Why Bertrand Russell Was Not A Christian
by Rev. Ralph Allan Smith
(1996)
Responding to Russell on God
Russell's Arguments against God's Existence
Russell briefly explains and then refutes in order the following five
arguments for the existence of God: 1) the first cause argument, 2) the
natural law argument, 3) the argument from design, 4) the moral argument,
5) the argument for the remedying of injustice. As I said above, he has
not chosen to refute the best forms of these arguments, but a man of Russell's
ability should be able to respond effectively even to the most sophisticated
presentations, for the proponents of these arguments do not usually regard
them as airtight proofs. These arguments are merely said to point to the
probability of God's existence or the reasonableness of faith in God.
Russell's five arguments belong to three basic types of arguments for
the existence of God: cosmological, teleological, and moral. Cosmological
arguments argue that the universe must have been caused and that the cause
is most likely God. Teleological arguments argue that the order men observe
in the world cannot be accidental and, therefore, suggests design by God.
Moral arguments come in various types. Russell deals with two, one which
contends that God must be the source of moral standards and the other
which argues that the moral injustice of history must be rectified by
a post-historical judgment.
Russell's objections to the traditional arguments are neither original
nor particularly profoundly stated. Concerning the cosmological type of
argument Russell states, in essence, that if Christians can believe in
a God who needs no cause, he can believe in a universe that needs no cause.
To the teleological arguments he answers that the world does not need
a law-giver to have laws, nor is the order in the world impressive when
one considers the problem of evil. Moral arguments fail too, in Russell's
opinion, because there must be a standard for good and evil apart from
God in order to affirm God's goodness, but if there is such a standard,
then men do not need God for morality, but the standard itself. Russell
could have added that even if the traditional arguments for God were accepted,
they would only demonstrate the probability of the existence of some kind
of a god, which is still a long way from proving the existence of the
Triune Personal God of Christianity.
Finally, in a concluding argument against Christianity, Russell asserts
"Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I
have been talking to you about are not what really moves people. What
really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument
at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from
early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason." He adds a second
reason, "the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big
brother who will look after you." Again, he writes near the end of
the essay, "Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon
fear. It is partly terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the
wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you
in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing
-- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death." According
to Russell, then -- and this seems to be the most important point actually
-- belief in God is not a rational enterprise. People believe out of habit
or fear, but they have no adequate intellectual basis for their faith.
Traditional Approach Wrong
What should a Christian say to all this? In the first place, we should
admit that the traditional approach is wrong. Christians should not be
attempting to prove the existence of God to unbelievers as if both Christians
and non-Christians alike could address this question from a neutral perspective.
In the nature of the case, intellectual discussions about God are not
ethically neutral. Ironically, there is a sense in which Russell himself
seems to understand this point better than some Christians. He suggests
that Christians are irrational in their faith, believing, as it were,
in spite of better knowledge. In Russell's view something other than the
strictly intellectual issues, either fear or a desire for security, determines
the Christian's faith.
But this is precisely what the Bible teaches about the unbeliever. According
to the Bible, the unbeliever is not intellectually neutral and objective.
He is irrational, unbelieving in spite of better knowledge. In his heart
he knows that God exists, but he rejects Christianity out of fear, especially
the fear of death which is ultimately a fear that God will judge his sins.
For the unbeliever, eliminating God from the world is the way to obtain
security. Arguments against God are motivated by the unbeliever's wish
to believe that he is ethically normal and that the apparent unfriendliness
of the universe, summed up in the inescapable fact of death, is not a
testimony against his sins. Terrified of death, the non-Christian seeks
to justify himself in the face of it, some denying that it has any special
meaning, others asserting that it will be a wonderful experience. All
of this manifests what the Bible is speaking of when it says that sinful
man hates God (Rom. 8:7).
When, therefore, a Christian argues with an unbeliever about the existence
of God, he is not engaging in a neutral discussion. From the unbeliever's
perspective it is more like a personal attack. From the Christian's perspective
it is seeking the salvation of a man who is blind and lost. Neither side
is or can be neutral, so the traditional approach to apologetics, insofar
as it assumes or recommends neutrality, cannot honestly represent the
Christian position.
Indirect Approach to Answer Russell
What about Russell's denial of God's existence? Russell's arguments do
not stand. It can be demonstrated that Russell's approach is fundamentally
irrational, evidence that the Biblical description of the unbeliever is
accurate. Russell does not reject Christianity for neutral philosophical
reasons. He rejects Christianity out of fear. To demonstrate the truth
of this assertion requires what might be called an indirect approach.
We have to ask the question, if Christianity is untrue, and all the other
religions of the world are also untrue, what is the alternative? If Russell
has chosen to reject Christianity, it is presumably because he has found
something better. At least he has found some substitute worldview. What
was it?
We find the answer, at least in part, in another essay in the same volume
entitled "A Free Man's Worship." Russell informs us that science
teaches us of a purposeless world, void of meaning:
That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end
they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears,
his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations
of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling,
can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors
of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday
brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death
of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement
must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins
-- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly
certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only
within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation
of unyielding despair, can the soul's salvation henceforth be safely
built.
