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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The Answer to Atheism: Part 6



The following article is part six of a six-part 
series written in response to Bertrand Russell's  
"Why I Am Not a Christian." 

For reference, I have included a link to his essay 
at the bottom of each article.






In conclusion, Jesus is the antidote to sin’s poison. He offers hope, where there was nothing but fear. Hope in a restored relationship with God; not a religion seeking to crush and enslave people with unbearable rules and regulations, as Bertrand Russell claimed.
“Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.’”
~Matthew 11:28-30 New Living Translation (NLT)
“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him,’ Abba, Father.’ For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.”
~Romans 8:15-16 New Living Translation (NLT)
(Abba literally means: daddy.)
Christians follow God’s commandments with joy because we want to; not because we are compelled to out of fear. If we are in Christ, then our salvation is assured. It is a free gift from God, and there is nothing we can do to lose it. (Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 8:38-39)
The best analogy I can give for why Christians live the way we do, would be the example of one man saving the life of another. Hopefully, the man who was saved would say something along the lines of: “I’m in your debt. How can I repay you?”
To which Jesus replies, “Go and sin no more” (John 8:1-11)
That’s why we obey God—out of love and thankfulness for what has been done for us—not fear of “damnation” and “hell-fire,” as people like Bertrand Russell would have you believe.
You see, people knew from the beginning that something was wrong with the universe; that’s why they created religions in the first place, to try and work their way back to God. (One of the root words of religion, ligare, literally means “to bind” or “to reconnect.”) But as I’ve said before: Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship with God. Religions are built around a strict set of rules and regulations that make people depressed and fill them with fear.
“If I do this will I be re-incarnated and have to go through life as an ant instead of entering nirvana?”
“If I follow all of the Bible's commandments, will it be enough to earn God’s favor?”
“If I do enough good, will it outweigh the bad?”
If …
See the pattern?
The good news is, there’s a way out. A way to be free of sin, judgment, and the burden of religion. His name is Jesus. (Ephesians 2Romans 8:1-4)
Ultimately, the underlying question presented in “Why I Am Not a Christian” was this: Is God real? And, if so is God good? But it is clear from his writings what Bertrand Russell’s self-professed answer was. He was blinded to the truth because he did not want to believe it. And in the end, his anti-religious bias clouded not only his worldview, but also his judgment.
Bertrand Russell was not a “Father of Free Thought”, so much as he was a champion of close-mindedness; so consumed by his preconceived notions of God and Christianity, that he was willing to distort the truth in order to support his biased accusations, and lead people away from the one who could truly set them free.
He trusted in his own infallibility, lied about what he did not understand, and refused to believe that the truth was more wonderful than anything he could ever hope to comprehend.
“Therefore, since God in his mercy has given us this new way, we never give up. We reject all shameful deeds and underhanded methods. We don’t try to trick anyone or distort the word of God. We tell the truth before God, and all who are honest know this.
“If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.
“You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.
“We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.”
~2 Corinthians 4:1-7 New Living Translation (NLT)








To read the entire Answer to Atheism series from the beginning, click on the link provided.

The Answer to Atheism: Part 1








Monday, July 21, 2014

The Answer to Atheism: Part 5

The following article is part five of a six-part 
series written in response to Bertrand Russell's  
"Why I Am Not a Christian." 

For reference, I have included a link to his essay 
at the bottom of each article.




Mr. Russell’s final argument—that Christianity is a religion of fear, that puts an unnecessary burden of misery on its followers—is just as preposterous as the rest of his lecture.
Of course if you do not believe in Hell, as most atheists do, then the message of Christianity looks like fear mongering.
However, if Hell is real then the fear mongering instantly becomes a dire warning. So it all depends on whether or not Hell exists.
If it doesn’t, then there was no reason for Jesus to die in the place of all humanity. And if Jesus didn’t die, then he most certainly did not rise from the dead three days later. And if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then there is nothing to worry about. Christianity is a farce, just like all other religions. Which is exactly what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:14-25
But if Hell does exist, then Christians aren’t trying to scare people into converting. They’re trying to rescue people from a very real—albeit unseen—danger. And as we all know, it’s often the hidden dangers that cause the most harm. You don’t know its there until it’s too late.
Let me put it this way: if someone knew you were about to step on a land mine, wouldn’t you want them to warn you before you stepped on it? I know I would.
Furthermore, the example Mr. Russell gave of the syphilitic man and his wife being forbidden from using birth control, and therefore resigned to a life of misery and celibacy on account of religion, is based on his own opinion and not biblical fact.
Granted, some churches do teach a doctrine against the use of birth control. But this is not something found in the Bible. In fact, the verse that is most often used to promote this belief (Genesis 38:9-10) isn’t even about birth control at all. It’s about an ancient, cultural practice that required the brother of a dead man to marry his brother's wife in order to preserve the dead brother’s bloodline. So in reality, Onan—the man mentioned in this passage of scripture—was punished not because he used a form of birth control, but because he showed contempt for brother by refusing to father a child who would be his brother’s heir.

