Study of Elizabeth Anderson’s Essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”

 

The Death of God and the Birth of Morality: Elizabeth Anderson’s Scorching Rebuttal

Elizabeth Anderson’s essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” dismantles the common theological lament that without divine oversight, humanity will descend into a chaotic orgy of depravity. Many theists clutch their pearls at the thought, insisting that without a celestial referee to mete out cosmic penalties, civilization will spiral into anarchy. Thomas Hobbes famously argued that without the fear of God (or at least a brutal state to keep us in check), the world would devolve into barbaric lawlessness. Many religious folks echo the same sentiment: God is the architect of morality, and without Him, we’d be adrift in a sea of moral relativism where anything goes.

Anderson, however, is unconvinced. And she has receipts.

The Empirical Case Against Divine Morality

Over the years, I’ve encountered countless students from families who don’t pray before meals, recite scripture, or fear the wrath of an omnipotent sky judge. Yet, somehow, these irreligious households manage to produce people who value love, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. It’s almost as if morality emerges from human relationships rather than from divinely dictated rulebooks.

Moreover, if belief in God were the key to moral enlightenment, we’d expect religious people to be paragons of virtue. Instead, experience tells us otherwise—history is littered with holy men committing unholy acts. For every saint, there’s a scoundrel who weaponizes faith for personal gain. Anderson, recognizing this discrepancy, launches a blistering critique of the idea that belief in God is a prerequisite for moral decency.

The ‘Evil Tree’ of Secularism: A Christian Argument

Anderson begins with what she calls the “Common Christian Argument,” which holds that atheism, evolution, and secularism are the roots of an evil tree bearing the bitter fruits of abortion, homosexuality, drugs, rock music, and general debauchery. The moral panic here is clear: take God out of the equation, and civilization collapses. William Lane Craig, ever the dutiful Christian apologist, insists that without a divinely ordained moral code, we’d have no objective way of distinguishing good from evil. Anderson sees this argument for what it is—an emotional appeal rather than a reasoned position.

Hell as a Moral Deterrent?

Some argue that the threat of eternal damnation is the only thing keeping humanity from degenerating into lawless hedonism. Jesus himself, according to the Gospels, encouraged people to love God and fear hell in order to stay on the straight and narrow. But Anderson challenges this premise. She suggests that morality isn’t something to be coerced through fear of divine torture chambers. After all, mature adults don’t need the threat of punishment to act ethically—immorality, by its very nature, is often its own punishment, just as virtue is its own reward.

Morality: A Human Invention, Not a Divine Mandate

Anderson argues that morality is not a celestial decree but a social construct, evolving naturally to promote stability and cooperation. Every functioning society—religious or otherwise—has independently developed prohibitions against murder, theft, and deception. These moral codes existed long before Moses chiseled the Ten Commandments into stone. People, it turns out, don’t need divine instruction to figure out that killing each other is a bad idea.

But Were Pagan Societies Morally Inferior?

Of course, not everyone agrees with Anderson’s take. Elaine Pagels, for instance, points out that in the ancient world, pagans were known to abandon unwanted infants to die in the streets—an atrocity that Christians condemned. If we accept this historical tidbit, it complicates Anderson’s argument. Perhaps religious morality has provided unique moral advancements. But even so, that doesn’t mean belief in God is necessary for morality today.

The Big Twist: Religion Isn’t Just Unnecessary for Morality—It’s Often an Obstacle

Anderson’s essay takes a sharp turn when she argues that religion isn’t just an optional framework for morality—it’s often a hindrance. Not only does atheism not lead to moral rot, but theism, particularly in its more fundamentalist forms, frequently produces moral atrocities. The God of the Bible, she points out, is capricious, cruel, and unrestrained by human moral intuitions. If morality is whatever God decrees, then anything—genocide, slavery, child sacrifice—can be justified as divinely ordained.

Anderson gleefully catalogs the Bible’s greatest moral abominations: wars, plagues, ethnic cleansings, infanticide, slavery, and stonings—all endorsed by the divine. The Old Testament, she argues, reads less like a guide to righteousness and more like a blood-soaked manifesto for tribal supremacy.

The New Testament doesn’t escape her ire, either. Jesus’ “family values” leave much to be desired, and Anderson finds the idea of vicarious atonement—Jesus dying for humanity’s sins—particularly repugnant. In her view, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement contradicts the very idea of personal responsibility. If God is all-powerful, why does He need to kill His own son to offer forgiveness? Shouldn’t an omnipotent being be capable of forgiving people without engaging in cosmic blood sacrifice?

Slavery: A Biblical Blind Spot

Anderson also takes aim at the Bible’s endorsement of slavery. If the Bible were truly the ultimate moral guide, wouldn’t it have offered an unambiguous denunciation of human bondage? Instead, scripture treats slavery as an ordinary, even divinely sanctioned, institution. If biblical morality is timeless, why does it reflect the ethical blind spots of its era?

The Rorschach Bible: Faith as a Projection of Our Moral Biases

In one of her most incisive observations, Anderson compares the Bible to a Rorschach test: people emphasize the passages that align with their existing moral inclinations while ignoring the rest. Whether one fixates on “love thy neighbor” or the mass extermination of Canaanites depends more on personal character than divine revelation.

She also critiques the way people worship power rather than goodness. Quoting Hobbes, she suggests that religious reverence often stems from awe at raw power rather than admiration for moral virtue. This, she argues, explains why believers have historically tolerated and even celebrated the authoritarian and often tyrannical nature of their deities.

The Fragile Authority of Religious Belief

Anderson skewers the self-assured claims of religious certainty, mocking the way different faiths confidently declare themselves the one true religion while dismissing all others as absurd. She sees little distinction between the great world religions and the cults of L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, or Sun Myung Moon. All rely on unverifiable revelations, dubious miracles, and ancient testimonies passed down through unreliable chains of transmission.

Her conclusion? These so-called divine truths, so often contradictory and morally suspect, deserve no privileged position in our ethical deliberations.

So Where Does Moral Authority Come From?

If God isn’t the source of morality, what is? Anderson argues that moral authority comes not from divine fiat but from us—from human beings negotiating ethical principles based on mutual accountability. Morality isn’t about obeying decrees from on high; it’s about navigating the complexities of human coexistence through reason, empathy, and shared experience.

Anderson’s argument is as compelling as it is unsettling. I wish I had her unshakable confidence in atheism. While I still wrestle with the vestigial fear of eternal damnation (an unfortunate byproduct of early indoctrination), I can’t deny the force of her reasoning. If nothing else, “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” is one of the sharpest, most relentless critiques of theism I’ve ever read.