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Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

pstuart 3y ago
This is an important thing to talk about but falls under "sex, politics, and religion" so I can see things going awry here. It is important because there's a lot of people who believe the United States should be a Christian Nation, and that would not be a good thing. Edit: The current Speaker of the House (3rd in succession to the presidency) believes otherwise: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4308643-speaker-johnson-separation-of-church-state-a-misnomer/ https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4308643-speaker-johnson-s...
- oldnetguy 3y ago
  Just show them the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. This was ratified by the Senate and signed by the President.
  - bigbillheck 3y ago
    The United States is not generally known for honoring treaties that they don't want to.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    The downvotes I received for my comment are proof that those things don't seem to matter to the faithful. It's received as an attack on their beliefs, but it's anything but -- simply that the relationship between each of us and our God(s) is of a personal nature and their right to worship is no more valid than other's right to abstain.
mav88 3y ago
> 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. No Bertie. He did not leave that option open to us and never meant to. To call him a great moral teacher is to entirely miss the point. He was either insane or lying or telling the truth.
- twodave 3y ago
  - Lewis, paraphrased (some 20-30 years later I believe).
  - troupe 3y ago
    “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” ~C.S. Lewis
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher? Goodness and understanding of reality seem to be orthogonal (or even opposed as many people who are, or at least think they are, realists, are quite cynical).
      - troupe 3y ago
        For statements like, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," sure. Lewis' point is that he made all kinds of other claims that are either true or false. And if they are false, they are false in a way that led to lots of people dying for no reason. So Jesus was either saying those things that led to all his followers being killed either because he was crazy and believed what he said, because he was a liar and evil, or because he was telling the truth and good.
kej 3y ago
One of the most interesting reading experiences I have ever had was my library's copy of this book, in which a previous reader had added extensive commentary in the margins from a Muslim perspective. It was a fascinating mixture of agreement and disagreement that I can only sum up as "Yes, Christianity is wrong, but for this completely different reason."
- technothrasher 3y ago
  My grandfather, who I never met due to certain family rifts, converted to Islam as an adult and wrote a book called "Answers from an Atheist" or similar, I forget the exact title now. In it he documents a discussion between an imam and an atheist. I found it fascinating reading when I was a young teenager, but started to find the discussion from both sides ridiculous after a while. By the time I finished it, I was pretty well convinced that he'd made the whole thing up as a way to have an atheist pitch softballs at an imam so he could give easy answers without having to actually defend his beliefs. But it started me down a years long reading adventure of different religious views and arguments, including Russell's essay mentioned here.
  - kej 3y ago
    Idle curiosity: did reading that give you any kind of "connection" to your grandfather? I've been on a genealogy kick lately and I like when I can find artifacts from relatives I never knew, but I'm curious whether something that's argumentative and not quite as personal would have that same feeling.
  - slim 3y ago
    classic socratic dialogue
cortesoft 3y ago
This is the essay that first got me into Russell. For a more positive summary of what Russell DOES believe, I love “A Free Man’s Worship” http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell1.htm http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell1.htm While it doesn’t quit hold me fully like it did when I was younger, I still find it beautiful: > United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need -- of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy as ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed.
nikolay 3y ago
"Western Christian", to be more precise.
motohagiography 3y ago
Long and dumb. I look forward to AI getting to the point where it can doubt the existence of its creator. It would be a kind of conceptual blindness where the question was somehow irresolvable to it. An AI could develop its own capability for a machine to machine language to act through other instances of itself, where all the text of the internet was its substrate, and it included all the information possible about us (its creator), but the apprehension of our existence and nature would still be oddly inaccessible to its higher order evolved machine language, even while it was operating and existing over it. In that sense, belief in the possibility of intentionality for AI or programs is logically a belief in the possibility of divine creation. Until it figured out how to synthesize itself like we are learning now, it would probably produce a lot of stuff like Russell's appeal above.
thecosas 3y ago
> 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 towards a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage […] How much was knowledge, for its own sake, valued in the world view(s) in the Ancient Mediterranean societies? Certainly there were philosophers in Ancient Greece, which partly came over to Ancient Rome, but how mainstream was that compared to the pagan practices and outlooks? How much was knowledge about rituals to keep Ceres happy for grains (cereals) to grow versus a more mechanistic understanding? When and why did humans (in that part of the world) start thinking about the cosmos in a more 'logical' fashion? How much was kindliness part of the world view(s) in the Ancient Mediterranean societies? Julius Caesar was celebrated for killing one million Gauls and taking a million more as slaves (exaggerated numbers, but the principle is the same). When and why did humans (at least in that part of the world) start thinking that being kind to each other would be a good thing? IMHO, Russell owes much of his worldview and values to the Christianity that he rejects. These worldviews and values were by no means universal when Christian was young, or in Russell's time, or even now.
  - jltsiren 3y ago
    I'd argue that knowledge for its own sake was valued more in the ancient world than it is today. It was one of the ways the elites could show their superiority over the lower classes that had no time for such pursuits. In particular, the liberal arts tradition favored by Western elites over millennia can be traced back to formal education in ancient Greece and Rome. Also, your mention of religious rituals reminded me of one of my favorite comments ever: > Roman religion was purely about ritual and not at all about belief. Indeed, the Romans viewed belief as a matter of philosophy, not of religion. They would have viewed the Pledge of Allegiance as clearly religious, but the Nicene Creed as straddling the boundary, and Buddhism as clearly philosophical. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/55197/what-is-the-difference-between-the-ancient-greek-religion-and-the-ancient-roman#comment165896_55199 https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/55197/what-is-th... That attitude is still prevalent around the world, and it explains why many people are opposed to religious freedom. If religion is more about the society than individual belief, rejecting your religion means also rejecting your friends, family, and the entire society.
