Why I Am Not a Christian (BR)

7/31/2019 Why I Am Not a Christian (BR)

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Bertrand Russell

Why I Am Not A Christian

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Introductory note

Russell delivered this leure on Mar 6, 1927

to the National Secular Society, South London

Bran, at Battersea Town Hall. Published in

pamphlet form in that same year, the essay

subsequently aieved new fame with Paul

Edwards edition of Russells book, Why I Am

Not a Christian and Other Essays(1957).

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As your Chairman has told you,

the subje about whi I am going toeak to you tonight is Why I AmNot a Christian. Perhaps it would beas well, first of all, to try to make outwhat one means by the word Christian.

It is used these days in a very loosesense by a great many people. Somepeople mean no more by it than aperson who attempts to live a good

life. In that sense I suppose therewould be Christians in all ses andcreeds; but I do not think that that isthe proper sense of the word, if onlybecause it would imply that all the

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people who are not Christians all

the Buddhists, Confucians, Moham-medans, and so on are not tryingto live a good life. I do not mean by aChristian any person who tries to live

decently according to his lights. Ithink that you must have a certainamount of definite belief before youhave a right to call yourself a Chris-tian. The word does not have quite

su a full-blooded meaning now asit had in the times of St. Augustineand St. Thomas Aquinas. In thosedays, if a man said that he was a

Christian it was known what hemeant. You accepted a whole collec-tion of creeds whi were set out withgreat precision, and every single syl-lable of those creeds you believed

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with the whole strength of your con-

viions.

What Is a Christian?Nowadays it is not quite that. We

have to be a little more vague in ourmeaning of Christianity. I think,however, that there are two differentitems whi are quite essential toanybody calling himself a Christian.

The first is one of a dogmatic naturenamely, that you must believe inGod and immortality. If you do notbelieve in those two things, I do not

think that you can properly call your-self a Christian. Then, further thanthat, as the name implies, you musthave some kind of belief aboutChrist. The Mohammedans, for in-

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stance, also believe in God and in

immortality, and yet they would notcall themselves Christians. I think

you must have at the very lowest thebelief that Christ was, if not divine,

at least the best and wisest of men. Ifyou are not going to believe thatmu about Christ, I do not think

you have any right to call yourself aChristian. Of course, there is another

sense, whi you find in Whitaker Al-manack and in geography books,where the population of the world issaid to be divided into Christians,

Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetishworshipers, and so on; and in thatsense we are all Christians. The geog-raphy books count us all in, but thatis a purely geographical sense, whi

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I suppose we can ignore.Therefore I

take it that when I tell you why I amnot a Christian I have to tell you twodifferent things: first, why I do notbelieve in God and in immortality;

and, secondly, why I do not thinkthat Christ was the best and wisest ofmen, although I grant him a very highdegree of moral goodness. But for the successful efforts ofunbelievers in the past, I could nottake so elastic a definition of Christi-anity as that. As I said before, inolden days it had a mu more full-

blooded sense. For instance, it in-cluded he belief in hell. Belief ineternal hell-fire was an essential itemof Christian belief until pretty recenttimes. In this country, as you know, it

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ceased to be an essential item because

of a decision of the Privy Council,and from that decision the Ar-bishop of Canterbury and the Ar-bishop of York dissented; but in this

country our religion is settled by Aof Parliament, and therefore the PrivyCouncil was able to override theirGraces and hell was no longer neces-sary to a Christian. Consequently I

shall not insist that a Christian mustbelieve in hell.

The Existence of God

To come to this question of theexistence of God: it is a large and se-rious question, and if I were to at-tempt to deal with it in any adequatemanner I should have to keep you

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here until Kingdom Come, so that

you will have to excuse me if I dealwith it in a somewhat summary fash-ion. You know, of course, that theCatholic Chur has laid it down as a

dogma that the existence of God canbe proved by the unaided reason.That is a somewhat curious dogma,but it is one of their dogmas. Theyhad to introduce it because at one

time the freethinkers adopted thehabit of saying that there were suand su arguments whi mere rea-son might urge against the existence

of God, but of course they knew as amatter of faith that God did exist.The arguments and the reasons wereset out at great length, and theCatholic Chur felt that they must

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stop it. Therefore they laid it down

that the existence of God can beproved by the unaided reason andthey had to set up what they consid-ered were arguments to prove it.

