Reviews
Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russell
isaacbarton's review
2.0
For as sharp as Bertrand Russell is in other things I read by him. This is lame. Still a few steps up from Richard Dawkins though.
megahugestrike's review
5.0
Russell doesn't just have a problem with Christianity, but with all religions that believe in god, immortality, and persecute others for not sharing these beliefs.
The first essay goes over the rational arguments of Christianity, arguing against Thomas Aquinas's arguments one by one. I wish he expanded more on these I think there was still more to be said about them. However, the reason why he does this is clear, since he claims "the real reason why people accept religion has nothing to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds" and there is an "amazing power of desire in blinding even very able men to fallacies which would otherwise be obvious..." Basically, no matter how much he disproves the rational argument for Christianity, it wouldn't change much since these rational arguments are only secondary to emotional belief or faith.
Throughout the book he makes the point of the psychological reasons for being a Christian. In his words, "mainly upon fear... partly the terror of the unknown and partly... the wish to feel you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you...", and obviously "fear of death". Thus most people are Christian in order to soothe these fears rather than come to this conclusion on a rational basis.
There is also a lot of mention of the tranny of the majority, which calls that another reason to be Christian is because of societal pressure and persecution from the Christian majority in power. He makes a case how throughout history, Christians use their position of power to silence independent thinkers that go against the widely held Christian belief of the time, and makes the case that Christians are against intellectual and moral progress. For instance, the church opposed Galileo, Darwin, Freud, persecuted minorities like Jews through history, had the crusades, persecuted during the inquisition, burned witches, defended American slavery, and generally seem to often be on the wrong side of history despite being the majority opinion of the time. Another great example of this comes from Russell's own life at the end of the book, which I will address later.
A strong additional point that he makes to this is that while one could say Christianity is mild and tolerant now, this cannot be attributed to Christianity but rather due to the freethinkers that it persecuted. In his words "individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual". Thus it is only due to the pushback of independent thinkers that progress is made and why modern Christians do not have the same rigid beliefs in regards to birth control, homosexuality, intolerance of other religions, etc. as they did historically.
Another interesting point was that since Russell is a rationalist through and through, he also doesn't seem to believe in free will, since he understands that all actions can be traced back through their causes. Because of this, he is greatly interested in education of children and believes that through education we can influence all of human behavior. This causes him to make some pretty wild points, such as that that emotions like "fear and hatred... can now be almost wholly eliminated from human nature by educational, economic, and political reforms."
He also notices how in our modern time education of children is more and more the responsibility of the state. For instance, children attend public school, learn about Christianity at church rather than at home, and are born in hospitals rather than at home, which are responsibilities that would take place with the family in the past rather than the state. Since these responsibilities before often fell on women, it is only natural that through the rise of individualism "divorce becomes more frequent... the family is still further weakened, since in effect it usually results in a child's having only one parent". He doesn't argue this individualism is a bad thing, just that the state needs to take a greater role and replace the family unit, even proposing the idea "to make childbearing a well-paid profession" so that some women would have careers basically as breeders while most women could live independently, which is pretty controversial but at least logically follows in his argument of the state replacing the family.
In regards to morality, he claims human desires create should morality, but currently superstition (Christian superstition) has a hold on morality. He says other than superstition, there is no reason why there is a stigma unjustly cast upon children of unmarried parents, against birth control, sexual intercourse before marriage, etc. These stigmas often upheld by religion causes suffering to millions, which is "fiendish cruelty" in Russell's eyes and can't be called morality.
Russell was living at a time of Nazism and Communism, fear of which caused a rally to Christian belief during this period. He claims that the Christian argument that these atheism of these regimes is what causes their atrocities is a weak one, since despite, their atheism they closely resemble the intolerant Christianity of medieval times with a tyrannical majority, with a "doctrine essential to salvation" which is "held as sacred and inviolable truth", the belief in which causes the atrocities such those committed by Communists but also caused the Christian atrocities such as the inquisition. Thus, it is not strictly the belief in god or atheism that causes these atrocities, but belief in any objective truth and persecuting those who don't believe it.
In fact he makes a great point that "it is the similarities between Christianity and Communism that make them incompatible". This is because when when two people's who's belief is based in faith disagree, there is no grounds or possibility to appeal to the other, causing mutual hatred. Contrasting this to two scientists who disagree, they don't feel the need to hate each other because "they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because as men of science, they know that neither is infallible."
Another point I liked was regarding the problems with personal salvation in Christianity, he says "the world is a unity, and the man who pretends to live independently is a conscious or unconscious parasite." I like this quote itself, but he also makes the point that personal salvation (or any individualistic philosophy) often doesn't take into account others, leading to atrocities where someone "has to persuade himself that the slave or proletarian or colored man is of inferior clay, and that his sufferings do not matter."