All this is a bit beside the point however, when we ask the obvious question of how Russell's hypothetical man contracted syphilis in the first place. If the man in question was truly concerned with biblical teachings about sex, then it is likely that he would not have contracted the disease. In this regard the fate of this man and his wife is a life of celibacy resulting from medical necessity, not religious oppression. If the man had not engaged in sexual promiscuity he would not have contracted syphilis and would not be required to abstain from sexual intercourse.


Another key point that I want to mention here is that according to the Bible, Hell was never meant for people. It was meant for Satan and the fallen angels allied with him.
“Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.’”
~Matthew 25:41 New Living Translation (NLT) [Emphasis Added]
God loves people; even those who hate Him.
“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
~Romans 5:8 New Living Translation (NLT) [Emphasis Added]
God doesn’t want anyone to go to Hell.
“The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.” 
~2 Peter 3:9 New Living Translation (NLT)  [Emphasis Added]
Satan is the one who wants people to go to Hell.
“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
~1 Peter 5:8 New Living Translation (NLT) [Emphasis Added]
But Jesus came to save us from that fate.
“For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”
~Luke 19:10 New Living Translation (NLT) [Emphasis Added]
“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My (Jesus') purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”
~John 10:10 New Living Translation (NLT)  [Emphasis Added]
Essentially, Satan’s attitude is that of a hostage-taker hiding behind a human shield. He knows he’s going to die, but he is determined to take as many people down with him as he can.
Satan knows God loves humanity so much that He died to save them, and so he’s trying to hurt God by dragging as many people to Hell as he can; by lying to them about God, tricking them into worshiping other things, or by simply making them apathetic to religion in general; lulling them into a false sense of security based on their own “goodness.” Even though the Bible says that we are all sinners and are guilty before God. (Romans 3:23)
           



             Continued in: The Answer to Atheism: Part 6

Sunday, July 20, 2014

The Answer to Atheism: Part 4

The following article is part four of a six-part 
series written in response to Bertrand Russell's  
"Why I Am Not a Christian." 

For reference, I have included a link to his essay 
at the bottom of each article.




As for Mr. Russell’s statement that religion “retards progress,” I would challenge him—and anyone who follows his reasoning—to review the history of humanitarianism, science, and social reform in the western world. 
In the first century AD, It was the church that founded many of the earliest hospitals and orphanages, in a time and culture where it was considered an act of mercy to let the less fortunate starve to death.
In the middle ages, it was the church that started the schools and universities that sparked the Renaissance. The monks and priests of the Catholic Church were the first Western Academics. They paved the way for logic and reasonthe very foundations of modern science. They were the ones who recorded our histories; translating them from Greek and Latin texts. They were the first inventors, creating and perfecting revolutionary devices like the water wheel, mechanical clock, blast furnace, and eyeglasses. Without the church, we would not have had the Renaissances. And without Christian Universities, we would not have western science.
Furthermore, many of the ideals we value most, stem directly from Christianity. If it weren’t for our biblical values, we would not have the sociopolitical freedoms we enjoy today. Most notably: The Abolition of Slavery. (The United States of America is the only country in history to fight a war specifically to end slavery.)
If it weren't for the Christian belief that all men are equal before God, we would not have seen the shift in political ideals that lead to the signing of the Magna Carta and the American Declaration of Independence.
While it is true that some religions may retard progress; genuine Christianity isn’t a religion—it’s a relationship with God. Christianity does not “retard progress.” In fact one could argue that Christianity actually facilitates progress. If one chooses to believe the historical evidence, that is.
I could go on and on about this, since it is such a broad subject. But in the interest of saving time and ink, I will simply say that Mr. Russell’s information is once again fictitious and does not hold up under close examination of the historical facts.