There are, of course, a number ofthem, but I shall take only a few.

The First-cause ArgumentPerhaps the simplest and easiest

to understand is the argument of theFirst Cause. (It is maintained thateverything we see in this world has acause, and as you go bain the ain

of causes further and further youmust come to a First Cause, and tothat First Cause you give the name ofGod.) That argument, I suppose,does not carry very mu weight

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nowadays, because, in the first place,

cause is not quite what it used to be.The philosophers and the men of sci-ence have got going on cause, and ithas not anything like the vitality it

used to have; but, apart from that,you can see that the argument thatthere must be a First Cause is onethat cannot have any validity. I maysay that when I was a young man and

was debating these questions very se-riously in my mind, I for a long timeaccepted the argument of the FirstCause, until one day, at the age of

eighteen, I read John Stuart MillsAutobiography, and I there found thissentence: My father taught me thatthe question Who made me? cannotbe answered, since it immediately

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suggests the further question Who

made god? That very simple sen-tence showed me, as I still think, thefallacy in the argument of the FirstCause. If everything must have a

cause, then God must have a cause. Ifthere can be anything without acause, it may just as well be the worldas God, so that there cannot be anyvalidity in that argument. It is exaly

of the same nature as the Hindusview, that the world rested upon anelephant and the elephant restedupon a tortoise; and when they said,

How about the tortoise? the Indiansaid, Suppose we ange the sub-je. The argument is really no betterthan that. There is no reason why theworld could not have come into be-

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ing without a cause; nor, on the other

hand, is there any reason why itshould not have always existed. Thereis no reason to suppose that theworld had a beginning at all. The idea

that things must have a beginning isreally due to the poverty of ourimagination. Therefore, perhaps, Ineed not waste any more time uponthe argument about the First Cause.

The Natural-law ArgumentThen there is a very common ar-

gument from natural law. That was a

favourite argument all through theeighteenth century, eecially underthe influence of Sir Isaac Newton andhis cosmogony. People observed theplanets going around the sun accord-

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ing to the law of gravitation, and they

thought that God had given a behestto these planets to move in that par-ticular fashion, and that was why theydid so. That was, of course, a con-

venient and simple explanation thatsaved them the trouble of looking anyfurther for explanations of the law ofgravitation. Nowadays we explain thelaw of gravitation in a somewhat

complicated fashion that Einstein hasintroduced. I do not propose to give

you a leure on the law of gravita-tion, as interpreted by Einstein, be-

cause that again would take sometime; at any rate, you no longer havethe sort of natural law that you had inthe Newtonian system, where, forsome reason that nobody could un-

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derstand, nature behaved in a uni-

form fashion. We now find that agreat many things we thought werenatural laws are really human conven-tions. You know that even in the re-

motest depths of stellar ace thereare still three feet to a yard. That is,no doubt, a very remarkable fa, but

you would hardly call it a law of na-ture. And a great many things that

have been regarded as laws of natureare of that kind. On the other hand,where you can get down to anyknowledge of what atoms aually do,

you will find they are mu less sub-je to law than people thought, andthat the laws at whi you arrive arestatistical averages of just the sortthat would emerge from ance.

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There is, as we all know, a law that if

you throw dice you will get doublesixes only about once in thirty-sixtimes, and we do not regard that asevidence that the fall of the dice is

regulated by design; on the contrary,if the double sixes came every time weshould think that there was design.

The laws of nature are of that sort asregards a great many of them. They

are statistical averages su as wouldemerge from the laws ofance; andthat makes this whole business ofnatural law mu less impressive than

it formerly was. Quite apart fromthat, whi represents the momentarystate of science that may ange to-morrow, the whole idea that naturallaws imply a lawgiver is due to a con-

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fusion between natural and human

laws. Human laws are behests com-manding you to behave a certain way,in whi you may oose to behave,or you may oose not to behave; but

natural laws are a description of howthings do in fa behave, and being amere description of what they in fado, you cannot argue that there mustbe somebody who told them to do

that, because even supposing thatthere were, you are then faced withthe question Why did God issue justthose natural laws and no others? If

you say that he did it simply from hisown good pleasure, and without anyreason, you then find that there issomething whi is not subje tolaw, and so your train of natural law

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is interrupted. If you say, as more

orthodox theologians do, that in allthe laws whi God issues he had areason for giving those laws ratherthan others the reason, of course,

being to create the best universe, al-though you would never think it tolook at it if there were a reason forthe laws whi God gave, then Godhimself was subje to law, and there-

fore you do not get any advantage byintroducing God as an intermediary.

