Bertrand Russell: Why I am not a Christian

Today, I sat next to a priest on the tube. He was wearing his white collar, and I could feel myself hesitating slightly before taking my book out of my bag. For a split second I thought that it might be disrespectful for me to pull out Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell. But then I realized that was nonsense and started reading.

I don’t know how popular Mr Russell was during his lifetime (though I can imagine many disapproved of his views), and neither do I know how well-known he is today among the general public. He was born in 1872 and died ninety-eight years later in 1970. He was a philosopher, mathematician, historian, and profound social critic, among other things. There are a great many people, I think, who’d do well with reading some of his writings. Why I am not a Christian is a selection of his essays and lectures, most of them written during the first forty years of the 20th century. Still, the aspects of the issues he confronts are just as relevant today. Unfortunately.

Even though I’m not a religious person myself, I’m very fascinated by religion and how powerful a grip it can have on human beings. In 1930, Mr Russell wrote:

Hitherto species of mankind have survived because however foolish their purposes might be they had not the knowledge required to achieve them. Now that this knowledge is being acquired, a greater degree of wisdom than heretofore as regards the ends of life is becoming imperative. But where is such wisdom to be found in our distracted age?

I wonder how he would view 2012. Wiser? Or maybe just even more distracted. I think I’d go with the last one.

In 2005, the UN estimated that, without greater access to drugs or the development of new medication, AIDS will kill more than 80 million Africans by 2025, HIV infections reaching an asthonishing 90 million – 10% of the continent’s population. A crucial way to stop the spread of this disease is the use of condoms. But some beg to differ.

When speaking to African bishops at the Vatican, also in 2005, the current pope Benedict named divorce and “a contraception mentality” as major threats to the very “fabric of African life”.  According to the Catholic Church’s ‘Holy Father’, AIDS should be fought by fidelity and abstinence.

In Why I am not a Christian, Bertrand Russell names the Christian religion’s attitude towards sex as its absolute worst feature – it is “morbid and unnatural”.

The Church did what it could to secure that the only form of sex which it permitted should involve very little pleasure and a great deal of pain.

He continues:

The opposition to birth control has, in fact, the same motive: if a woman has a child a year until she dies worn out, it is not to be supposed that she will derive much pleasure from her married life; therefore birth control must be discouraged.

The conception of Sin which is bound up with Christian ethics is one that does an extraordinary amount of harm, since it affords an outlet for their sadism which they believe to be legitimate, and even noble.

This was also written in 1930 – a time when the state of New York still officially held that masturbation caused insanity. Today, the 2012 US election campaign has had an unbelievably strong focus on contraception and birth control. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more conservative candidates would happily suggest to reinstate the above masturbation law – it is a logical assumption to make, based on their various statements during the past few years. Their views on contraception is, at best, ignorant and stupid – they don’t seem to understand quite what it’s about. Another issue is the rapid increase of the world’s population. If anything, this shows that contraception is something we are very much in need of using. That is, as Bertrand Russell says, “if we were not prevented by the political influence of the Churches which prefer war, pestilence, and famine to contraception”.In 1940, Mr Russell was prevented from teaching in New York. His writings were seen as “lecherous, libidinous, lustful, venerous, erotomaniac, aphrodisiac, irreverent, narrow-minded, untruthful, and bereft of moral fiber” – I can’t help but think that these would be much better suited for many of today’s politicians than for anything he ever wrote.

In 1936, Mr Russell predicted that marriage would, after a while, loose its centrality in society, and cease to be customary “except among the rich and the religious”. In Norway, where I grew up, it is perfectly common these days for two people to live together and have children without being married, but I know several, also from “Western” countries, who find this somewhat strange. On another note, it is proving very hard to accomplish marriage for some who do wish to go down that road. It’s astonishing how intolerant most societies are towards gay people, despite the progress of the past decades. It’s disturbing that thirty people were killed in the United States in 2011 because of their sexual orientation. And even though we Norwegians like to think of ourselves as very open-minded, a young Norwegian man proved us wrong a few days ago when he wrote an article about his experience. When he told his buddies that he’s gay, they stopped hanging out with him. His family tells him he should change – people will laugh at him, think he’s weird. Even more alarmingly, he’s received death threats. He says it’s about time we all understand that gay people are just like straight people – the only difference is that they happen to fall in love with those of their own gender. Why is this so hard to tolerate?

Discrimination, taboos, depreciation of intelligence, and fear is still highly resonant in our societies, mainly because of religion. I believe that we can excuse people of earlier days for their ignorance in relation to many things, though not necessarily their harmful reactions to it. But when I hear the same sort of opinions today – that homosexuality is a disease, that they shouldn’t be able to get married or have children, racist comments, discrimination – I’m less forgiving. We have a vast amount of knowledge today, but yet there is a reluctance to actually apply it in a kind and reasonable way. Why are we so determined to be so self-destructive?

