Was Dostoevsky right when he wrote, "Without God, all is permitted"?

Question

Was Dostoevsky right when he wrote, "Without God, all is permitted"?

Answer 1

No.  All social mammals are born with instincts for empathy and altruism.  These two instincts form the basis, in humanity, of the social contract.

Answer 2

All is permitted to a point.  That point being the end of this life.  Then, one must do as God commands, no matter what.

Answer 3

Dunno.  Let's see how Japan's crime rate with a 70% atheist population compares to ours with a 7% or so.....

Nope looks like he was wrong.

I don't need to check.  a) I've been there and b) I'm using data from valid statistical surveys.  Lack of belief in gods is atheism, and applies to about 70%  of Japanese people.  How misty eyed they get about nature and harmony is immaterial - they do not have a god, let alone the Bible variant, and yet remain an exceptionally moral nation.

QED.....

Answer 4

All Right!!!

IT'S ON.

Answer 5

No. For the survival of civilization, mankind must establish laws and regulations to maintain order, fairness and justice. People learned how to live together and be morally civil to each other long before Dostoevsky's god came along.

Answer 6

Isn't that the real reason people deny God?

Having a Supreme Being to be accountable to is rather uncomfortable to men who know the wickedness of their own heart.

Answer 7

I'm loving Fireball's accusation of 'satan!"

Irony overload...

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/f...

Dostoyevsky never said it, for one thing.

Answer 8

Absolutely not. Without any gods, we still have morality and millenia of evolution guiding us.

Answer 9

"Many people in west want it both ways kill God but keep the Christian morality. If you kill God all those things must be killed too."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Hitler brought back crucifixion.

Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot killed people by the millions.

So - yeah - there are no limits.

Best regards.

David M: Check with any of you Japanese friends: Japanese are very spiritual people and all public schools teach morals classes.

Answer 10

Dostoevsky, had he lived during the time of the gulags, would have changed his mind.  Probably, he would have been the first to taste proletarian freedom under the godless state his homeland Russia had become since the ascent to power of communism.

Answer 11

Paradoxically, the corallary is true.

Answer 12

Without a Higher Authority, there is no law-giver to tell us what is right or wrong, so people are free to do as they please if there is no God.

Answer 13

yes....that guy was helping Satan with those comments....SIN IS REAL AND IT WILL KILL US ALL!!

Answer 14

No.  There are millions of people all over the globe who worship no god but still live their lives by moral codes of conduct that does not permit all things.

Answer 15

He was right in expressing his apparent dysfunction, which prevented him from distinguishing right or wrong unless he thinks a god tells him the rules.