You really have a law outside and an-terior to the divine edis, and God

does not serve your purpose, becausehe is not the ultimate lawgiver. Inshort, this whole argument aboutnatural law no longer has anythinglike the strength that it used to have.

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I am traveling on in time in my review

of the arguments. The arguments thatare used for the existence of Godange their araer as time goeson. They were at first hard intellec-

tual arguments embodying certainquite definite fallacies. As we come tomodern times they become less re-eable intelleually and more andmore affeed by a kind of moralising

vagueness.

The Argument from DesignThe next step in the process

brings us to the argument from de-sign. You all know the argument fromdesign: everything in the world ismade just so that we can manage tolive in the world, and if the world was

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ever so little different, we could not

manage to live in it. That is the ar-gument from design. It sometimestakes a rather curious form; for in-stance, it is argued that rabbits have

white tails in order to be easy toshoot. I do not know how rabbitswould view that application. It is aneasy argument to parody. You allknow Voltaires remark, that obvi-

ously the nose was designed to besu as to fit eacles. That sort ofparody has turned out to be notnearly so wide of the mark as it might

have seemed in the eighteenth cen-tury, because since the time of Dar-win we understand mu better whyliving creatures are adapted to theirenvironment. It is not that their envi-

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ronment was made to be suitable to

them but that they grew to be suit-able to it, and that is the basis of ad-aptation. There is no evidence of de-sign about it.

When you come to look into thisargument from design, it is a most as-tonishing thing that people can be-lieve that this world, with all thethings that are in it, with all its de-

fes, should be the best that om-nipotence and omniscience have beenable to produce in millions of years. Ireally cannot believe it. Do you think

that, if you were granted omnipo-tence and omniscience and millionsof years in whi to perfe yourworld, you could produce nothingbetter than the Ku Klux Klan or the

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Fascists? Moreover, if you accept the

ordinary laws of science, you have tosuppose that human life and life ingeneral on this planet will die out indue course: it is a stage in the decay

of the solar system; at a certain stageof decay you get the sort of condi-tions of temperature and so forthwhi are suitable to protoplasm, andthere is life for a short time in the life

of the whole solar system. You see inthe moon the sort of thing to whithe earth is tending somethingdead, cold, and lifeless.

I am told that that sort of view isdepressing, and people will some-times tell you that if they believedthat, they would not be able to go onliving. Do not believe it; it is all non-

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sense. Nobody really worries about

mu about what is going to happenmillions of years hence. Even if theythink they are worrying mu aboutthat, they are really deceiving them-

selves. They are worried about some-thing mu more mundane, or it maymerely be a bad digestion; but no-body is really seriously rendered un-happy by the thought of something

that is going to happen to this worldmillions and millions of years hence.

Therefore, although it is of course agloomy view to suppose that life will

die out at least I suppose we maysay so, although sometimes when Icontemplate the things that peopledo with their lives I think it is almosta consolation it is not su as to

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render life miserable. It merely makes

you turn your attention to otherthings.

The Moral Arguments for Deity

Now we rea one stage further inwhat I shall call the intelleual de-scent that the Theists have made intheir argumentations, and we cometo what are called the moral argu-

ments for the existence of God. Youall know, of course, that there used tobe in the old days three intelleualarguments for the existence of God,

all of whi were diosed of by Im-manuel Kant in the Critique of PureReason; but no sooner had he dis-posed of those arguments than he in-vented a new one, a moral argument,

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and that quite convinced him. He was

like many people: in intelleual mat-ters he was skeptical, but in moralmatters he believed implicitly in themaxims that he had imbibed at his

mothers knee. That illustrates whatthe psyoanalysts so mu empha-sise the immensely stronger holdupon us that our very early associa-tions have than those of later times.

