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The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ã 2008 M. Previous: Reading Number 9: Bertrand Russell Rehashes Plato
-Reading Number Ten -
Bertrand Russell’s Mind Speaks Up
Excerpted from: Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian”
Russell now begins discussing the character of Christ, and why he doesn’t think Christ is worth following. In large part his problems with Christ stem from the fact that he had so many “hard sayings” (see John 6:60, Matt. 13:10-17). But hey, if Jesus was really who he said he was, he would have said things the way I would want him to say them, right? (Or at least the way Bertrand Russell would have said them.) For Christ to ask us to try to understand him on his own terms is really asking too much!
...I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels ...For one thing, he certainly thought 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"
I don’t know about you, but when I think about experts in biblical interpretation, I think of Bertrand Russell. His interpretation is unquestionably the right one.
... That was the belief of his earlier followers...
Of course...who said they were right about everything?
When He said, "Take no thought for the morrow," and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count.
I tell you, this guy was positively psychic! He could even discern the very thoughts of Jesus! (Despite the fact that in this same essay he claims “it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all.” Now that’s a real feat—to be able to read the thoughts of someone who never even existed!)
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 that is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Hmm, I don’t recall the exact verse where Jesus ever claimed to be “profoundly humane.” Which means, I suppose, not allowing anyone to ever suffer any pain. Well, maybe that was one of Russell’s cherished values, but it’s not really biblical, is it? Sort of like saying, “A truly, profoundly pacifistic soldier would not kill anyone.” Sure, but soldiers don’t claim to be pacifists.
...one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching...
Yeah, vengeance belongs to God. Who does Jesus think he is?
You do not, for instance, find that attitude in Socrates.
And we all know that just like Jesus, Socrates claimed to be the Savior of the world, and the One who would judge the living and the dead.
it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation... 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...
I’m sure we’re all very grateful to your mind for speaking up, Bertrand.
...There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost... 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.
Yes, it was certainly a “hard saying” of Jesus, though I’m not sure how Russell knew the exact amount of suffering it has caused. But we have to remember that he had powers beyond those of ordinary mortals. Surely he would never overstate the matter by saying the amount was “unspeakable,” though perhaps it was not quite in the same league as, for example, Hitler’s Holocaust. After all, some of the people he speaks of might have eventually resolved the issue in their own minds, either on their own or with the help of a clergyman or other resource.
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...
Now Nietzsche would say that that was a good thing (good in a “beyond good and evil” sort of way, that is). In any case, I’m sure we can all agree that a teaching should be judged not on what it actually teaches, but on how people pervert and twist it into something else. (Except atheism, of course—it’s unfair to judge atheism by the deeds of guys like Stalin or Pol Pot—even if they’re not a perversion, because there’s nothing in atheism per se that discourages such deeds.)
I do not think that the real reason that people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds... ...Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear... 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.
Once again our friend displays his uncanny powers of insight into people’s motivations. Now of course, we all know that fear is always a wrong motive for doing something...something to remember the next time you’re inside a burning building. Just calmly say to yourself, “If I ran out of this building, I would only be doing it based on fear. And Bertrand Russell says fear of death is the parent of cruelty. So I’d better stay put.” It’s true that most pagan societies have lived with a lot of fear and superstition, as well as cruelty—slavery, war, oppression of women, practices of mutilation, infanticide. But I ask you: which is the better antidote—Christianity, with its teaching that we are all created in God’s image, that God loves each one of us and offers us eternal life so that we don’t have to fear death—or atheism, with its teaching that we are just another kind of animal, an accident of blind evolutionary processes, and that after death is only nothingness? Which do you think most discourages cruelty and offers hope? Hmm...on second thought, don’t answer that.
...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.
Exactly right—if you don’t count little things like the French Revolution, communism, fascism...and on the flip side, all the Christians who have worked to abolish slavery, establish hospitals, clothe the poor, visit those in prison, bring medical care, famine relief and economic development to peoples around the world, etc.
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
...and realize that we’re just a freak accident of nature that will someday be extinct, just another here-today-gone-tomorrow fluke of evolution like dung beetles and tapeworms. Ah yes, there’s so much more dignity in that view!
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