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The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ã 2008 M. Previous: Reading Number 8: Nietzsche...and His Imaginary Friends Next: Reading Number 10: Bertrand Russell’s Mind Speaks Up
- Reading Number Nine -
Bertrand Russell Rehashes Plato
Excerpted from: Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian”
Bertrand Russell was a philosopher who wrote a lot of highly technical stuff. But he was an atheist, and that makes him A-OK in our book, right? His famous essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” explains why he finds Christianity distasteful. He starts by discussing arguments for God’s existence.
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... 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?"... 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...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..
Some of Russell’s arguments in this essay are a little dated. Russell styled himself a man of science, but ironically science now tells us, according to the currently accepted big bang theory, that our universe had a beginning. The science of thermodynamics also tells us that the energy of the universe will last only a finite amount of time, so the universe can’t have existed for an infinite length of time already, because its energy would have already run down. So the idea that the universe had a beginning is not really based on “the poverty of our imagination,” as Russell claims. It’s based on science. Since matter is not eternal, one could argue that there must have been some non-material, eternal entity or process that caused our universe to come into existence. But that in itself would still not prove the existence of a personal God. That’s a huge relief, naturally, but still the whole idea of the universe having a beginning is something that probably makes most atheists uncomfortable, since it does fit annoyingly well with the biblical account of creation. Perhaps our best bet when faced with the subject is to repeat Mill’s question, “Who made God?” The question is just plain silly, of course, since the First Cause argument doesn’t really say that “everything must have a cause,” as Russell claims, merely that finite things like our universe must have a cause. But sometimes Mill’s question will succeed in throwing unwary theists off course.
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... It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot...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... There is no evidence of design about it.
Again, an out-of-date argument. Today’s versions of the argument from design address very specific features of our universe; they don’t simply claim that “everything” was made solely to make human life possible. There are certain things, such as the gravitational constant, that, were they “ever so little different,” would indeed make it very unlikely that life of any kind could exist in our universe. So it’s not a matter of life “growing suitable” to the universe. Sadly, Russell is no help here either.
...[I]t 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
Ah, now here’s a truly current theme! We atheists still use this argument all the time. It’s the argument that because there are “defects” in the universe, that shows it wasn’t designed! In other words it takes the word “design” to mean “perfection.” Now normally, you wouldn’t think the two were synonyms. After all, we know plenty of designed things that are not perfect, either because they started out less than perfect, or somehow deteriorated or were damaged after they were created. But I ask you, if design and perfection were not synonymous, would a brilliant philosopher like Russell think they were? Of course not. Brilliant people don’t make mistakes like that.
...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 merely a flash in the pan; it is a stage in the decay of the solar system...
Well what do you know? Looks like Russell was aware that the universe couldn't go on forever without winding down after all! And yet earlier he claimed that it's perfectly reasonable to think that the universe had no beginning and has already existed for an infinite amount of time! I guess it just shows that even though he was a highly accomplished philosopher, Russell was not too proud to engage in basic logical contradictions now and then.
...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 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;
If there is any lingering doubt about how brilliant Russell was, this should dispel it. I tell you, he had powers beyond those of the average mortal, powers to discern psychological causes in people he barely knew or had not even met, even including causes like bad digestion! Makes me proud to have someone like that on the side of atheism.
but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen in this world millions and millions of years hence.
So true, and so very reasonable! After all, humans are only animals. And animals don’t worry about anything beyond their immediate needs. Ergo, we humans can’t either. We can’t worry about things like the meaning of life or the fate of the universe. We just think we can.
...[W]e come to what are called the moral arguments for the existence of God... ...One form is to say that there would be no right and wrong unless God existed... The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are then 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 who made this world
This argument is called the Euthyphro Dilemma, because Plato first brought it up in his dialogue called “Euthyphro.” According to the dilemma you have two choices: either morality is based on a fiat (decree) of God or it is not. And neither choice works. If the reason things are good or evil is simply because God said so, then something we now regard as evil, say, torturing babies, could just as easily be decreed by God to be good as evil. But that makes it all arbitrary. It would mean God’s morality decrees are arbitrary, and so God would be not good in any meaningful sense, because the meaning of “good” itself is arbitrary. On the other hand, if it’s not up to God’s arbitrary choice, then God must be ruled by some standard of good and evil. But if there’s a standard God has to conform to in decreeing what’s good, then God is not supreme. There’s some other standard he has to answer to. What a dilemma, eh? But let’s think about this. If God said torturing babies was good, would that make it good? If God said, “2 + 2 = 5,” would that make it true? Or what if God said, “Some things that exist don’t exist”? It’s hard to imagine that truths of mathematics or logic (as in the last two sentences) could be different. Can you imagine 2 + 2 equaling 5? Or something existing and not existing at the same time? Now why do these truths seem unchangeable? Well, because they seem to be built into our universe. And the theist could say that that’s because they are also intrinsic to God. God is a God who is logical, rational, orderly—and moral. And that’s why the universe and the creatures he created are that way too. According to this view it’s a matter of God’s intrinsic nature. Saying God is good is really no different from saying he is logical or rational by nature. So his decrees are not whims. They are based on his own nature, and not on some other standard or superior deity that he has to answer to. Anyway, the above is the argument theists could make in response to Russell. But is it a good argument? Well, yeah, I guess you could say it is. Why don’t we just move on?
...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... 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... ... 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 then the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also.".
Russell makes a very shrewd move here. He insists on looking at things “from a scientific view.” Yeah, let’s ignore any revelation God may have made to us in his Word given through prophets and apostles and through Jesus Christ. If we don’t seriously consider the claims of Christ and of the Word of God, then yes, we can ignore everything except what we see in the present world, and claim that there is no sign of any future judgment or rewards or punishment to redress the injustices of the present world. Slick move, Bertrand!
...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.
I think we all know that if there are people who believe in God for the wrong reasons, that means God doesn’t exist. Notice also how Russell once more displays his uncanny ability to discern other people’s motives. And what about people who were not taught to believe in God from infancy, but who later came to belief in him? Sadly, Bertrand Russell is no longer around to reveal to us what those people’s motives were. Of course, atheists have no psychological motives for wanting there to be no God, like maybe the desire to be free from moral constraints. It’s just a coincidence that Bertrand Russell was an advocate of “free love” and had lots of (sometimes simultaneous) sexual affairs during his lifetime.
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