Kant, as I say, invented a newmoral argument for the existence ofGod, and that in varying forms wasextremely popular during the nine-

teenth century. It has all sorts offorms. One form is to say therewould be no right or wrong unlessGod existed. I am not for the mo-ment concerned with whether there is

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a difference between right and

wrong, or whether there is not: that isanother question. The point I amconcerned with is that, if you arequite sure there is a difference be-

tween right and wrong, then you arein this situation: Is that differencedue to Gods fiat or is it not? If it isdue to Gods fiat, then for God him-self there is no difference between

right and wrong, and it is no longer asignificant statement to say that Godis good. If you are going to say, astheologians do, that God is good,

you must then say that right andwrong have some meaning whi isindependent of Gods fiat, becauseGods fiats are good and not bad in-dependently of the mere fa that he

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made them. If you are going to say

that, you will then have to say that itis not only through God that rightand wrong came into being, but thatthey are in their essence logically an-

terior to God. You could, of course,if you liked, say that there was a su-perior deity who gave orders to theGod that made this world, or couldtake up the line that some of the

gnostics took up a line whi I of-ten thought was a very plausibleone that as a matter of fa thisworld that we know was made by the

devil at a moment when God was notlooking. There is a good deal to besaid for that, and I am not concernedto refute it.

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The Argument for the Remedying of

InjusticeThen there is another very curious

form of moral argument, whi isthis: they say that the existence of

God is required in order to bring jus-tice into the world. In the part of thisuniverse that we know there is greatinjustice, and oen the good suffer,and oen the wied proer, and

one hardly knows whi of those isthe more annoying; but if you are go-ing to have justice in the universe as awhole you have to suppose a future

life to redress the balance of life hereon earth. So they say that there mustbe a God, and there must be Heavenand Hell in order that in the long runthere may be justice. That is a very

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curious argument. If you looked at

the matter from a scientific point ofview, you would say, Aer all, I onlyknow this world. I do not knowabout the rest of the universe, but so

far as one can argue at all on prob-abilities one would say that probablythis world is a fair sample, and ifthere is injustice here the odds arethat there is injustice elsewhere also.

Supposing you got a crate of orangesthat you opened, and you found allthe top layer of oranges bad, youwould not argue, The underneath

ones must be good, so as to redressthe balance. You would say, Proba-bly the whole lot is a bad consign-ment; and that is really what a scien-tific person would argue about the

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universe. He would say, Here we

find in this world a great deal of in-justice, and so far as that goes that isa reason for supposing that justicedoes not rule in the world; and there-

fore so far as it goes it affords a moralargument against deity and not in fa-vor of one. Of course I know thatthe sort of intelleual arguments thatI have been talking to you about are

not what really moves people. Whatreally moves people to believe in Godis not any intelleual argument at all.Most people believe in God because

they have been taught from early in-fancy to do it, and that is the mainreason.Then I think that the next mostpowerful reason is the wish for safety,

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a sort of feeling that there is a big

brother who will look aer you. Thatplays a very profound part in influ-encing peoples desire for a belief inGod.

The Character of ChristI now want to say a few words

upon a topic whi I oen think isnot quite sufficiently dealt with by

Rationalists, and that is the questionwhether Christ was the best and thewisest of men. It is generally takenfor granted that we should all agree

that that was so. I do not myself. Ithink that there are a good manypoints upon whi I agree with Christa great deal more than the professingChristians do. I do not know that I

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could go with Him all the way, but I

could go with Him mu further thanmost professing Christians can. Youwill remember that He said, Resistnot evil: but whosoever shall smite

thee on thy right eek, turn to himthe other also. That is not a newprecept or a new principle. It wasused by Lao-tse and Buddha some500 or 600 years before Christ, but it

is not a principle whi as a matter offa Christians accept. I have nodoubt that the present prime minister[Stanley Baldwin], for instance, is a

most sincere Christian, but I shouldnot advise any of you to go and smitehim on one eek. I think you mightfind that he thought this text was in-tended in a figurative sense.