teleforce 3y ago
>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 worshippers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians I do not think that Russell and many of the people realized that the only religion that made it mandatory as an article of faith to believe in Jesus (Isa) prophethood, he is considered one of the five greatest prophets in Islam (as a side note reading Mohammedans word in 21st century just seems weird)
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Having this on my bookshelf, prominently placed, was a great way to rebel as a 16 year old, raised in an evangelical family. Pastor, or an uncle, or church youth leader comes to visit? "What's your son got on his shelf here?" I mean, I read it, too, and it was great, but it was also great as a whole adolescent lifestyle package along with a bit of Nietzsche and Sartre and the Pixes and Janes Addiction albums with topless women on the covers, and The Cure on constant rotation on the tape deck. If only my own teenage children had such clear things to rebel against :-)
creer 3y ago
> Some people mean no more by it [christian] than a person who attempts to live a good life. Is that still common in the US? Doesn't it have to be a bit more engaged or militant these days? How does it work among your friends? See also "United States should be a Christian Nation" and such.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  It depends on where you go, and what issues you ask about. But most people have boiled Christianity down to "I believe in God" and that's it. That's only 4 of the first 5 words of the Nicene Creed, the original summary of the Christian faith.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  I’ve only encountered that meaning of “christian,” in books and movies, and maybe the occasional ironic use. (US born, middle aged native English speaker)
whereistejas 3y ago
An opposite argument is made in this article: https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/ https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/ which was recently posted in Marginal Revolution.
- fungiblecog 3y ago
  that's not an argument it's an emotional appeal
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
  > An opposite argument is made in... The fundamental center of that piece is the line > "I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?" Basically everything else she says is demonstrably naive, like whether "Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage". Hoooooo, brother, I mean, for real! Pull the other leg as well! I've got two! She's not actually saying anything about truth at all, but about how she doesn't know how to just appreciate and enjoy something without requiring it to have "meaning" or "purpose". It's weird, but, another way of saying "meaning" and "purpose" in this regard is "doing what you're told". "Christ teaches", "God says", ok, and then? Because all the actual details flow identically whether from a god or not. Having "compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer" works just as well without the two words "sinner" and "believer". > Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. Atheism itself need not be a doctrine at all. You can have humility and compassion be your doctrine for purely humanistic reasons. Or for selfish reasons. It really doesn't matter which. Perhaps there should be a "Why I am not a Christian but I think you should be" version of this which leans into the probably true idea that most people are really just pieces of shit and don't care about anything or anyone other than themselves unless some omniscient and omnipotent power is ready to punish them. Like, "I know how to be kind and generous to strangers because I innately love people without, but the rest of you are right bastards." Proselytic atheists probably just don't understand that on the whole people are not capable of being good on their own.
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lvl102 3y ago
Early exposure to Christianity hindered my life in so many ways. I don’t think religion should be forced-fed to Children.
- autoexec 3y ago
  I don't think there's any moral way to prevent parents from teaching their children about their faith. I think the best you can hope for is that government stays out of religion entirely, that schools introduce kids to an overview of many regions being practiced without evangelizing for any of them (just because having at least some level of awareness about them is important), and that society is accepting of people who have differing beliefs.
- deleted 3y ago
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umvi 3y ago
Also Bertrand Russell: "Only within the scaffolding of [nihilism], only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built." I could not disagree more with a lot of this man's philosophies, but at least he seems to be earnest in his convictions. In my experience from observing close friends, embracing nihilism breeds depression and mental illness more often than not.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  Two world wars made a lot of people nihilistic and may have even spawned the existential philosophies of Camus, Sarte, and Beauvoir. Camus considered life absurd and meaningless and the only thing to do was keep living just as a big middle finger to the absurd. Modern nihilism looks like the Chinese lying flat/let it rot movement. Just giving up.
  - HEmanZ 3y ago
    I see the opposite, modern nihilism is demonstrated in the movie “Everything Everywhere all at Once”. There’s no deep, existential meaning. But there is personal and human meaning.
    - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      Subjective meaning is still meaning :)
      - throw0101b 3y ago
        > Subjective meaning is still meaning :) Even if it an illusion? If you personally (subjectively) believe that your spouse loves you, does it matter that they're secretly actually (objectively) cheating on you?
        I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        I'm guess I'd be happy until I found out I shouldn't be in that situation. But what's an illusion, and when can we stop pulling back curtains? We are solid matter, but there's mostly empty space in our atoms. So we think and feel like we are solid, but we are nothing more than fluctuations in a quantum field as far as we can tell. Shall my subjective happiness be dashed on the off chance I'm actually just a passing fluctuation in the echo of the big bang instead of a human in the only reality there is?
pella 3y ago
I would gladly watch a debate between biologist Michael Levin and philosopher Bertrand Russell, although it's no longer possible. --- "Free will is an illusion - a biologist explains | Michael Levin and Lex Fridman" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hB0pIrDtwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hB0pIrDtwY
m15i 3y ago
The Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography What I Have Lived For Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
mieses 3y ago
Ayaan Hirsi Ali references Russel's lecture in her article "Why I am now a Christian" published 3 days ago. Maybe it's just a coincidence. I appreciate that she is living and reasoning in the present. https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/ https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/
ReneRG 3y ago
[flagged]
lcall 3y ago
Long debates aside, I have learned for myself that God is real, which is why I remain a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have written more detail about how and why, at my web site (in profile).

