solely based on substantial beliefs? The difficulty in these two fields is the lack of physical evidence to determine the legitimacy. Therefore, the ethical questions are quite endless. 

As for people working on addressing or researching these, I found various studies that surround the topic of faith-based ethics, such as researchers at Santa Clara University. There is some discourse regarding ethical issues in spirituality, but not as much as religion. I think this may be due to the fact that it is not as well-received compared to religion. I do think there is a bit of bias when previewing some of the research as they tend to be conducted by those within the groups. However, I think that research will continue to expand and we will be exposed to new ideas regarding these ethical questions in the near future.