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Then there is another point whiI consider excellent. You will remem-ber that Christ said, Judge not lest

ye be judged. That principle I do notthink you would find was popular in

the law courts of Christian countries.I have known in my time quite anumber of judges who were very ear-nest Christians, and none of themfelt that they were aing contrary to

Christian principles in what they did.Then Christ says, Give to him thatasketh of thee, and from him thatwould borrow of thee turn not thou

away. That is a very good principle.Your Chairman has reminded youthat we are not here to talk politics,but I cannot help observing that thelast general eleion was fought on

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the question of how desirable it was

to turn away from him that wouldborrow of thee, so that one must as-sume that the Liberals and Conserva-tives of this country are composed of

people who do not agree with theteaing of Christ, because they cer-tainly did very emphatically turn awayon that occasion.Then there is one other maxim ofChrist whi I think has a great dealin it, but I do not find that it is verypopular among some of our Christianfriends. He says, If thou wilt be per-

fe, go and sell that whi thou hast,and give to the poor. That is a veryexcellent maxim, but, as I say, it isnot mu praised. All these, Ithink, are good maxims, although

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they are a little difficult to live up to.

I do not profess to live up to themmyself; but then, aer all, it is notquite the same thing as for a Chris-tian.

Defects in Christs TeachingHaving granted the excellence of

these maxims, I come to certainpoints in whi I do not believe that

one can grant either the superlativewisdom or the superlative goodnessof Christ as depied in the Goels;and here I may say that one is not

concerned with the historical ques-tion. Historically it is quite doubtfulwhether Christ ever existed at all, andif He did we do not know anythingabout him, so that I am not con-

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cerned with the historical question,

whi is a very difficult one. I amconcerned with Christ as He appearsin the Goels, taking the Goelnarrative as it stands, and there one

does find some things that do notseem to be very wise. For one thing,he certainly thought that His secondcoming would occur in clouds ofglory before the death of all the peo-

ple who were living at that time.There are a great many texts thatprove that. He says, for instance, Yeshall not have gone over the cities of

Israel till the Son of Man be come.Then he says, There are some stand-ing here whi shall not taste deathtill the Son of Man comes into Hiskingdom; and there are a lot of

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places where it is quite clear that He

believed that His second comingwould happen during the lifetime ofmany then living. That was the beliefof His earlier followers, and it was

the basis of a good deal of His moralteaing. When He said, Take nothought for the morrow, and thingsof that sort, it was very largely be-cause He thought that the second

coming was going to be very soon,and that all ordinary mundane affairsdid not count. I have, as a matter offa, known some Christians who did

believe that the second coming wasimminent. I knew a parson whofrightened his congregation terriblyby telling them that the second com-ing was very imminent indeed, but

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they were mu consoled when they

found that he was planting trees inhis garden. The early Christians didreally believe it, and they did abstainfrom su things as planting trees in

their gardens, because they did acceptfrom Christ the belief that the secondcoming was imminent. In that re-e, clearly He was not so wise assome other people have been, and He

was certainly not superlatively wise.

The Moral ProblemThen you come to moral ques-

tions. There is one very serious defeto my mind in Christs moral arac-ter, and that is that He believed inhell. I do not myself feel that anyperson who is really profoundly hu-

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mane can believe in everlasting pun-

ishment. Christ certainly as depiedin the Goels did believe in everlast-ing punishment, and one does findrepeatedly a vindiive fury against

those people who would not listen toHis preaing an attitude whi isnot uncommon with preaers, butwhi does somewhat detra fromsuperlative excellence. You do not,

for instance find that attitude in Soc-rates. You find him quite bland andurbane toward the people who wouldnot listen to him; and it is, to my

mind, far more worthy of a sage totake that line than to take the line ofindignation. You probably all re-member the sorts of things that Soc-rates was saying when he was dying,

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and the sort of things that he gener-

ally did say to people who did notagree with him.You will find that in the GoelsChrist said, Ye serpents, ye genera-

tion of vipers, how can ye escape thedamnation of Hell. That was said topeople who did not like His prea-ing. It is not really to my mind quitethe best tone, and there are a great

many of these things about Hell.There is, of course, the familiar textabout the sin against the Holy Ghost:Whosoever eaketh against the

Holy Ghost it shall not be forgivenhim neither in this World nor in theworld to come. That text has causedan uneakable amount of misery inthe world, for all sorts of people have

