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.
