Without God, All Things Are Permissible
A widely held criticism of atheism is that without God, all things are permissible.
Historically, this view is typically attributed to the Russian novelist Dostoevsky; or, at least, to his character Ivan Karamozov in the book, The Brothers Karamozov, either directly, or through an attribution that was made by John Paul Sartre.
I am not actually concerned with the origins of this phrase. Regardless of where it came from, it is widely asserted today, and offered as a reason to hold atheists in moral contempt.
Many people assert that this justifies the belief that atheists are not to be trusted. They claim things like, “Atheists have no morals, so they are capable of just about anything. Unlike a good Christian, who knows not to murder or steal, atheists know none of these things, because the prohibition on murdering and stealing comes from God, and atheists deny the existence of God. We have every reason to fear that the atheist will murder or steal the instant it becomes useful for him to do so. Even if we must tolerate them as our neighbors, we cannot tolerate them in a position of trust and authority, only where we can watch and control their actions.”
That is the argument.
It is also simple, plain, unvarnished bigotry.
Atheism Implies No Moral Code
This much is true: Atheism implies no moral code.
Atheism is the belief that no god(s) exist. The proposition, “No god(s) exist,” does not imply any moral conclusion. For some action such as murder, “No god(s) exist” tells us nothing about the rightness or wrongness of murder. It simply does not have any moral implications one way or the other.
This much is also true: Heliocentrism implies no moral code.
Heliocentrism is the belief that the sun is near the center of the solar system, and all planets orbit around the sun. The belief that the sun is at the center of the solar system does not imply any moral conclusion. For some action such as murder, “The sun is near the center of the solar system” tells us nothing about the rightness or wrongness of murder. It simply does not have any moral implications one way or the other.
Yet, in the case of heliocentrism, we can easily see the absurdity if someone were to claim, “Since heliocentrism implies no moral code, then heliocentrists have no morals and are capable of just about anything. They are likely to murder or steal the instant it becomes useful for them to do so because nothing in heliocentrism tells them that murder and theft are wrong.”
Heliocentrism implies no moral code, but this does not imply that heliocentrists lack morality.
Atheism implies no moral code, but this does not imply that atheists lack morality.
Inconsistency
Not only is the argument against atheists fallacious, it is also contradicts itself. The person using this argument begins by claiming that atheism implies no moral code. He then assigns the moral code “all things are permissible” to atheists, asserting that atheism implies this moral code precisely because atheism implies no moral code.
It’s like saying that a square is round precisely because it has four corners.
The person who makes the claim, “Without God, all things are permissible,” is effectively deriving this from an attempt to offer a reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity) of the atheist position.
(1) If there are no god(s), then all things are permissible. (2) It is absurd to believe that all things are permissible. ****************** Therefore, it is absurd to believe that there are no god(s).The problem with this argument is that the first premise is false. It is not the case that “There are no god(s)” implies “All things are permissible”, because “There are no god(s)” implies no moral code, and “All things are permissible” is a moral code.
The argument fails.
Euthyphro
If atheism implies no moral code, then where does the atheist find morality? How does an atheist determine right from wrong?
We can start to see an answer if we look once again at the heliocentrists. If heliocentrism implies no moral code, where do heliocentrists get their morals? How is it that a heliocentrist can be moral, if heliocentrism does not tell them the difference between right and wrong?
The answer is that heliocentrists look at something other than heliocentrism as a source of morality. Heliocentrism is not about right and wrong, it is about the orbit of the planets. You do not study right and wrong by looking at the orbits of the planets, you study right and wrong by looking elsewhere.
The same answer applies to atheists. They go to a different source for their morality. Atheism is not about right and wrong, it is about the existence (or non-existence) of god(s). You do not study right and wrong by looking at the existence of gods, you study right and wrong by looking elsewhere.
Plato proved that even theists, those who believe that a god or gods exist, need to look elsewhere for their moral code. In the book Euthyphro, Plato’s character Socrates (based on a real person) discussed the nature of good and evil with an Athenian citizen named Euthyphro.
Euthyphro had told Socrates that what is good is what is loved by the gods. Socrates then asked (and I am offering an interpretation here), “Is it loved by the gods because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by the gods?”
If it is good because it is loved by the gods, then we have to ask why the gods love this and not some other thing. Why is it that the gods do not love the torture of children? If goodness is what the gods love, there can be no reason other than the fact that the gods (by luck, perhaps) happen not to love this particular thing. Either the gods love it, or they do not; that is all that matters. If they love the torture of children, then we would be obligated to torture children — to please the gods.