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imagined that they have committed

the sin against the Holy Ghost, andthought that it would not be forgiventhem either in this world or in theworld to come. I really do not think

that a person with a proper degree ofkindliness in his nature would haveput fears and terrors of that sort intothe world. Then Christ says, The Son ofMan shall send forth his His angels,and they shall gather out of His king-dom all things that offend, and themwhi do iniquity, and shall cast

them into a furnace of fire; there shallbe wailing and gnashing of teeth;and He goes on about the wailingand gnashing of teeth. It comes inone verse aer another, and it is quite

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manifest to the reader that there is a

certain pleasure in contemplatingwailing and gnashing of teeth, or elseit would not occur so oen. Then youall, of course, remember about the

sheep and the goats; how at the sec-ond coming He is going to divide thesheep from the goats, and He is go-ing to say to the goats, Depart fromme, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.

He continues, And these shall goaway into everlasting fire. Then Hesays again, If thy hand offend thee,cut it off; it is better for thee to enter

into life maimed, than having twohands to go into Hell, into the firethat never shall be quened; wherethe worm dieth not and the fire is notquened. He repeats that again and

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again also. I must say that I think all

this dorine, that hell-fire is a pun-ishment for sin, is a dorine of cru-elty. It is a dorine that put crueltyinto the world and gave the world

generations of cruel torture; and theChrist of the Goels, if you couldtake Him asHis roniclers representHim, would certainly have to be con-sidered partly reonsible for that.

There are other things of less im-portance. There is the instance of theGadarene swine, where it certainlywas not very kind to the pigs to put

the devils into them and make themrush down the hill into the sea. Youmust remember that He was omnipo-tent, and He could have made thedevils simply go away; but He ose

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to send them into the pigs. Then

there is the curious story of the figtree, whi always rather puzzled me.

You remember what happened aboutthe fig tree. He was hungry; and

seeing a fig tree afar offhaving leaves,He came if haply He might find any-thing thereon; and when He came toit He found nothing but leaves, forthe time of figs was not yet. And Je-

sus answered and said unto it: Noman eat fruit of thee hereaer forever and Peter saith unto Him:Master, behold the fig tree whi

thou cursedst is withered away.This is a very curious story, because itwas not the right time of year for figs,and you really could not blame thetree. I cannot myself feel that either

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in the matter of wisdom or in the

matter of virtue Christstands quite ashigh as some other people known tohistory. I think I should put Buddhaand Socrates above him in those re-

es.

The Emotional FactorAs I said before, I do not think

that the real reason why people accept

religion has anything to do with ar-gumentation. They accept religion onemotional grounds. One is oen toldthat it is a very wrong thing to atta

religion, because religion makes menvirtuous. So I am told; I have not no-ticed it. You know, of course, theparody of that argument in SamuelButlers book, Erewhon Revisited. You

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will remember that inErewhon there is

a certain Higgs who arrives in a re-mote country, and aer endingsome time there he escapes from thatcountry in a balloon. Twenty years

later he comes ba to that countryand finds a new religion in whi heis worshiped under the name of theSun Child, and it is said that he as-cended into heaven. He finds that the

Feast of the Ascension is about to becelebrated, and he hears ProfessorsHanky and Panky say to ea otherthat they never set eyes on the man

Higgs, and they hope they never will;but they are the high priests of thereligion of the Sun Child. He is veryindignant, and he comes up to them,and he says, I am going to expose all

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this humbug and tell the people of

Erewhon that it was only I, the manHiggs, and I went up in a balloon.He was told, You must not do that,because all the morals of this country

are bound round this myth, and ifthey once know that you did not as-cend into Heaven they will all be-come wied; and so he is persuadedof that and he goes quietly away.