Bertrand Russel wrote in 1927:

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.

I coudn’t agree more. Most people are religious today because they grew up surrounded by a certain belief – not necessarily indoctrinated, but nevertheless strongly influenced by superstition. One of my nearest “neighbours” where I live at the moment is The Kingdom Hall of Jehovas Witnesses. Every weekend many families go there. There’s nothing wrong with that per se (a branch of religion created by some guys in the US in the 1970s is no less genuine than one created by some guys a few thousand years ago), but I can’t help thinking about the kids and whether they really want to be there.

I have previously written about unnecessary fears on this blog, especially in relation to religion. I am of the opinion, as was Bertrand Russell, that fear is the main source of religion. He went a little further and called religion “a disease born of fear” and “a source of untold misery to the human race”. Nevertheless, I agree with him. Fear is the basis of most wrong-doing in the world. When people are scared, they act irrationally. If these people have not been educated, the road to fear is very short, and it can result in extreme opinions and, sometimes, violent acts. Fear makes us want to think someone is taking care of us, that there’s someone to rely on when things don’t go as well as we’d hoped. The views that many express in Europe today scare me – that we’re on the range of war, that we need to protect ourselves from a certain enemy, close our borders, and not accept those that are different. But it doesn’t make me believe in God. It seems to me that the economic crisis has had far worse consequences than countries going bankrupt, and we need to be careful and work hard to not let those sentiments take over. Mr Russell wrote in 1931, with a rather large hint of irony, that “the foreigner is a morally degrading influence, and we all owe a debt of gratitude to the police for the care which they take to see that only exceptionally virtuous foreigners are allowed to reside among us”. This attitude is still highly present today. Fear and hatred is, above all, unnecessary – it would be perfectly possible to completely eliminate these emotions from human nature through the knowledge we possess.

According to Bertrand Russell, religion “has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world”. It has created taboos that have caused a massive amount of harm for many from an early age. It teaches children “a superstitious attitude about certain parts of the body, about certain words and thoughts”, while we should rather answer their curiosity as honestly as we possibly can. This leads back to the church’s image of sex. If children’s questions aren’t answered honestly, they can become “stiff and awkward in all matters of love” – a natural result when having to go from a strict taboo to perfect competence, with nothing in-between.

1930:

The attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favour, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.

(…)

Religions prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

Why don’t we strive even harder to use the amazing knowledge we actually possess? Though limited in the greater scheme of things, it is extraordinary what human beings are able to do on the basis of the knowledge we’ve acquired so far. I’m sure people at all stages through history have  believed that they’ve come quite far. It’s hard for us to imagine development beyond our lifetime. But the truth is, we’re only a tiny piece of history. And the world – and thereby it’s population – will continue to evolve constantly. But some area are unnecessarily hindered, by us.

To be fair, religion has improved in some ways. Witches are no longer burned on stakes, and most peoples’ knowledge of the feared Inquisition today derives from a Monty Python sketch. But why is this?

It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. (…) It is thanks to the generations of Freethinkers, who, from the Renaissance to the present day, have made Christians ashamed of many of their traditional beliefs.

Bertrand Russell called himself an agnostic. I would call myself an atheist. By this I mean that I do not believe that there is a god or any supernatural being who watches over us. I can’t say that I know God doesn’t exist, but I can say that I don’t believe in him. I don’t mean to put myself above anyone who might believe – I fear things as well. I’m ridiculously scared of spiders. I fear the dark. My thoughts easily get carried away to create the most absurd scenarios. But I don’t fear a god, because – in my mind – he does not exist. And it pains me to see the damage that the belief in him has caused in the world. Because people never interpret things in the same way – there will always be different versions of the same tale. It’s like that game we play as kids, when we stand in a line and one person at one end whispers a sentence to the next person. The phrase is passed along, all the way to the other end. Along the way someone might mishear something. Someone might choose to change the phrase deliberately, trying to be funny. The result at the other end is always completely different. This is how history works. This is how human beings work. And this is how religions have been created.

I believe in thought, in the perks of life, in happiness, and kindness. That is my “religion”, if you will. I’m glad that I – as an atheist – can sit next to priest on the tube. I’m glad that we get along. We can both believe what we want, and we can both have our opinions about the other. But while religion has caused untold suffering for centuries, my belief has resulted in suffering only because those who dared utter it were deemed heretics by the religious.

Unlike those who believe, I don’t think there is an afterlife. Again, I agree with Mr Russell, and I think this post – which is clearly in honour of his philosophy – should be ended by one of the most beautiful quotes I know:

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.