God said so. Now what?

I listened to a Triggernometry podcast episode recently featuring Andrew Wilson, a right wing debater who argued against democracy and in favor of a kind of soft Christian theocracy—essentially where Christian doctrine guides the political role of the government. His justifications ranged from scripture and the supposed flourishing of Christian societies above others to, in his own words, the fact that he simply “feels like it.”

That last phrase is worth sitting with. Feels like it. Because it reveals the core problem—not just with Wilson’s worldview, but with a whole category of lawmaking that has shaped societies throughout history. When the justification for a law is belief, instinct, or divine authority, there’s nowhere to go. You can’t argue with it. You can’t test it. You can’t persuade someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

And that, more than anything, is what makes it dangerous.

The Problem With "God Said So"

Wilson made one point worth taking seriously: rights only exist insofar as they can be defended by force. And to a large extent, it’s true. If an entity opposed to those rights held greater power, it could eliminate them. He’s not wrong about the mechanics.

But he draws the wrong conclusion. His response is essentially: since force determines outcomes anyway, let the right people hold the force. Specifically, Christians. More specifically, people like him.

Democracy

Wilson argues that democracy is inherently flawed because it enables tyranny by the majority—mob rule that can trample minority groups. Again, there's something to that. Democracy is messy and imperfect.

But democracy also allows ideas to compete, be challenged, evaluated, and rejected. You have to persuade people to win. You have to make strong arguments that hold up. It allows societies to evolve, and bad policies to be reversed through persuasion rather than force. Ideas that were unthinkable in the 1950s are accepted today—not because a ruler decreed it, but because minds changed over time. It’s the whole point.

The alternative is trusting a benevolent dictator to have the best interests of not just the populace in mind, but of individuals. History suggests that's a risky bet.

In Wilson’s vision, individual rights appear to be a secondary concern when policies align with his interpretation of Christian doctrine. He doesn’t feel compelled to rationalize why two men shouldn’t be allowed to marry, for example, scripture settles it. But in a pluralistic society, laws need justifications that everyone, regardless of faith, can engage with.

The Polygamy Question

At one point, Wilson asks the hosts: why shouldn't three men be able to marry? Or ten? Why can't a man marry three women? (Notably, he doesn't wonder why a woman couldn't marry multiple men.)

It's meant as a reductio ad absurdum—an attempt to expose the left as having no real moral foundation. But it accidentally illustrates the right way to make laws and examine their foundations.

For religious thinkers, the answer is scripture. The ethical guide is the Bible; God said so. But that immediately raises the question: which God? And the answer can’t just be “because it’s wrong.” We need to think it through deeper.

Despite Wilson’s contention otherwise, non-believers aren't morally adrift—they simply have to justify each belief through reason rather than revelation. My own starting point, for example, is maximizing individual liberty while minimizing harm to others. The Golden Rule —"do unto others as you would have them do unto you" — fits that framework, and it appears in Confucianism (a philosophy) just as much as Christianity. It's a principle that doesn't require a deity to justify.

So back to polygamy. Rather than reaching for scripture, the honest questions are:

• Does it harm the people involved, and how does that differ from monogamous relationships, which can also be painful and abusive?

• What are the societal harms, and how do they compare to those of other legally permitted arrangements?

• If relationships between consenting adults are already legal, what specifically makes a marriage between multiple adults more harmful?

Legally, polygamy is restricted for some practical reasons. It complicates taxes, inheritance, custody, medical decisions, and divorce. That’s a rational argument, not a moral one.

Further, there are legitimate concerns about exploitation, particularly in communities where women lack equal rights. As with anything, there is potential for abuse, but it can also be counteracted by laws and protections.

There are also considerations around economic and social stability. For example, if men marry multiple female partners, there would be fewer potential partners available for other men.

These deserve serious debate. But notice they're arguments about consequences, ones that can be examined, measured, and challenged by anyone regardless of their faith. That's exactly what rational lawmaking looks like. And crucially, if the evidence doesn't support the harm, the law doesn't hold. That's how it should work.

Who Decides the Greater Good?

What Wilson and those like him ultimately want is to remake the world in their own moral image. He asks, for instance, whether banning OnlyFans would really cause net harm. Perhaps it would—prostitution has existed throughout human history, and platforms like OnlyFans at least allow people to sell sexual content in relative safety, without physical risk from encounters with strangers.

But beyond that specific debate, there’s a deeper problem: when you grant someone the power to determine the greater good, you’re trusting whoever was strong enough to seize that power—not whoever was persuasive enough to earn it.

This brings to mind a science fiction series I’ve been watching lately, in which an AI takes control of society. It eliminates corruption, solves hunger, reduces violence. But some people have to die in the process—”subversives,” as it calls them, enemies of the system. Privacy, too, disappears. And in a narrow, measurable sense, the AI works. The world becomes safer and more equitable by the numbers, by the things we can measure.

But at what cost? If the ruler is objectively correct, is that enough justification?

This is the oldest tension in political philosophy: how far do we go for the greater good, and at what point does the pursuit of it destroy the thing we were trying to protect?

Wilson believes Christian governance would produce better societal outcomes.

Marxists believed the same about communism—that the system was sound, and only human greed and corruption was what caused it to fail in practice.

The AI believes in its code.

They may all be sincere (well, insofar that artificial intelligence is capable of sincerity). They may even be partially right in theory. The trouble is, none leave much room for the rest of us to disagree.

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