The Fundamental Amorality of Authoritarianism

There's nothing at all moral about authoritarianism. I've been thinking about this a lot.  Immanuel Kant said that someone who does something that has a good outcome for selfish reasons is still amoral. He gives the example of a shopkeeper who offers fair deals, but only because he thinks people will be more likely to by from him. ("The Foundation of the Metaphysic of Morals").

If that's true, then if people only do as they're told because they're afraid of punishment or wanting for reward, they're not actually being moral, regardless of the outcome.

Not only that, but how do people in authority know what's good?  Philosophers have been arguing about that since the days of the Ancient Greeks (and that's just in the West).   If you say you have some holy book or scripture that you claim comes from a perfectly good God, how do you know it does? How do you know God is good unless you know right from wrong first? And, if you assume he's (or she's or it's) good, you're guilty of a circular argument, which is a logical fallacy. IOW, you're saying God is good and good is God. That is, saying that your so-called "God" is good and that good is defined as being whatever your "God" says it is is totally unhelpful in getting at what's good. How do you know this proposed God isn't in fact a false god? How do you know he's not a demon or even the Devil himself (assuming such beings exist)? So, no help there.

Kant also said that we have to know that good first and then understand God through our knowledge of the good, not the other way around. Now, you atheists are safe here, and agnostics probably are too, but this is definitely food for thought for you theists. There's simply no other way to try to get at the good. So, we cannot rely on scripture to teach us what's good. (Also "Foundation of the Metaphysic of Morals".)

So, where does that leave us? Simply at the point where no religion, no government, no strict father or mother, no one can tell any of us what it means to be good.  Authoritarianism has zero to do with morality.

Only in a society in which people can figure out for themselves what they think it means to be good and good truly flourish. To force some professed good on others serves nothing. It's not just that none of us knows what's good. It's also that, even if we did know, forcing good on others wouldn't actually make them moral, because they wouldn't be doing good because they truly believe it's right.

So, that also means that a wrathful God is out of the question. If God is truly good, She (I've decided to be radical today) would not punish anyone for being immoral or reward anyone for being good, because that would rob us of our ability to be moral and a good God would want us to be moral. She'd instead help them to see what's good and encourage them to sincerely care enough about others to be good.

Empathy, compassion, and caring about others is our only surety.  Anyone who fails in that regard has lost their way.