That is the idea that we shouldall be wied if we did not hold tothe Christian religion. It seems to methat the people who have held to it

have been for the most part extremelywied. You find this curious fa,that the more intense has been the re-ligion of any period and the moreprofound has been the dogmatic be-

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lief, the greater has been the cruelty

and the worse has been the state ofaffairs. In the so-called ages of faith,when men really did believe theChristian religion in all its complete-

ness, there was the Inquisition, withall its tortures; there were millions ofunfortunate women burned aswites; and there was every kind ofcruelty praiced upon all sorts of

people in the name of religion.You find as you look around theworld that every single bit of progressin humane feeling, every improve-

ment in the criminal law, every steptoward the diminution of war, everystep toward better treatment of thecoloured races, or every mitigation ofslavery, every moral progress that

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there has been in the world, has been

consistently opposed by the organ-isedures of the world. I say quitedeliberately that the Christian relig-ion, as organised in its ures, has

been and still is the principal enemyof moral progress in the world.

How the Churches Have RetardedProgress

You may think that I am going toofar when I say that that is still so. I donot think that I am. Take one fa.

You will bear with me if I mention it.

It is not a pleasant fa, but theures compel one to mention fasthat are not pleasant. Supposing thatin this world that we live in today aninexperienced girl is married to a

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syphilitic man; in that case the

Catholic Chur says, This is an in-dissoluble sacrament. You must en-dure celibacy or stay together. And if

you stay together, you must not use

birth control to prevent the birth ofsyphilitic ildren. Nobody whosenatural sympathies have not beenwarped by dogma, or whose moralnature was not absolutely dead to all

sense of suffering, could maintainthat it is right and proper that thatstate of things should continue. That is only an example. Thereare a great many ways in whi, at thepresent moment, the ur, by itsinsistence upon what it ooses tocall morality, inflis upon all sorts ofpeople undeserved and unnecessary

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suffering. And of course, as we know,

it is in its major part an opponent stillof progress and improvement in allthe ways that diminish suffering inthe world, because it has osen to

label as morality a certain narrow setof rules of condu whi have noth-ing to do with human happiness; andwhen you say that this or that oughtto be done because it would make for

human happiness, they think that hasnothing to do with the matter at all.What has human happiness to dowith morals? The obje of morals is

not to make people happy.

Fear, the Foundation of ReligionReligion is based, I think, primar-

ily and mainly upon fear. It is partly

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the terror of the unknown and partly,

as I have said, the wish to feel thatyou have a kind of elder brother whowill stand by you in all your troublesand diutes. Fear is the basis of the

whole thing fear of the mysterious,fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear isthe parent of cruelty, and therefore itis no wonder if cruelty and religionhave gone hand in hand. It is because

fear is at the basis of those twothings. In this world we can now be-gin a little to understand things, anda little to master them by help of sci-

ence, whi has forced its way step bystep against the Christian religion,against the ures, and against theopposition of all the old precepts.Science can help us to get over this

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craven fear in whi mankind has

lived for so many generations. Sci-ence can tea us, and I think ourown hearts can tea us, no longer tolook around for imaginary supports,

no longer to invent allies in the sky,but rather to look to our own effortshere below to make this world a bet-ter place to live in, instead of the sortof place that the ures in all these

centuries have made it.

What We Must DoWe want to stand upon our own

feet and look fair and square at theworld its good fas, its bad fas,its beauties, and its ugliness; see theworld as it is and be not afraid of it.Conquer the world by intelligence

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and not merely by being slavishly

subdued by the terror that comesfrom it. The whole conception ofGod is a conception derived from theancient Oriental deotisms. It is a

conception quite unworthy of freemen. When you hear people in urdebasing themselves and saying thatthey are miserable sinners, and all therest of it, it seems contemptible and

not worthy of self-reeing humanbeings. We ought to stand up andlook the world frankly in the face. Weought to make the best we can of the

world, and if it is not so good as wewish, aer all it will still be betterthan what these others have made ofit in all these ages. A good worldneeds knowledge, kindliness, and

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courage; it does not need a regretful

hankering aer the past or a fetteringof the free intelligence by the wordsuttered long ago by ignorant men. Itneeds a fearless outlook and a free in-

telligence. It needs hope for the fu-ture, not looking ba all the timetoward a past that is dead, whi wetrust will be far surpassed by the fu-ture that our intelligence can create.

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Este libro se dise empleando los tipos grficos

IM Fell English Pro (20 y 27 puntos en portada)

y Fabiol (23 puntos en cuerpo de texto),

en los talleres de Ediciones Nutria

de El Paso, Texas.

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Documents

Why I Am Not a Christian (BR)