Helping one’s fellow, doing good things, and avoiding crime are important religious instructions designed to improve the world. In different religious traditions, conduct following covenants is encouraged by the promise of reward, and derogation from them is punished, like heaven and hell in the Christian tradition. Society also has morality as a unique form of public understanding of good and evil, including historically developed concepts of norms, values, and ideals. A person acting only from the motives of divine reward or punishment cannot be considered moral. Religion and morality have regulatory and educational functions in society and are rather considered guides or advice. They push a person to learn to evaluate right and wrong, fair and not fair. If an individual is motivated by fear or desire for reward and not by their judgment, religion and morality have failed their educational task.
A thought experiment aimed at assessing the morality of human actions motivated by divine punishment or reward raises the question of morality and religion correlation. They have long defined human behavior; simultaneously, they interacted and influenced each other. The experiment tests whether a person considers morality as a derivative of religion or as an independent phenomenon. The argument above represents them as separate, not derivatives, but interconnected. The experiment also considers the motivation of the actions of the individual. Help is undoubtedly a virtue, but the incentives that spurred them are also crucial in personal spiritual development. Reliance on punishment and reward implies insincerity of motives and therefore is not truly moral. Thus, religion and morality should teach a person to judge the correctness of specific actions and not act as means of influence.