The final section talks about how Russell was prevented from taking a position at New York City College in 1940, leading to being banned from teaching in the United States. The Catholic judge for the case McGeehan and other opponents opposed Russell for reasons such as "teaching a philosophy of life which denies god", not calling masturbation and homosexuality sins, and other similar reasons. These reasons made me want to blow my brains out but also give evidence to Russell's earlier point of the persecution of freethinkers by religious leaders, attempting to silence opinions contrary to theirs. Additionally, despite the negative consequences at the time, by standing up for ideas such as separation of religion from education during this time we now see that he was on the right side of history in this case.
I put a lot of quotes here since Russell is actually very clear and eloquent, and is able to make his own point more clearly than me rephrasing it.
The first essay goes over the rational arguments of Christianity, arguing against Thomas Aquinas's arguments one by one. I wish he expanded more on these I think there was still more to be said about them. However, the reason why he does this is clear, since he claims "the real reason why people accept religion has nothing to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds" and there is an "amazing power of desire in blinding even very able men to fallacies which would otherwise be obvious..." Basically, no matter how much he disproves the rational argument for Christianity, it wouldn't change much since these rational arguments are only secondary to emotional belief or faith.
Throughout the book he makes the point of the psychological reasons for being a Christian. In his words, "mainly upon fear... partly the terror of the unknown and partly... the wish to feel you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you...", and obviously "fear of death". Thus most people are Christian in order to soothe these fears rather than come to this conclusion on a rational basis.
There is also a lot of mention of the tranny of the majority, which calls that another reason to be Christian is because of societal pressure and persecution from the Christian majority in power. He makes a case how throughout history, Christians use their position of power to silence independent thinkers that go against the widely held Christian belief of the time, and makes the case that Christians are against intellectual and moral progress. For instance, the church opposed Galileo, Darwin, Freud, persecuted minorities like Jews through history, had the crusades, persecuted during the inquisition, burned witches, defended American slavery, and generally seem to often be on the wrong side of history despite being the majority opinion of the time. Another great example of this comes from Russell's own life at the end of the book, which I will address later.
A strong additional point that he makes to this is that while one could say Christianity is mild and tolerant now, this cannot be attributed to Christianity but rather due to the freethinkers that it persecuted. In his words "individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual". Thus it is only due to the pushback of independent thinkers that progress is made and why modern Christians do not have the same rigid beliefs in regards to birth control, homosexuality, intolerance of other religions, etc. as they did historically.
Another interesting point was that since Russell is a rationalist through and through, he also doesn't seem to believe in free will, since he understands that all actions can be traced back through their causes. Because of this, he is greatly interested in education of children and believes that through education we can influence all of human behavior. This causes him to make some pretty wild points, such as that that emotions like "fear and hatred... can now be almost wholly eliminated from human nature by educational, economic, and political reforms."
He also notices how in our modern time education of children is more and more the responsibility of the state. For instance, children attend public school, learn about Christianity at church rather than at home, and are born in hospitals rather than at home, which are responsibilities that would take place with the family in the past rather than the state. Since these responsibilities before often fell on women, it is only natural that through the rise of individualism "divorce becomes more frequent... the family is still further weakened, since in effect it usually results in a child's having only one parent". He doesn't argue this individualism is a bad thing, just that the state needs to take a greater role and replace the family unit, even proposing the idea "to make childbearing a well-paid profession" so that some women would have careers basically as breeders while most women could live independently, which is pretty controversial but at least logically follows in his argument of the state replacing the family.
In regards to morality, he claims human desires create should morality, but currently superstition (Christian superstition) has a hold on morality. He says other than superstition, there is no reason why there is a stigma unjustly cast upon children of unmarried parents, against birth control, sexual intercourse before marriage, etc. These stigmas often upheld by religion causes suffering to millions, which is "fiendish cruelty" in Russell's eyes and can't be called morality.
Russell was living at a time of Nazism and Communism, fear of which caused a rally to Christian belief during this period. He claims that the Christian argument that these atheism of these regimes is what causes their atrocities is a weak one, since despite, their atheism they closely resemble the intolerant Christianity of medieval times with a tyrannical majority, with a "doctrine essential to salvation" which is "held as sacred and inviolable truth", the belief in which causes the atrocities such those committed by Communists but also caused the Christian atrocities such as the inquisition. Thus, it is not strictly the belief in god or atheism that causes these atrocities, but belief in any objective truth and persecuting those who don't believe it.
