Man and Arbiter

Man and Arbiter
| Thomas M. Doran | CWR

Human beings are notoriously fallible. Making even the wisest among us an arbiter of moral questions is risky business.

An arbiter, derived from the
Latin for judge, is defined as “one chosen to judge or decide a
disputed issue”; also, “one who has the power to judge at will”.

Many insist that an arbiter for
morality and behavior is irrelevant today, that enlightened societies
have progressed beyond judging morality and behavior, unless behavior
breaks a law. Nonetheless, it is evident that human beings, though
many will not admit it, need an arbiter. The fundamental question is
who or what will this arbiter be?

Belief systems are at the heart of this
question. Scientific materialists deny a Deity and anything
transcendent, including objective Truth. Many believe in a
“disengaged Supreme Being, or force”, including Deists, New
Agers, and Buddhists; Star Wars is a modern depiction of such a
“force”. There are those who believe in an “engaged Supreme
Being”, including many traditional Jews and Muslims. Most
Christians believe in a “Trinitarian Supreme Being in solidarity
with man, even as man.”

Pantheists and dualists accept numerous
deities, some opposing others. Syncretists adopt bits and pieces of
more than one of these belief systems. Agnostics profess to be
ambivalent on the matter of a Supreme Being, with most eventually
drifting into the camp of the scientific materialists or the
syncretists.

Many scientific materialists who are
critical of “Deity as arbiter” fail to acknowledge, or recognize,
that they themselves have need of an arbiter. To those who assert
that they are post-morality, offer a view contrary to the avant-garde
positions on homosexual activity and reproductive “rights” and
see what happens.

Consider. Whether one makes this choice
explicitly or implicitly, all rely on an arbiter for essential
questions of justice, truth and falsehood, good and evil.

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