Who would suspect that the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism himself, the Dalai Lama, would be in favor of secular ethics, but he appears to get it like most of us atheists do. This is probably why I'm much more sympathetic to Buddhism than most other religions. He's absolutely right: secular ethics is foundational for having a thriving world community where multicultural societies exist.
For all its benefits in offering moral guidance and meaning in life, religion is no longer adequate as a basis for ethics. Many people no longer follow any religion. In addition, in today’s secular and multicultural societies, any religion-based answer to the problem of our neglect of inner values could not be universal, and so would be inadequate. We need an approach to ethics that can be equally acceptable to those with religious faith and those without. We need a secular ethics.
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