With the widespread adoption of evolutionary theory and its eventual triumph in the university, a new 'liberality' was introduced that allowed mere storytelling to proliferate in academia. No longer did one need hard research to get ahead; all one needed was a good story. Doestoevsky might have been thinking of Charles Darwin when he said; if there were no god all was permitted.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Doestoevsky held that if there were no god all was permitted.' [1.]
- If there is no god then all is not only permitted, but many things are necessary. One of the inventions necessary when men reject the creator is a belief in evolution. People are then permitted to pronounce the most absurd claims of impossible things happening without a word of criticism. If one is an evolutionist all is permitted; even the ludicrous idea (story) that man was once a fish. (The recent book 'Your inner fish' might just as well have been titled 'Your inner algae'.)
i.e. Not only is adultery (porn, abortion, etc.) permitted, but Darwinian fairy stories are permitted as well. Writers are allowed to make absurd claims and receive nothing but accolades for them; e.g. life 'emerged' from non-life (in utter contradiction to what we know about biology).
Once God goes everything goes; not only in the moral realm but in the intellectual realm at all. The examples of this seem to be everywhere; e.g. the various multiverse models; art is whatever you say it is; words don't mean anything; there is no truth; there is no reality; pornography is a force for good; politicians should be able to do whatever they like; etc.
If men reject god they must take on all of God's roles in the universe; e.g. it's not only permitted for men to play god, they must play god. It's not only permitted to invent creation myths, men Must create origin myths. (In the minds of many it's not permitted to critique these new necessary myths.)
If there is no God there is no reality; all we have are billions of different views of what it might or might not be. Who is to say if there is or isn't reality, or what it is. If there is no creator God all cosmological views are permitted. Who is to say whether the pantheist or the polytheist, the materialist or the vitalist is correct? Who is to say we can ever know. All is permitted; not only in pornography, not only in sexual behavior, but in the intellectual and political realm as well. To reject God is to reject any final judge or arbiter; in banal language, it's to lose the referee in the game of life.
Darwin was on of the earliest (not the first by any stretch) to realize that now that Christianity was in decline any idea was permitted, and he made a career out of the implications of this insight. He convinced people that now that Genesis had been thrown out he had the best available substitute. He was permitted to make up wild stories and have them taken seriously.
- M. Johnson
Notes;
1. To be as Gods - R.J. Rushdoony p. 114
2. If man is god then who is there to limit his desires? With billions of people there is literally no end to desires. If there is no god who is to say whose desires are less than another's desires? Who is left to say one desire is better than another?
3. People like Dawkins want to restrict the 'permitted' to the sexual (and perhaps social) realm; but this approach reminds me of the king who stood on the beach in the face of an incoming (flooding) tide, raised his hand and said; ''thus far and no further." (Cosmic evolution for him takes the place of god; and is the 'standard' for what is or is not permitted.) He and his peers will find permission a strong tide to turn back.
4. When I use the term God I'm referring to the Triune God of the Bible.
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