Why Bertrand Russel is not a Christian

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Carl:
As another measure of Russell’s infantile sarcasm, let’s quote from “Why I Am Not a Christian.” This is from his reply to the argument from design:

“Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omnicience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?”
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Infantile? The theodicy problem is not infantile. Or do you think that it is?

As Epicurus wrote:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Furthermore, the idea of the incompatibility of the strong anthropic principle and the existence of evil is not at all ‘infantile’.

By the way, I do not accede to everything that Russell argues in ‘Why I am not a Christian’ but I do not find any of it ‘infantile’ or easily dismissed and some of it is extremely powerful.

If you think that Russell’s arguments are ‘infantile’ and refuse to take them seriously, you are fooling only yourself.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
“The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability.” Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
 
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hecd2:
The evils of the Inquisition are great absolute evils and comparison with other greater evils does not excuse them or turn them into meritorious movements. We live with the consequences of passionate religiosity today and it is not pretty. The fact of the appalling evils of Mao and Stalin (whether Hitler weighs in the atheistic or believer’s scale is a moot point) does not excuse the gross evils of the Holy Inquisition or the Inquisition of Ferdinand and Isabella.
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The issue was not whether the inquisition was justified or not. Mr. R. (is it one "L"s, or two? I should know by now 🙂 , jk), claimed that wherever the devotion to religion was the greatest, there was more evil - to paraphrase. Someone (who, I forget…it’s too late and I’ve been out in the Sun too long for me to be attempting thought process) attempted to show that the inquisition was not the ruthless, blood-thirsty, tyrannical horror which it has been made out to be.
When the idea of God is denied - when men are made out to be merely animals - when atheism, and irreligion (and, i dare say above all, a lack of Christianity) reigns, that is where the most evil is. If there is no God - if there is nothing beyond the material universe, then what we do ultimately does not matter. There is no true evil or good, as there is no ultimate good - God - to judge by. Morals, ultimately, become meaningless. If there is no God, then we have no higher authority to answer to if someone decides he wants to kill his neighbor - or, if the state decides to murder thousands of people. If we’re all merely the result of chance, simply higher animals, it’s quite easy to point to someone as less human, and therefore less deserving of life or other intrinsic rights (for instance, Dred Scott decision, Halocaust and - Roe vs Wade).
Take God out of the picture, and the only thing left is chaos.
 
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Carl:
But atheists have done this too … need we remind the disciples of Russell of the three greatest maniacs of the twentieth century … Hitler, Stalin, and Mao … all three of them atheists committed to anihilating all religion.?
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All three wanted to remove religion because they wanted the state to become a religion, and therefore had to remove all ‘competition’. They did not kill in the name of atheism but in the name of the state.
 
They did not kill in the name of atheism but in the name of the state.

They were atheists who killed. Enough said.
 
The point is that Russell cannot say often enough how much cruelty was committed by Christians. But you will never see him say how much cruellty was committed by atheists. For a man of supposedly towering intellect, this seems a phenomenal oversight.

Is it that Russell was as human as the rest of us in refusing to turn on his own kind?
 
Carl said:
“The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability.” Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
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Hmm - interesting that you should choose a deist, an enemy of the Church and one whose work was on the Index until the Index was abolished to support your views.

Here are some other quotes of Francois Marie Arouet. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but Carl ought to know whom he is quoting:

Whenever an important event, a revolution, or a calamity turns to the profit of the church, such is always signalised as the Finger of God - Philosphical Dictionary

Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of our childhood forms our feelings, our habits, our belief. By the Ganges I would have been a slave of the false gods, a Christian in Paris, a Muslim here - Mahomet

As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites. - Philosophical dictionary

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning - Philosophical dictionary

What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them? - Candide

It* is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicaea that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived* - Philosophical dictionary

There is an unlimited supply of such quotes from Voltaire’s prolific output

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
There is an unlimited supply of such quotes from Voltaire’s prolific output

I agree. I’ve read and agreed with many of them when they fairly applied.

None of the remarks you cited overturn Voltaire’s view that atheists are “impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly.”

No one, including me, ever said that Churchmen have always presented a pretty picture to the world. What we are talking about is that Russell would never present an ugly picture of atheists so happily as he would present an ugly picture of Christians.

This seems to be a chronic problem for atheists. Christians will always admit their sins, even (and sometimes especially) the sins of their leaders. For Catholics, that is what confession is all about and why it is required. Atheists will never admit their own sins because they do not believe in sin, nor will they freely acknowledge the sinfulness of other atheists. It all goes back to the arrogance of atheism and atheists that they will do what they please and no one can tell them what they can or cannot do, especially God.

Russell is the perfect example of what Voltaire would have called “impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly” because they cannot understand the mystery of creation and the mystery of evil.
 
Carl said:
They did not kill in the name of atheism but in the name of the state.

They were atheists who killed. Enough said.
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So What? There are Christians who have killed, and people of every political, racial, religious, etc. flavor out there who have done so. My point is that Theists have (and will) kill in the name their deity. Very few, if any, atheists have killed ine name of unbelief of god.

