Episode 253 - If God Doesn't Exist

In 1882, Nietzsche stated in his book The Gay Science that “God is dead”. He wasn’t celebrating this fact; in fact, he was quite concerned about it. Dostoevsky, the author of some of the greatest books of all time, was concerned as well. In 1879, he published The Brothers Karamazov, and in it, one of his characters said “If God doesn’t exist then everything is permissible”. These statements were made about 3 years about, which is fascinating. Here we have two of the greatest philosophers of all time – one exclaiming almost reluctantly that “God is dead”, the other saying that “If God doesn’t exist then everything goes”. The question, really, becomes: do we need God for morality?

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Episode Transcript

Dostoevsky’s Chilling Claim

Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the greatest thinkers of all time (in my opinion, anyway). He touches on the darker aspects of human psychology, along with the lighter sides. He was a Christian, to some people’s surprise because he is usually associated with existentialism. In the book that he battles this idea between, let’s say, religious faith and reason, Russia at this point in history was veering towards socialism.

We all know how that turned out. If you haven’t investigated this very dark part of human history, essentially the Soviet Union adopted socialism as an ideology which resulted in a complete failure. It was an experiment, to say the least, and one which should make everyone cautious about this ideology.

I won’t delve too deep into why socialism at a grand scale simply doesn’t work in this episode (though perhaps I will in a future episode), but it is worth pointing out that Dostoevsky predicted that it wouldn’t work out so well.

Part of the reason was that the move towards socialism coincided with a move away from religious faith. Something else that played into this was the popularization and findings of the scientific method. Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, and the world was reacting to the newly-found theory that we now have an explanation for our creation other than God.