If the gods hate the torture of children because they know it is wrong, and they hate that which is wrong, then the study of right and wrong is not the study of what the gods like and hate. It is the study of whatever it is about torturing children that causes the gods to hate it. In other words, right and wrong does not depend on what the gods like. Rather, what the gods like depends on what is right and wrong. We determine right and wrong - we determine what the gods should like and dislike — by looking elsewhere.
Some people might want to claim that this is an atheist argument - an argument against the existence of God. It would be absurd to think that “God loves that which is good” implies that God does not exist. It cannot be the case that God loves that which is good unless there is a God. Therefore, it cannot be the case that “God loves that which is good” — the interpretation that God does not put goodness in such things as a parent’s love for a child, but finds it there — is an atheistic position. It requires that a God exists.
Yet, an atheist can also believe that goodness can be found in such things as a parent’s love for a child without believing that God exists. “God loves that which is good” is not an atheistic position, but it is compatible with the atheist position that, “If there was such a thing as a perfectly good God, he would have to approve of a parent’s love of a child, because it is good. A god who cannot see the goodness in a parent’s love for a child cannot be good.”
So, it makes more sense to believe that the difference between what is obligatory, permissible, and prohibited is independent of God, then it does to believe that without God all things are permissible. “There is no God” does not have any implications for moral value. However, this does not rule out the possibility that there are other things, besides God, that actually do have implications for moral value.
The Argument from Evil
In fact, there are some atheists who ground their atheism on the assumption that some things are not permissible.
They see things happening in the world, such as terrorist attacks in the name of God, or tsunamis, or hurricanes, that any being that had the power to prevent them would not permit. A human, having the power to prevent a devastating tsunami with the snap of his finger, would do so, they claim. Yet, these things happen. This must mean that every being that actually exists either (a) does not know that these things are happening, (b) lacks the power to prevent them from happening, or (c) does not care whether they happen.
Either way, a being that knows about these events, has the power to prevent them, and cares to prevent the destruction they cause does not exist.
This argument is quite at odds with the claim, “Without God, all things are permissible.” This is an argument that requires the assumption, that “Some things are not permissible; any entity that knows about them and has the power to prevent them and does not do so cannot be good.”
Back to the Reductio
There are those who believe that God made morality. Atheists do not believe in God, so they draw the conclusion that atheists must doubt the existence of morality. This is as nonsensical as saying that God made trees. Atheists do not believe in God, so it follows that they do not believe in trees.
Claiming that atheists have no other option but to say that morality (or trees) does not exist is absurd. The atheist could say, “Trees exist — I certainly do not doubt that. I just doubt that God had anything to do with their existence.” Similarly, he can say, “Morality exists — I certainly do not doubt that. I just doubt that God had anything to do with its existence, either.”
Some atheists might not say this. Some might actually say that, if there is no God, then there is no morality. Some might even agree that all things are permissible. However, there is still the option for some to say that morality (like trees) exists, but it has nothing to do with God. The claim that God does not exist is consistent with all of these views, and implies none of them.
Why Believe?
At this point, it becomes reasonable to ask why people believe something about atheists that is so clearly and easily proved to be false.
For some, it is probably the case that they never thought about the issue. However, even here, a person’s decision to accept the condemnation of another human being without question — to violate the moral principle of assuming innocence unless guilt is proven — shows that these people still fall short of the paradigm of moral virtue.
A person who is told that another must be condemned, hated, denigrated, and denied respect has a moral equal, who does not ask whether that advice is well founded or ill founded, is himself morally accountable. If we find that he has accepted this ill-founded advice without question, we have reason to ask, “Where is your sense of decency? Where is your sense of fairness? Can somebody like you truly be thought of as moral?”
More importantly, however, are those who do not just passively accept this view, but who actively promote it, are worthy of greater moral condemnation. They, certainly, have had time to think about what they were saying and see the flaws. However, they clearly do not care to see those flaws. They preach this error and demand that their followers accept it, without question.
These are people who clearly are not persuaded by the power of reason to accept this conclusion. Rather, they are persuaded by their hate and bigotry to see unsound reasons that support their hate as sound. They have been taught to hate a group of people, they want to give their hate a veneer of legitimacy, and they find their excuse - their rationalization — in the claim that “Without God, all things are permissible.”
These people claim that their religion leads them towards greater virtue. They claim, in fact, that all others must find religion in order to have greater virtue. Yet, this ‘greater virtue’ they are supposed to possess does not give them the power to see the immorality underlying their hate or the rationalizations and excuses they use to denigrate their neighbors.
If, indeed, their religion was a source of virtue, they could show this by demonstrating that their religion inspires them to condemn the unreasoned hatred and ill-founded contempt for others that can be found in the doctrine of “Without God, all things are permissible.”
I obtained useful feedback on an earlier draft of this article that I posted on the Internet Infidels discussion board.