George Carlin said it best when he showed must conflicts in the world are like this:

Q: “Do You believe in God?”

A: “No.”

BANG!!!

Q: “Do You believe in God?”

A: “Yes.”

Q: “Do You believe in my God?”

A: “No.”

BANG!!!
 
Monarchy

I see you were raised on the surly humor of George Carlin.

I think Carlin, like Russell, had a selective memory. Let’s show that from your angle.

*Atheist Hitler: Are you Catholic?

Catholic: Yes.

BANG!

Are you Lutheran?

Lutheran: Yes.

BANG!

Are you Jew?

Jew: Yes.

BANG! BANG! BANG!*

Ditto for Stalin and Mao. Stalin was an atheist who persecuted Christians. So was Mao.

Atheists like Russell and Carlin should have read more real history instead of comic book histrionics. Neither Russell nor Carlin have any excuse for their myopic vision of Christianity as a religion of hate and homicide, neither of which can be found in the teachings of Christ. Had either Russell or Carlin gotten beyond their teenage neurotic rebellion against authority, they might have read more and learned more about the positive legacy of Christ. But they both learned that they could build a reputation and an income appealing to those like themselves who had ceased to develop spiritually beyong their teenage years

Again, Christians do not always live up to the ideal Christ taught them. And sometimes men who posed as Christians commiting acts of great cruelty were really men who did not have God in their hearts at all. They were atheist con artists who saw their chance and took it.

I much prefer the Marquis de Sade type of atheist, who gloried in his atheism and saw it as the intellectual foundation of his cruelty. At least he was not a wolf in sheepskin. At least you knew him for the enemy he was and he made no pretense of moral superiority over his Christian neighbors.
 
Or this type of Christian?"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.

"In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison.

"Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.

"As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.

"And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery.

“When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.”

–Adolph Hitler, speech, April 12, 1922.
 
Cherubino:

Thank you for the assist: just the type of monstrous lie Hitler was capable of.

But here is a more believable witness of the true atheism underlying Hitler’s method:

*Text of Martin Niemoller remarks in the Congressional Record, October 14, 1968, page 31636):

“When Hitler attacked the Jews, I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant Church - and there was nobody left to be concerned.”

Pastor Niemoller spent over eight years in a Nazi concentration camp.*
 
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Monarchy:
So What? There are Christians who have killed, and people of every political, racial, religious, etc. flavor out there who have done so. My point is that Theists have (and will) kill in the name their deity. Very few, if any, atheists have killed ine name of unbelief of god.

George Carlin said it best when he showed must conflicts in the world are like this:

Q: “Do You believe in God?”

A: “No.”

BANG!!!

Q: “Do You believe in God?”

A: “Yes.”

Q: “Do You believe in my God?”

A: “No.”

BANG!!!
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Hitler, Stalin and China have killed hundreds of millions of innocent people. That is more than any Christian government in history.
 
Carl,

After more than 15 years as a proud member of one of the most notorious liar’s clubs in the world (AA), I’m convinced that if you really want to know what a man believes, pay very little attention to what he says about himself and instead watch closely where his feet go.
 
Monarchy

Very few, if any, atheists have killed ine name of unbelief of god.

Well, of course. Why would they? Why would they kill in the name of Nogod?

The point is that they kill in their own name. Since they have no god, their supreme authority is from within. Many atheists kill on their own authority. The prisons are full of them. Many drug pushers are in jail because they pushed drugs on their own authority, not God’s. Many thieves are in jail because they stole on their own authority, not God’s. Many abortionists slaughter the unborn on their own authority, not God’s. The beat goes on.

As Cheribino put it, a man’s life is not to be judged by what he said so much as by what he did. The atheist who lives with no god in his heart is far more to be feared than the Christian who lives with Christ in his heart. There is a moral brake on what the Christian can do. Even when the brake does not work, the Christian can be salvaged from the wreck he has made of his life. There is no brake on what a man who worships only his own interest will do … but an atheist who wrecks others and himself will turn even to suicide to escape the consequences of sin.

Russell did not see this at all. Consider this passage from his essay “What I Believe.”

“All moral rules must be tested by examining whether they tend to realize ends that we desire. I say ends that we desire, not ends that we ought to desire.”

This a formula for moral anarchy and another proof that Russell’s moral sense was more like that of a willful and hedonistic teenager than that of a mature man who knows the limits he must place on his own thoughts and actions.
 
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Strider:
Where’s John Henry Cardinal Newman when you need him? He would have reduced Russel to a quivering blob of flesh with a few strokes of his pen.
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for russell that would not have been much of a reduction. I’ve read much of his “philisophical” writings and they are filled with historical inaccuracies, misunderstandings over basic human nature, logical errors, and rampant egotism.

In the end–he was nothing but a very hateful and lustful man who had no understanding of basic Christian doctrine…his reasons for not being Christian are as effective as a small child’s. Russell should have stuck with his math books.
 
The state is the church of the atheist.

Though the ACLU would never admit it.
 
Another clue to why Bertrand Russell was not a Christian is to be found in psychologist Paul Vitz’s Faith of the Fatherless. (pages 26-28).
 
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