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[antony]

I don't know how to express this without appearing arrogant but... it appears you have missed dostoevsky's major point. What he wishes to show is that just because humans no longer have a god as such, morals still exist, not on an objective, golden, 'god says this' way, but on an individual basis. The very fact that one regards murder as wrong regardless of what the aw or god says is proof of this. I don't know if you have read crime and punishment but dostoevsky makes this point quite clear.<br>On a theological level, you may be right that these inherent morals come from god, but equally, they could come from nature - we just cannot know, so we let our faith guide us, yet we must always remember that we cannot know.

[Charlie]

Emile Durkheim in his discussions of Religion in Sociology argues this point. He claims that "rules" whether they be religious or secular, are all created by society and for society. Society can easily substitute social constraints for religious ones. In his final analysis, Durkheim argues that society is the father of us all... without society's ideas of understanding and definition we can not have self identity or understanding of anything outside of ourselves. Religion is a social invention to foster discipline, cohesion, vitality and a public euphoria. (This is not to argue against faith... that is personal.)<br> So in the context of this book, (and Dostoevsky's other minor work) crime is wrong because it is counter productive. It is not good for societal discipline, cohesion, vitality or euphoria... (however, punishing crime is)

[Paul]

As a Christian one of the fascinating aspects of the book for me was Dostoevsky's tremendous defence of Christian theism in the face of the growing atheism of his day. Without God/immortality/faith, etc, argues Dostoevsky, then we cannot speak in terms of good and evil and consequently all crime is not only permissible but perfectly reasonable. All morality, virtue, and love becomes meaningless. The fact that very few people take atheism to its logical conclusion is very telling for it shows that deep within the human heart there remains a vestige of awareness that we are made in the image of God and accountable to Him. <br>Dostoevsky's own faith was formed out of a long struggle of unbelief and doubt. I'm sure one of his great hopes for his readers is that once they had finished his book they would quickly pick up another book - the Bible - and discover the God, in the person of Jesus Christ, he so ably defends and commends.