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.
This reasoning is patently flawed. Look at it closely. Some people mean by
Christian a person who attempts to lead a good life. Russell says that this is not a proper sense of the word because it implies Buddhists, Confucians, etc... are not trying to live a good life. It does no such thing. Rather, it does the opposite. It grants that a member of any other religion who
does lead a good life is
also a Christian.
In those days [of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas], 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.
This is an assertion that is not substantiated. What we have in writing from those times are things by and through the Church. Russell has no way of knowing what men of that age believed. We may, for example, suppose that men of that age
professed to agree wholeheartedly with Church doctrine -again, not equivalent to Christ's teachings - so that the Church would not kill them and take their possessions.
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.
See my comment above about the influence of Zoroastrianism on early Christianity.
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.
It can be suggested that to conclude there could not have been a First [causeless] Cause also demonstrates poverty of imagination.
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.
This essay was delivered in 1927. He is summarizing how the Natural Law Arguments of the Newtonian era has been superseded by General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (which was so new at the time, it was not even called that [QM] - Russell had to describe it rather than refer to it.) His point was that scientific advancements nullify or at least trivialize Natural Law Arguments. I would point to the latter part of the 20th Century, when many physicists published popular works that show the idea of Laws of Nature is not dead.
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?
He shows an astonishing ignorance of evolutionary processes. Again, consider this essay in its historical perspective: the Allies went on to win, and the Klan is being rooted out as we speak.
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.
This "if - then" statement is crucial to Russell's argument. Yet he does not prove or support it in any way.
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.
Russell here hits upon - unintentionally, I think - the notion of a Creator who is not the First Cause.
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.
Russell fails to grasp the essential point of justice in this argument. Justice is an act of the
many; mercy the act of the individual. Christ intended us
as individuals not to judge other individuals, he in no sense said that collective justice should not take place. In fact, he said, "What ye shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven."
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.
Here Russell plainly says that the actions of other people prove that Christ was not wise. This is not only illogical, it is at best deliberately ignorant.
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.
Nowhere, in any version of the New Testament, does Christ say there is a hell. This assertion of Russell's almost leads me to believe that he had not read the NT. In fact, in this essay, he quotes the NT without citing specific chapter and verse.
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.
Here Russell correctly criticizes organized religion.
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.
Yes, one should not revive the works of ignorant men. It is not clear from his essay whether he places Christ in that category, but it is clear that he tries to take Christ down a peg or two.
It is this that I find intellectually repellent.