(If you are interested in learning more about the Bible’s place in history I highly recommend reading "The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization" by Vishal Mangalwadi. It’s an excellent read and very thought provoking from an intellectual standpoint.) 





                 Continued in: The Answer to Atheism: Part 5


Wednesday, July 16, 2014

The Answer to Atheism: Part 3

The following article is part three of a six-part 
series written in response to Bertrand Russell's  
"Why I Am Not a Christian." 

For reference, I have included a link to his essay 
at the bottom of each article.



The next point I want to address are Mr. Russell's remarks concerning the character of Christ.
Here again, Mr. Russell specifically chose to quote passages out of context in an attempt to make Jesus look like a fool, and ignored all of the times Jesus’ words and actions are vindicated. (i.e. Jesus predicted his own death and resurrection multiple times in scripture, as well as the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in A.D. 70)
Mr. Russell also failed to resolve the issue of the many miracles Jesus performed before thousands of eyewitnesses—many of whom were still living at the time the New Testament was written. (1 Corinthians 15:6)
Jesus healed the blind, the deaf and the mute; the lame, the lepers, and the paralyzed. He even raised a man from the dead after he had been buried for four days. There is no good explanation for these things aside from the miraculous.
Furthermore if the Bible's claims really were fabricated, then the multitude of eyewitnesses would have been able to discredit the New Testament the moment it was penned. It is impossible to claim that miraculous events have transpired in a region where literally anyone could come forward and refute the claims.
Simply put: Christianity would not have been able to spread like it did, where it did, when it did, if the events recorded in the New Testament didn't actually happen.
Additionally, Mr. Russell used the King James Version in his rebuttal of Christ; a translation which in my opinion is perhaps the hardest translation to understand; considering it is written in 17th century English. Granted the King James Bible is still a valid translation, and is in fact the mostly widely used translation in existence.
That being said, let’s look at the verses in question from the New Living Translation to see if their is any truth to Mr. Russell’s claims.
“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.
“And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.
“Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.”
~Matthew 7:1-6 New Living Translation (NLT)
From the context it is obvious that Jesus isn’t talking about a court of law; he’s talking about Christians judging people in a better-than-thou, self-righteous, and/or faultfinding way. So Mr. Russell's argument here is debunked.
Mr. Russell's second argument, claiming that Christ demands that his followers sell everything they own was also a misquote. Jesus was giving an answer  to a specific person, in a specific situation; not issuing a command to all Christians. 
Additionally, Jesus’ statement in Mathew 19:23-24 about how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, is true. It is human nature to trust in our wealth, positions, and the security these things bring, instead of trusting in God. Thus “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!” This, however, is not a commandment to be poor, as Mr. Russell claimed.
“Someone came to Jesus with this question: ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’
“‘Why ask me about what is good?’ Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. But to answer your question—if you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments.’
“‘Which ones?’the man asked.
“And Jesus replied: ‘You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“‘I’ve obeyed all these commandments,’ the young man replied. ‘What else must I do?’
“Jesus told him, ‘If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’
“But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I’ll say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!’
“The disciples were astounded. ‘Then who in the world can be saved?’ they asked.
“Jesus looked at them intently and said, ‘Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.’”
~Matthew 19:16-26 New Living Translation (NLT)
Mr. Russell’s next argument is also easily refutable.
“‘I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Kingdom of God.’
“About eight days later Jesus took Peter, John, and James up on a mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was transformed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly, two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared and began talking with Jesus. They were glorious to see. And they were speaking about his exodus from this world, which was about to be fulfilled in Jerusalem.”
~Luke 9:27-32 New Living Translation (NLT)
In Luke 9:27, the Greek word for “kingdom” can also be translated to mean “royal splendor.” This, combined with the context of the following verses and their parallels in the synoptic gospels, leads us to the obvious conclusion that Jesus was referring to Peter, James and John—the three disciples who would witness his glory on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Likewise the supposed inconsistency in Matthew 10:23 is easily explained by the context of the chapter—Jesus sending out the twelve disciples—as well as by the first verse in Matthew 11, which reads: “When Jesus had finished giving these instructions to his twelve disciples, he went out to teach and preach in towns throughout the region.”
To put it simply: Jesus and the disciples split up. This means that when Jesus said that he would return, he was simply stating that he would return to the twelve disciples before they had reached all of the towns in Israel.
Mr. Russell's final argument against Christ is his comment about worry and the timing of Christ’s return. It’s the last verse in Matthew Chapter 6.
“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!
“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
“That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?
“And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?
“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
~Matthew 6:19-34 New Living Translation (NLT)
As you can see, this passage is completely unrelated to Mr. Russell's argument about the timing of Christ’s return.
Likewise, Mr. Russell's other arguments about Christ’s character, judgment, and his harsh words to the Pharisees are also flawed, because they are based on the presupposition that a) Jesus did not exist (Which is an extremely flawed statement in and of itself, given the historical evidence to the contrary.) and b) if Jesus did exist, then he was not God.
However, if Jesus was God, as he claimed on numerous occasions, (John 10:30-31Mark 14:60-62, etc.) then everything he said about judgment is also true, and does not go against his character. (Remember, Jesus made a whip and drove the vendors and money changers out of the Gentile Court of the temple in John 2:15-17. He was not a passive Mahatma Gandhi-like character, contrary to the popular stereotype.)
           


