Faith and slavery of the mind

The theistic position on moral really is a very unsatisfying and in fact a very disturbing one. The essence of it being that man can’t provide meaning for himself and is locked in a master slave depenency. He has to rely on an external agent to give him meaning and can’t decide for himself what is right and what is wrong. What’s more, reason and free will become useless placebos. No, in moral theology the moral rules consist of a god given set of statements not to be questioned. Severe punishment awaits him who dares to question. That basically is a master slave dependance. Is it healthy to engage in such a dependance? For deciding on that one could search for an indenpendant judgement.

But alas, in the theistic view the divine master controlls all and is carefully placed beyond the realm of possible investigation. There’s no second opinion. There’s no possibility to independently check the allegedly god given moral. If that were possible, we wouldn’t need an external agent to dictate us moral. In other words, the theist is living a parasitic zombielike state. Theists tell each other this is meaningful. Of course this is exactly the bogus you’d expect to find to emerge in man-made cultures in need for a system of some form of mind control. And, what concidence, virtually every tribe on the planet has claimed his own master god that’s in control of things like the beginning of the world. In fact, much of the global history so far has been dominated by cultural clashes of these religious claims. To me, this really is sickening and unhealthy practice that has nothing to do with leading meaningful lives.

This is why a human based moral is so much more satisfying than an externally dictated one. In a human based moral love of your fellow human being for instance, isn’t dictated by an external agent but is a decision made by man himself. The real thing, not the surrogate in my opinion. The same dogmatic shield that prohibits independant investigation of allegedly divine moral statements also prohibits an independant comparison of religions from within religion. This is the nature of institutionalized religion. A strong indication for a person’s religious beliefs usually is the culture in which that person is born. Religion is a culture thing. Yet, every religion strongly denies the human origin of its moral values.

Also the theistic stance is very unsatisfying from an intellectual perspective. Because it’s premisses are postulated and not open to investigation, they are dogmas. Although any sane human being should shrudder on the thought of what dogmas have brought about in this world, in the theistic tradition dogmas are considered to be OK. In fact the invention of many religious dogmas can be traced historically. The ideas of redemption by the cross and the holy trinity date from considerably after christ’s death. These were issues decided on by men already in an institutionalized religious environment long after the events they interpretated allegedly took place. Opponents of clerical dogma were also present at the time but their fate in many cases was sealed not long after these dogma gatherings. In the prelude of such gatherings the expected outcome was not clear from intrinsic facts about the events. The only good indication for the expected outcome was the political strength of defenders and opponents. This is strong indication that there is no real divine basis to these dogmas but these are man made statements.

Every claim on the validity of moral predicates should be substantiated by it’s proponents on the basis of reasoning alone. To claim this validity on divine origin alone is an unworthy subjugation to slavery of the mind.

The Benchmarking Of Moral

For centuries philosophers have tried to answer the question of the
nature of morality. Conclusive answers are hard to get by. Still many theist claim a divine origin of moral.

The problem with a god given moral

Moral under the guidance of a god is a logically problematic idea. There’s the problem of dicriminating between evil and good divine intentions. When people are
subjected to a god given moral, they’re not able to validate this
god-moral because people can only benchmark it with there own moral,
which is god given. So the answer would be begging the question. In other words, we have no independent means to answer the
question whether the god provided moral is a good moral or an evil one. Think of the implications of this. This could mean
that when we’re dealing with an evil god who just presents his moral as
a good moral, we won’t know the difference. You might object that it’s
plain to see that god’s moral as presented in the bible is a good
moral, but that only is a valid argument when it’s an entirely human
judgement. In that case we ‘ve reached the conclusion that man can
reach moral conclusions on his own which in turn declines the need for
an absolute god-given moral altogether.

Still, people do assert strong moral convictions. Some facts on morality.

- Morality in general shows both geographic and cultural depedencies.
-
Morality is dynamic in nature. History clearly shows that over time
moral convictions can change significantly even within the same culture
and geographic location.
- Some moral concepts seem to be shared by nearly all humans over all time.
-
Some animals seem to live by some moral rules. Moreover, behaviour of
some animals seems to parallel some basic moral concepts of man. For
instance, primates will punish certain deeds of a group member by
exclusion of the member from the group.

A conclusion from these facts is that moral isn’t absolute and
static in essence at all, it’s (partly at least) dynamic and relative. Furthermore a
biological and/or environmental factor seems present. Moral convictions seem to stem from
a mix of personal, cultural and intrinsic (biological) goals. So,
morality is based on goals we aim at of which some are shared by many
(some may be ‘hard-wired’ in our phenotype), others are
very personal indeed. Then the question is not if moral is relative, but just how relative. In other words, is there a common human basis of moral predicates, constant over all time and all cultures?

On evolution and human behaviour

In a discussion I had with a theist, my opponent put forward that proponents of evolution who claim that religion is a byproduct of evolution and at the same time attack religion as a corrosive and destructive phenomenon, shoot themselves in the foot. For how can theism have any evolutionary advantages if it is destructive to society?

To answer this question first let’s have a look at some other human behaviour that we probably agree on to be very corrosive indeed: human warfare. This clearly is a form of behaviour most individuals would disprove of. Yet war is written all over human history. It can be traced back to early history and tribal societies and even further. How then is it possible to have warfare?

The answer is that from an evolutionary perspective warfare – although it certainly can have strong negative impact on individuals – in some very basic ways sustains the propagation of the human genome, for instance by giving acces, by brute force that is, to food sources in times of scarcity. An evolutionary – or in a broader sense any naturalistic explanation – in no way entails a moral condonement.

So there’s is a big difference between the evolutionary perspective and the perspective from the well being of individuals. In your question you seemingly unnoticebly (and not deliberately, i’m sure) change your perspective from the human genome to individual needs.

There is no contradiction in the fact that religion may have evolved as a human trait while at the same time being very destructive on the level of the individual. This very much is part of a broader reason versus nature argument often put forward. But not all that nature brings us is good for individuals. As organized individuals we should take a stand against any destructive behaviour that nature has bestowed upon us. Any religion that claims room for the free will of man contradicts itself when it states that an evolutionary origin of behaviour indicates advantages for individuals and extends that even to moral justification. In short, like some traits of human behaviour malaria has evolved, I suggest we act as responsible grown ups equipped with free will and reason and fight corrosive social elements where we encounter it.