This is a bleak image, but, as he hinted in the pregnant words "soul's
salvation," Russell finds hope, and in so doing betrays a Christian
hangover. In the paragraph immediately following the above quotation,
unyielding despair yields:
A strange mystery it is that nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions
of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth
at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight,
with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the
works of his unthinking mother. In spite of death, the mark and seal
of the parental control, man is yet free, during his brief years, to
examine, to criticize, to know, and in imagination to create. To him
alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs;
and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control
his outward life.
Having rejected God and posited a blind, omnipotent mother-nature, Russell
blithely assumes that he can somehow from this "firm foundation of
unyielding despair" infer knowledge, morality, and freedom. Readers
must assume that the adjective "omnipotent" is used here by
way of hyperbole, since he has not demonstrated that nature must be all-powerful.
But one cannot simply allow him to speak of "nature." What actually
does he mean by "nature"? The answer would seem to be brute
forces. But brute forces could be the forces of an utterly irrational
universe of chance, or the forces of a deterministic system.
How did Russell conceive of it? In the essay "What I Believe,"
written in 1925, Russell wrote "Man is part of nature, not something
contrasted with nature. His thoughts and his bodily movements follow the
same laws that describe the motions of stars and atoms."
Mother nature appears to be Mama machine. If that is the case, the one
thing that neither man nor any other being has is freedom. Mechanical
necessity rules all. Not having freedom, man's so-called knowledge would
be nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain, inevitable as the
"laws that describe the motions of stars and atoms" and devoid
of meaning. Good and evil would be words that men use because something
in their brains has triggered them to think and speak in such terms, but
ethical words could have no real content.
Russell gives us, in other words, a world that is not only without God,
but one which logically excludes the possibility of rational knowledge,
ethics, and freedom, a world in which "nature" itself obviates
the existence of the kind of free man he wishes to believe in. The bare
assertion that knowledge, ethics, and freedom exist cannot bring them
into being, except in Russell's fervid imagination. Mama machine can only
give birth to baby machines.
If, to escape this problem, one should seek to find comfort in a world
of chance, another view of the world suggested by Russell, he is not actually
helped at all. Chance knows nothing of reason, ethics, or freedom. Randomness
-- the "liberty" of spastic convulsion -- is the closest a world
of chance can possibly come to the idea of freedom, but randomness is
inexplicable by definition. It precludes reason. And in a world without
logic or reason, good and evil cannot exist.
Thus, whether Russell chooses a deterministic mechanical view of the
universe or a chance view of the universe, he has no right to proceed
beyond the foundation of despair to find salvation in a free man's worship.
His vision of the free man is a religious delusion, a desperate dream
to comfort those not brave enough to face real despair. His confession
of faith, then, is the epitome of fanaticism:
[T]o worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed
by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny
that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces
that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to
sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own
ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.
The sum of the matter is, then, that Russell rejects the Christian view
of the world and offers in its place an irrational view of his own making
that is no less religious than Christianity. Assuming his existence to
be meaningless, momentary and under the sway of the irresistible forces
of either the empire of chance or that of mechanical necessity, he maintains
that he is "a weary but unyielding Atlas." But there is not
the least basis for this faith in all his metaphysics, which, if he followed
with full seriousness, would lead him to a total denial of the possibility
of meaningful knowledge. Russell, however, chooses not to be consistent
with his view of the world. Though his metaphysics logically debars the
human dignity Russell craves, he fervently believes anyway.
Conclusion
We must conclude that Russell's view of the world is irrational. A world
that is ultimately ruled either by chance or deterministic law is a world
in which the idea of knowledge is unintelligible. It is clear, then, as
we asserted above, that Russell does not hold on to this faith for intellectual
reasons. It has been suggested, and will be argued further in the next
chapter, that Russell's real motivation is fear of God's judgment.
Concerning the philosophical argument against Christianity, it must be
admitted that on Russell's presuppositions Christianity is untrue. This
is not a particular problem, however, because on his presuppositions,
his own philosophy is also untrue. If Russell's presuppositions reduce
his own philosophy to absurdity, they cannot be used to deny Christianity.
What our indirect approach has demonstrated is that Russell makes demands
on Christianity that cannot be fulfilled by his own alternative either.
What he does is typical of non-Christian philosophy in general. The unbeliever
demands that God meet his impossible conditions -- impossible due to limitations
in man and impossible because they contradict the nature of God and reality
-- and then has the audacity to claim that God fails. But his own inability
to provide a rational alternative resoundingly speaks the hidden truth
that Russell is a rebel, that his pretended intellectual neutrality is
a sham, that his reasoning is controlled by a perverse self interest.
This, the real reason that Russell was not a Christian, does not argue
against Christianity. Just the opposite -- the facts that Russell in attempting
to philosophically disprove Christianity is unable to provide a logical
alternative, and that he actually conforms to the Christian description
of man, serve, rather, as an indirect argument for the truth of Christianity.
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