"If there is no God, everything is permitted" in Woody Allen's movies

I think Allen's films (Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point) provide a forceful rebuttal to sanguine claims that are made on behalf of "Ethics Without God." It seems to me that, if we take Allen's message seriously, atheism, even if it is true (and Allen thinks it is true), atheism is ethically damaging in a significant range of cases, in that people can get involved in "everything is permitted" reasoning and never be held accountable by anyone, including themselves. 

It isn't that he thinks that ethics can come only from God. It is just that on an atheistic view it is perfectly possible for them to "get away with murder" and avoid punishment, even the internally imposed punishment of guilt feelings, which, it seems, can be overcome.

Particularly interesting is the difference between the outcome of Allen's movies and Crime and Punishment, which can only be explained in terms of the difference between Allen's atheism and Dostoyevsky's Russian Orthodox Christianity.

There is an ugly side to all of this, in that Allen has been accused of his own crimes and misdemeanors. Not murder, of course, but being a pedophile. 

Of course, Allen has not been proven guilty, but then, neither were his protagonists in the two movies. Did he fall into "everything is permitted" reasoning in his own life? 

Surely, a belief in ultimate moral accountability is hardly the only motive for being moral. More often than we realize, it does deter the evil in the hearts of men (and women). 

Papalinton likes this quote: "If religion cannot restrain evil. it cannot claim effective power for good." M Cohen, American professor of Philosophy and Law.

But I think that in many many, many instances, it does restrain evil. Of course, when it does restrain evil, it doesn't make it onto the evening news.

See also this discussion. .

A problem Bible passage

 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.   (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

At the risk of giving cannon fodder to resident gnus,  let me ask, how do we interpret this? 

An Essay on Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors

Here. 

Should it be illegal to quote this passage, on grounds that it's hate speech?

Roman s 1

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Michael Murray on heavenly silence

Here. 

Why evolution doesn't select for ethics

Here. 

Religious motives for being moral

Often people assume that the only religious motives for being moral are those of getting to heaven and avoiding hell. These are often thought to be mercenary motives. But this is not the only kind of religious motivation for being moral. You might want to be moral  because it fulfills the purpose for which God created you.