The Moral Content of Human Action

Exhibit A: The Mind of a Highly Intelligent Police-Intellectual
Exhibit B: The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

Note that the latter is from the middle of the previous century, while the former is an interview from 1980. Heinlein's odious "mathematical morality" from Starship Troopers is alive and well, it seems.

The question that has been vexing me for a while is whether the social fiction [Mario's - excellent - turn of phrase] of God could be necessary to preserve the (possibly also ficticious) idea of human action having moral content (more or less wed to the point of identity to that of free will)?

This is a critical question because without the acceptance of free will the dehumanization of man is so complete that we can't even speak of dehumanization. There is nothing left that sets humans apart, all mankind is only biological automata.

As concerns society, this view would (in my opinion) quasi-automatically lead to technocracy as preferred by the interviewee from the first link. This is merely an artifact of the psyche; logically it doesn't follow: If there's no free will, there's no moral content to human action and arrangement, but there's also no preferable course of actions on part of any government.

Belief in the complete transparency and hence determination of human action and its motives does not lead, logically, to a morality of control but to complete denial of morality as such. In such a world, post-modernist nihilism is simply correct in a factual sense.

So, in the end, my question may be: Does "moral correctness" require fudging the facts? More ironically, do we need a "higher authority" to sustain belief in free will?