             Continued in: The Answer to Atheism: Part 4


Tuesday, July 15, 2014

The Answer to Atheism: Part 2

The following article is part two of a six-part 
series written in response to Bertrand Russell's  
"Why I Am Not a Christian." 

For reference, I have included a link to his essay 
at the bottom of each article.




On a side note, I thought Mr. Russell's comment about the Devil creating the world while God wasn’t looking was pretty funny. But it’s not half wrong. God created the world, and the Devil usurped it from us by tricking humanity into disobeying God, thus plunging the world into darkness. We sinned. We caused the problem. But Satan facilitated it by means of temptation. He was the pebble that started the avalanche. So yes, Mr. Russell is right; all the evil we see around us in this broken universe is ultimately the Devil’s fault.
That's the funny thing about atheism—and really humanity in general. Even if people deny the existence of God, they usually don’t deny the existence of the Devil. And even if they do, they can't deny the fact that evil exists. Yet it seems to be human nature to blame God for everything.
So how is it that the one being who is generally considered to be the very personification of evil, somehow manages to avoid any blame whenever bad things happen?
That being said, the argument that good and evil mean nothing to God, is ludicrous from the biblical perspective. According to Genesis Chapters 1-3, God knew the difference between good and evil. In fact, His very existence is what would make such knowledge possible. If God is good, then anything that is in contrast to His nature, would therefore be evil. Since God knows everything about Himself, He would of course have to know everything He is not. Ergo: evil. And since God is good, the entire universe was also good; since God had created it in accordance with His nature. Therefore, there was no evil in our world at the time of creation. If there were, God would not have been able to say what He said in Genesis 1:31.
“Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!
And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.”
~Genesis 1:31 New Living Translation (NLT) [Emphasis Added]
Evil is the absence of good, just as darkness is the absence of light.
God is the standard for what is good. Therefore evil is anything that is in conflict with God. i.e evil exists whenever a conscious being chose to pervert something that is good through sin: rebellion against God’s Nature and/or a spoken Commandment.
(Since God spoke the universe into being, and we know that God’s word is truth (John 17:17) it therefore stands to reason that any commandment He speaks becomes a law of nature. The breaking of which would result in catastrophic consequences such as death (Romans 6:23) and the Laws of Thermodynamics etc.)


         

             Continued in: The Answer to Atheism: Part 3


             Why I Am Not A Christian (Reference Material)

Monday, July 14, 2014

The Answer to Atheism: Part 1

The following article is part one of a six-part 
series written in response to Bertrand Russell's  
"Why I Am Not a Christian." 

For reference, I have included a link to his essay 
at the bottom of each article.