In fact he makes a great point that "it is the similarities between Christianity and Communism that make them incompatible". This is because when when two people's who's belief is based in faith disagree, there is no grounds or possibility to appeal to the other, causing mutual hatred. Contrasting this to two scientists who disagree, they don't feel the need to hate each other because "they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because as men of science, they know that neither is infallible."
Another point I liked was regarding the problems with personal salvation in Christianity, he says "the world is a unity, and the man who pretends to live independently is a conscious or unconscious parasite." I like this quote itself, but he also makes the point that personal salvation (or any individualistic philosophy) often doesn't take into account others, leading to atrocities where someone "has to persuade himself that the slave or proletarian or colored man is of inferior clay, and that his sufferings do not matter."
The final section talks about how Russell was prevented from taking a position at New York City College in 1940, leading to being banned from teaching in the United States. The Catholic judge for the case McGeehan and other opponents opposed Russell for reasons such as "teaching a philosophy of life which denies god", not calling masturbation and homosexuality sins, and other similar reasons. These reasons made me want to blow my brains out but also give evidence to Russell's earlier point of the persecution of freethinkers by religious leaders, attempting to silence opinions contrary to theirs. Additionally, despite the negative consequences at the time, by standing up for ideas such as separation of religion from education during this time we now see that he was on the right side of history in this case.
I put a lot of quotes here since Russell is actually very clear and eloquent, and is able to make his own point more clearly than me rephrasing it.
davehershey's review
3.0
Recently I watched the movie God is not Dead (which I did not like). During the scene where the Christian student stands up to his atheist professor, the professor adds an assignment for the whole class as punishment for this one student's recalcitrance. The assignment is to read Bertrand Russell's Why I am Not a Christian on top of their other assigned reading.
I chuckled for I was, ironically, reading this very book at the time. Russell was a world-famous philosopher and outspoken atheist. The title of the book is really just the title of an essay that is the first chapter. The essay is included in a variety of editions of books, each with slightly different other essays included. In the essay Russell quickly moves through a variety of reasons why he is not a Christian. Due to the scope covered, he does not go very deep into any one reason. Yet his arguments do manage to pack a punch and his influence on today's atheists is obvious.
Actually, it might benefit more popular atheist writers to emulate Russell. I found myself more sympathetic to his arguments then to those of Dawkins, Harris and their ilk, though I am not sure why. Maybe it is distance - Russell is dead and unable to speak anymore so I only see his writings, not his obnoxious twitter posts. For whatever reason, there is something about Russell that both makes me like him more and challenges me more then contemporary atheists.
While I am challenged, and I enjoy a good challenge, I have no intention of abandoning Christianity. I think Christians ought to read books like this because asking and seeking answers to such questions does sharpen our faith. In the end, I think faith makes sense. In this vein, I enjoyed reading the debate between Russell and Catholic Frederick Copleston. Perhaps not surprisingly, I thought Copleston provided better arguments (guess that's why I am still a Christian). So I'd recommend this book to Christians who are interested in tough questions, maybe to Christians who have read lots of Christian apologetics but not much from the other side. Its worth the read, even if I think the Christian case is stron
I chuckled for I was, ironically, reading this very book at the time. Russell was a world-famous philosopher and outspoken atheist. The title of the book is really just the title of an essay that is the first chapter. The essay is included in a variety of editions of books, each with slightly different other essays included. In the essay Russell quickly moves through a variety of reasons why he is not a Christian. Due to the scope covered, he does not go very deep into any one reason. Yet his arguments do manage to pack a punch and his influence on today's atheists is obvious.
Actually, it might benefit more popular atheist writers to emulate Russell. I found myself more sympathetic to his arguments then to those of Dawkins, Harris and their ilk, though I am not sure why. Maybe it is distance - Russell is dead and unable to speak anymore so I only see his writings, not his obnoxious twitter posts. For whatever reason, there is something about Russell that both makes me like him more and challenges me more then contemporary atheists.
While I am challenged, and I enjoy a good challenge, I have no intention of abandoning Christianity. I think Christians ought to read books like this because asking and seeking answers to such questions does sharpen our faith. In the end, I think faith makes sense. In this vein, I enjoyed reading the debate between Russell and Catholic Frederick Copleston. Perhaps not surprisingly, I thought Copleston provided better arguments (guess that's why I am still a Christian). So I'd recommend this book to Christians who are interested in tough questions, maybe to Christians who have read lots of Christian apologetics but not much from the other side. Its worth the read, even if I think the Christian case is stron
eb00kie's review against another edition
5.0
May I just say that I love the Routledge Russell covers? The recurring elements make such a pleasant contrast with the originality and incisiveness of the book.