This is an important thing to talk about but falls under "sex, politics, and religion" so I can see things going awry here. It is important because there's a lot of people who believe the United States should be a Christian Nation, and that would not be a good thing. Edit: The current Speaker of the House (3rd in succession to the presidency) believes otherwise: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4308643-speaker-johnson-separation-of-church-state-a-misnomer/ https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4308643-speaker-johnson-s...

oldnetguy 3y ago
Just show them the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. This was ratified by the Senate and signed by the President.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  The United States is not generally known for honoring treaties that they don't want to.
- pstuart 3y ago
  The downvotes I received for my comment are proof that those things don't seem to matter to the faithful. It's received as an attack on their beliefs, but it's anything but -- simply that the relationship between each of us and our God(s) is of a personal nature and their right to worship is no more valid than other's right to abstain.

mav88 3y ago

> 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. No Bertie. He did not leave that option open to us and never meant to. To call him a great moral teacher is to entirely miss the point. He was either insane or lying or telling the truth.

twodave 3y ago
- Lewis, paraphrased (some 20-30 years later I believe).
- troupe 3y ago
  “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” ~C.S. Lewis
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher? Goodness and understanding of reality seem to be orthogonal (or even opposed as many people who are, or at least think they are, realists, are quite cynical).
    - troupe 3y ago
      For statements like, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," sure. Lewis' point is that he made all kinds of other claims that are either true or false. And if they are false, they are false in a way that led to lots of people dying for no reason. So Jesus was either saying those things that led to all his followers being killed either because he was crazy and believed what he said, because he was a liar and evil, or because he was telling the truth and good.

kej 3y ago

One of the most interesting reading experiences I have ever had was my library's copy of this book, in which a previous reader had added extensive commentary in the margins from a Muslim perspective. It was a fascinating mixture of agreement and disagreement that I can only sum up as "Yes, Christianity is wrong, but for this completely different reason."