 First of all I want to say that Mr. Russell’s arguments are nothing new and essentially boil down to a very low opinion of God and a belief that God is flawed and/or human. Which again, is not a new belief. Just look at the ancient Greek and Norse gods. They were a whole lot more believable than the Judeo-Christian God. But that was because they were also very human, seeing as how men created them.
But let’s start with what the Bible says about human wisdom and then go from there.
“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. 
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
~Isaiah 55:8-9 New Living Translation (NLT) 
In light of this, Mr. Russell’s first real mistake was trying to comprehend God from a limited, narrow-minded viewpoint. His second error was taking selected verses out of context to make his point; only using information that would help his case without reading further to see if his accusations were founded.
However, Mr. Russell was correct in saying that Christianity has deviated from what it was intended to be. But this is perhaps the only kernel of truth in his entire essay.
The second flaw I found in Mr. Russell’s essay were his arguments against The First Cause, Natural-law, and Design arguments for the existence of God.
The idea that God, too, must have an origin is based on the evolutionary worldview, and can be dismantled as soon as one opens their mind up to the possibility that there is an omnipotent being in the universe.
If, as the Bible says, everything was created from nothing by the afore mentioned entity, then does it not stand to reason that said entity is beyond the laws of physics and nature itself?
If God created everything, then that would imply that He is more powerful than anything else in the universe. And if God created all of time and space as the Bible claims, then how can anyone honestly say that He too, had to have a beginning? The extent of His power is clearly beyond anything we could ever hope to comprehend.
Furthermore Mr. Russell's argument against the First Cause: “If God made me, then who made God?” is circular reasoning and can be turned around on him. He believes that the universe created him, but then who created the universe?
The argument that the universe created itself and exists because it had to exist, falls under the same circular reasoning. If the universe exists because it had to exist, then why did it have to exist to begin with? This sort of argument can go back and forth indefinitely and ultimately resolve nothing.
The same can be said for Mr. Russell’s argument against the Natural-laws theory. If God is all-powerful, then who are we to decide what laws should and should not apply? Not to mention Mr. Russell never gave an example of how a natural, scientific law could be improved upon.
Mr. Russell makes yet another error by observing all the evil in our world today and immediately concluding that the world has always been this way. However, if you understand what the Bible teaches about the nature of sin, then you know that this was not always the case. The Laws of Thermodynamics are the scientifically proven effects of sin on our universe.
According to God’s Word, everything in the created universe began breaking down at the exact moment that Adam and Eve first disobeyed God. (Genesis 2:173:1-24)

Why I Am Not A Christian, By Bertrand Russell.



Reference Material 
"The Answer to Atheism" parts 1-6






Why I Am Not A Christian

 By Bertrand Russell

Introductory note: Russell delivered this lecture on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall. Published in pamphlet form in that same year, the essay subsequently achieved new fame with Paul Edwards' edition of Russell's book, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays ... (1957).

As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is "Why I Am Not a Christian." Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word Christian. It is used these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians –all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on – are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions. 
 
What Is a Christian?
Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in our meaning of Christianity. I think, however, that there are two different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature –namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and in immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. I think you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think you have any right to call yourself a Christian. Of course, there is another sense, which you find in Whitaker's Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshipers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians. The geography books count us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense, which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things: first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant him a very high degree of moral goodness.
 But for the successful efforts of unbelievers in the past, I could not take so elastic a definition of Christianity as that. As I said before, in olden days it had a much more full-blooded sense. For instance, it included he belief in hell. Belief in eternal hell-fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell. 
 

The Existence of God
To come to this question of the existence of God: it is a large and serious question, and if I were to attempt to deal with it in any adequate manner I should have to keep you here until Kingdom Come, so that you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in a somewhat summary fashion. You know, of course, that the Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason. That is a somewhat curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas. They had to introduce it because at one time the freethinkers adopted the habit of saying that there were such and such arguments which mere reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist. The arguments and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic Church felt that they must stop it. Therefore they laid it down that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to prove it. There are, of course, a number of them, but I shall take only a few.

The First-cause Argument
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.

The Natural-law Argument
Then there is a very common argument from natural law. That was a favorite argument all through the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony. People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further for explanations of the law of gravitation. Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to give you a lecture on the law of gravitation, as interpreted by Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate, you no longer have the sort of natural law that you had in the Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depths of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. That is, no doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea that natural laws imply a lawgiver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were, you are then faced with the question "Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?" If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others – the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it – if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver. In short, this whole argument about natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am traveling on in time in my review of the arguments. The arguments that are used for the existence of God change their character as time goes on. They were at first hard intellectual arguments embodying certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times they become less respectable intellectually and more and more affected by a kind of moralizing vagueness.

