If you work to exclude religion as a whole because some religions or those practicing them have certain beliefs you may find reprehensible, you also exclude other moral and ethical beliefs, peer pressure, and community support that would combat corruption.
To which I would reply yes, religion in any form can be (and is) used to support and encourage corruption.
All (communal, as opposed to internal) religions look good on the surface, promising wealth (prosperity gospel Christianity), eternal life (various abrahamic religions), removal of body thetans (scientology), etc.
They all share the attribute of not being provable, and all will fight (often quite literally) for their own survival based on no evidence at all.
And they all require the existence of THE OTHER, a threat, sometimes existential, sometimes racial but in some way unacceptably different.
Actions against THE OTHER are seen as noble, even when they otherwise seem to go against the letter and spirit of the communal creed.
Religion cannot be used as a tool of inclusion because for someone to be considered "good", there has to also be an identifiable "evil". Strangely, nobody ever claims this latter title for themselves.
Finally, I'm sure we (you and I) will never know for sure, but I'm willing to bet the majority of the authorities involved here were all part of their community churches.
I feel strongly that it is foolish to remove the freedom to practice religion if it promotes moral and ethical behavior. Freedom to believe and have faith in something that helps society shouldn't be dissolved.
That said, I'm all for having additional secular classes in ethics and morality for those that don't want to practice a religion. Freedom goes both ways as long as it doesn't promote values that hurt others.
We need to work together to solve corruption and other problems. Religion is not the enemy of morality, and neither is secular education of morality.
Yes.
Much of our morality and ethics are innate and stem from our nature and evolution as a social species. Religion just took credit for it.
Even social groups of monkeys and rodents tend to avoid killing eachother and do what is in the best interests of the group.
Where is your evidence for this? It would seem more evident to me that the source I am aware of through my education in history and life experience for teaching of morals and ethics has been religion.
Although many here may not be old enough to realize it, countries that are mostly secular not long ago historically speaking had much moral and ethical teaching from their religions.
Attributing this to monkeys and innate behavior may account for part, but from what I understand, you could just as easily bring up monkeys in a ruthless environment where it is every monkey for him/herself. Having an established organization or organizations that teach morals and ethics is important.
Are there any important religious teachings that wouldn't be taught in a secular ethics class?
Not saying that people can't practice freely, but that it has no place in state education and government. No need for it in ethics classes either.
FWIW, I come from a country where religion doesn't play a big part in life and can think of two friends out of 50-100 that would be considered at all religious. Religion might seem more relevant to people in other countries obviously.
Financial compensation and putting those that caused the injustice in prison equaling the total of all of the terms served by all of those affected. That is as close to justice as could be had.
As for preventing corruption- there's no way to do this as long as there are people that can be corrupted. You can add oversight. You could replace the entire force with minorities. But if there are people that are corruptible, these efforts will fail. The best that you can do is to (1) promote ethics education in schools and flag students that reject it/scoff at it as they may need much more help and (2) don't divorce government and schools from religion which is an additional force for peer-pressure and community support against corruption.