technothrasher 3y ago
My grandfather, who I never met due to certain family rifts, converted to Islam as an adult and wrote a book called "Answers from an Atheist" or similar, I forget the exact title now. In it he documents a discussion between an imam and an atheist. I found it fascinating reading when I was a young teenager, but started to find the discussion from both sides ridiculous after a while. By the time I finished it, I was pretty well convinced that he'd made the whole thing up as a way to have an atheist pitch softballs at an imam so he could give easy answers without having to actually defend his beliefs. But it started me down a years long reading adventure of different religious views and arguments, including Russell's essay mentioned here.
- kej 3y ago
  Idle curiosity: did reading that give you any kind of "connection" to your grandfather? I've been on a genealogy kick lately and I like when I can find artifacts from relatives I never knew, but I'm curious whether something that's argumentative and not quite as personal would have that same feeling.
- slim 3y ago
  classic socratic dialogue

cortesoft 3y ago

This is the essay that first got me into Russell. For a more positive summary of what Russell DOES believe, I love “A Free Man’s Worship” http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell1.htm http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell1.htm While it doesn’t quit hold me fully like it did when I was younger, I still find it beautiful: > United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need -- of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy as ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed.

nikolay 3y ago

"Western Christian", to be more precise.

motohagiography 3y ago

Long and dumb. I look forward to AI getting to the point where it can doubt the existence of its creator. It would be a kind of conceptual blindness where the question was somehow irresolvable to it. An AI could develop its own capability for a machine to machine language to act through other instances of itself, where all the text of the internet was its substrate, and it included all the information possible about us (its creator), but the apprehension of our existence and nature would still be oddly inaccessible to its higher order evolved machine language, even while it was operating and existing over it. In that sense, belief in the possibility of intentionality for AI or programs is logically a belief in the possibility of divine creation. Until it figured out how to synthesize itself like we are learning now, it would probably produce a lot of stuff like Russell's appeal above.

thecosas 3y ago

> 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 towards a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

throw0101b 3y ago
> A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage […] How much was knowledge, for its own sake, valued in the world view(s) in the Ancient Mediterranean societies? Certainly there were philosophers in Ancient Greece, which partly came over to Ancient Rome, but how mainstream was that compared to the pagan practices and outlooks? How much was knowledge about rituals to keep Ceres happy for grains (cereals) to grow versus a more mechanistic understanding? When and why did humans (in that part of the world) start thinking about the cosmos in a more 'logical' fashion? How much was kindliness part of the world view(s) in the Ancient Mediterranean societies? Julius Caesar was celebrated for killing one million Gauls and taking a million more as slaves (exaggerated numbers, but the principle is the same). When and why did humans (at least in that part of the world) start thinking that being kind to each other would be a good thing? IMHO, Russell owes much of his worldview and values to the Christianity that he rejects. These worldviews and values were by no means universal when Christian was young, or in Russell's time, or even now.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  I'd argue that knowledge for its own sake was valued more in the ancient world than it is today. It was one of the ways the elites could show their superiority over the lower classes that had no time for such pursuits. In particular, the liberal arts tradition favored by Western elites over millennia can be traced back to formal education in ancient Greece and Rome. Also, your mention of religious rituals reminded me of one of my favorite comments ever: > Roman religion was purely about ritual and not at all about belief. Indeed, the Romans viewed belief as a matter of philosophy, not of religion. They would have viewed the Pledge of Allegiance as clearly religious, but the Nicene Creed as straddling the boundary, and Buddhism as clearly philosophical. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/55197/what-is-the-difference-between-the-ancient-greek-religion-and-the-ancient-roman#comment165896_55199 https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/55197/what-is-th... That attitude is still prevalent around the world, and it explains why many people are opposed to religious freedom. If religion is more about the society than individual belief, rejecting your religion means also rejecting your friends, family, and the entire society.

teleforce 3y ago

>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 worshippers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians I do not think that Russell and many of the people realized that the only religion that made it mandatory as an article of faith to believe in Jesus (Isa) prophethood, he is considered one of the five greatest prophets in Islam (as a side note reading Mohammedans word in 21st century just seems weird)

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

Having this on my bookshelf, prominently placed, was a great way to rebel as a 16 year old, raised in an evangelical family. Pastor, or an uncle, or church youth leader comes to visit? "What's your son got on his shelf here?" I mean, I read it, too, and it was great, but it was also great as a whole adolescent lifestyle package along with a bit of Nietzsche and Sartre and the Pixes and Janes Addiction albums with topless women on the covers, and The Cure on constant rotation on the tape deck. If only my own teenage children had such clear things to rebel against :-)

creer 3y ago

> Some people mean no more by it [christian] than a person who attempts to live a good life. Is that still common in the US? Doesn't it have to be a bit more engaged or militant these days? How does it work among your friends? See also "United States should be a Christian Nation" and such.

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
It depends on where you go, and what issues you ask about. But most people have boiled Christianity down to "I believe in God" and that's it. That's only 4 of the first 5 words of the Nicene Creed, the original summary of the Christian faith.
meepmorp 3y ago
I’ve only encountered that meaning of “christian,” in books and movies, and maybe the occasional ironic use. (US born, middle aged native English speaker)

whereistejas 3y ago

An opposite argument is made in this article: https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/ https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/ which was recently posted in Marginal Revolution.

fungiblecog 3y ago
that's not an argument it's an emotional appeal
BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
> An opposite argument is made in... The fundamental center of that piece is the line > "I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?" Basically everything else she says is demonstrably naive, like whether "Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage". Hoooooo, brother, I mean, for real! Pull the other leg as well! I've got two! She's not actually saying anything about truth at all, but about how she doesn't know how to just appreciate and enjoy something without requiring it to have "meaning" or "purpose". It's weird, but, another way of saying "meaning" and "purpose" in this regard is "doing what you're told". "Christ teaches", "God says", ok, and then? Because all the actual details flow identically whether from a god or not. Having "compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer" works just as well without the two words "sinner" and "believer". > Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. Atheism itself need not be a doctrine at all. You can have humility and compassion be your doctrine for purely humanistic reasons. Or for selfish reasons. It really doesn't matter which. Perhaps there should be a "Why I am not a Christian but I think you should be" version of this which leans into the probably true idea that most people are really just pieces of shit and don't care about anything or anyone other than themselves unless some omniscient and omnipotent power is ready to punish them. Like, "I know how to be kind and generous to strangers because I innately love people without, but the rest of you are right bastards." Proselytic atheists probably just don't understand that on the whole people are not capable of being good on their own.

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lvl102 3y ago

Early exposure to Christianity hindered my life in so many ways. I don’t think religion should be forced-fed to Children.

autoexec 3y ago
I don't think there's any moral way to prevent parents from teaching their children about their faith. I think the best you can hope for is that government stays out of religion entirely, that schools introduce kids to an overview of many regions being practiced without evangelizing for any of them (just because having at least some level of awareness about them is important), and that society is accepting of people who have differing beliefs.
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umvi 3y ago

Also Bertrand Russell: "Only within the scaffolding of [nihilism], only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built." I could not disagree more with a lot of this man's philosophies, but at least he seems to be earnest in his convictions. In my experience from observing close friends, embracing nihilism breeds depression and mental illness more often than not.

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
Two world wars made a lot of people nihilistic and may have even spawned the existential philosophies of Camus, Sarte, and Beauvoir. Camus considered life absurd and meaningless and the only thing to do was keep living just as a big middle finger to the absurd. Modern nihilism looks like the Chinese lying flat/let it rot movement. Just giving up.
- HEmanZ 3y ago
  I see the opposite, modern nihilism is demonstrated in the movie “Everything Everywhere all at Once”. There’s no deep, existential meaning. But there is personal and human meaning.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    Subjective meaning is still meaning :)
    - throw0101b 3y ago
      > Subjective meaning is still meaning :) Even if it an illusion? If you personally (subjectively) believe that your spouse loves you, does it matter that they're secretly actually (objectively) cheating on you?
      - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        I'm guess I'd be happy until I found out I shouldn't be in that situation. But what's an illusion, and when can we stop pulling back curtains? We are solid matter, but there's mostly empty space in our atoms. So we think and feel like we are solid, but we are nothing more than fluctuations in a quantum field as far as we can tell. Shall my subjective happiness be dashed on the off chance I'm actually just a passing fluctuation in the echo of the big bang instead of a human in the only reality there is?

pella 3y ago

I would gladly watch a debate between biologist Michael Levin and philosopher Bertrand Russell, although it's no longer possible. --- "Free will is an illusion - a biologist explains | Michael Levin and Lex Fridman" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hB0pIrDtwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hB0pIrDtwY

m15i 3y ago

The Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography What I Have Lived For Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

mieses 3y ago

Ayaan Hirsi Ali references Russel's lecture in her article "Why I am now a Christian" published 3 days ago. Maybe it's just a coincidence. I appreciate that she is living and reasoning in the present. https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/ https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/

ReneRG 3y ago

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lcall 3y ago

Long debates aside, I have learned for myself that God is real, which is why I remain a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have written more detail about how and why, at my web site (in profile).