The Argument from Design
The next step in the process brings us to the argument from design. You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy argument to parody. You all know Voltaire's remark, that obviously the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.
 When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists? Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending – something dead, cold, and lifeless.
 I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that, they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries about much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out – at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation – it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things. 
 


The Moral Arguments for Deity
Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations, and we come to what are called the moral arguments for the existence of God. You all know, of course, that there used to be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument, and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his mother's knee. That illustrates what the psychoanalysts so much emphasize – the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very early associations have than those of later times.
 Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say there would be no right or wrong unless God existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God that made this world, or could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up – a line which I often thought was a very plausible one – that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it. 
 

The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice
Then there is another very curious form of moral argument, which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world. In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life here on earth. So they say that there must be a God, and there must be Heaven and Hell in order that in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say, "After all, I only know this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also." Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, "The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say, "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment"; and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say, "Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice, and so far as that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a moral argument against deity and not in favor of one." Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about are not what really moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason.
 Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desire for a belief in God. 
 

The Character of Christ
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree that that was so. I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the way, but I could go with Him much further than most professing Christians can. You will remember that He said, "Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-tse and Buddha some 500 or 600 years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept. I have no doubt that the present prime minister [Stanley Baldwin], for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a figurative sense.
 Then there is another point which I consider excellent. You will remember that Christ said, "Judge not lest ye be judged." That principle I do not think you would find was popular in the law courts of Christian countries. I have known in my time quite a number of judges who were very earnest Christians, and none of them felt that they were acting contrary to Christian principles in what they did. Then Christ says, "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." That is a very good principle. Your Chairman has reminded you that we are not here to talk politics, but I cannot help observing that the last general election was fought on the question of how desirable it was to turn away from him that would borrow of thee, so that one must assume that the Liberals and Conservatives of this country are composed of people who do not agree with the teaching of Christ, because they certainly did very emphatically turn away on that occasion.
 Then there is one other maxim of Christ which I think has a great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among some of our Christian friends. He says, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor." That is a very excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practiced. All these, I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to live up to. I do not profess to live up to them myself; but then, after all, it is not quite the same thing as for a Christian. 
 

Defects in Christ's Teaching
Having granted the excellence of these maxims, I come to certain points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one is not concerned with the historical question. Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance, "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." Then he says, "There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom"; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, "Take no thought for the morrow," and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought that the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In that respect, clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise.

The Moral Problem
Then you come to moral questions. There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching – an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him.
 You will find that in the Gospels Christ said, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell." That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many of these things about Hell. There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost: "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this World nor in the world to come." That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world.
 Then Christ says, "The Son of Man shall send forth his His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"; and He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming He is going to divide the sheep from the goats, and He is going to say to the goats, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." He continues, "And these shall go away into everlasting fire." Then He says again, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into Hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." He repeats that again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him asHis chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
 There are other things of less importance. There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever' . . . and Peter . . . saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects. 
 

The Emotional Factor
As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. You know, of course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler's book, Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in Erewhon there is a certain Higgs who arrives in a remote country, and after spending some time there he escapes from that country in a balloon. Twenty years later he comes back to that country and finds a new religion in which he is worshiped under the name of the "Sun Child," and it is said that he ascended into heaven. He finds that the Feast of the Ascension is about to be celebrated, and he hears Professors Hanky and Panky say to each other that they never set eyes on the man Higgs, and they hope they never will; but they are the high priests of the religion of the Sun Child. He is very indignant, and he comes up to them, and he says, "I am going to expose all this humbug and tell the people of Erewhon that it was only I, the man Higgs, and I went up in a balloon." He was told, "You must not do that, because all the morals of this country are bound round this myth, and if they once know that you did not ascend into Heaven they will all become wicked"; and so he is persuaded of that and he goes quietly away.
 That is the idea – that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
 You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. 
 

How the Churches Have Retarded Progress
You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man; in that case the Catholic Church says, "This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must endure celibacy or stay together. And if you stay together, you must not use birth control to prevent the birth of syphilitic children." Nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.
 That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy." 
 

Fear, the Foundation of Religion
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

What We Must Do
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world –its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.



To view my personal analysis of Mr. Russell's essay, click on the link below: