I have heard this line, If there is no God everything is permitted, quoted and quoted over the years.
But I had no idea it originated with the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Do not miss the story I linked right above about the night that changed Dostoyevsky’s life forever.
This entire view condenses down to the puzzle of: How can we get ethics out of determinism?
I honestly have no idea myself. For one does not follow the other. How does one even define good and evil from determinism?
Ok, apparently I simply forgot it was Dostoyevsky.
One cannot remember everything the read. But that’s kind of what this blog is about, after all.
Let’s keep reading!
The classical Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky considered the consequences of moral relativism in his book The Brothers Karamazov. He wrote, “If there is no God, everything is permissible.”
-Dr. James Dobson, Bringing Up Girls