Why Bertrand Russell Should Have Been a Christian...

Bertrand Russell, in his (in)famous essay Why I Am Not a Christian, mounts his attack on Christianity on two fronts: (1) the existence of God, and (2) the moral character of Christ. In his attack on rational belief for the existence of God, Bertrand Russell (1) gives a characterization of some of the classic arguments for God’s existence (the first-cause argument, the ‘natural-law’ argument, the design argument, and various forms of the moral argument), and then (2) successively attempts to debunk each of them, showing how they are all either invalid arguments, materially untrue, or simply unfashionable. His attack on the moral character of Christ is waged on two fronts: (1) supposed errors in His teaching, and (2) serious defects in his moral attitude. Then, Mr. Russell attempts to demonstrate that religion is simply a natural human response to fear, but is a response which has more seriously retarded the development of humanity and has caused much more suffering and death than good in the world. To end his essay, Mr. Russell repeats the Enlightenment creed that ‘an increase in our knowledge will ultimately lead to the betterment of humanity in all its aspects.’

Since Mr. Russell mentioned St. Thomas Aquinas, I will do so as well, for the purpose of showing that Mr. Russell’s ‘refutation’ of the ‘first cause’ argument is inadequate. Although, he does not mention the issue specifically, the problem of not having a First Cause (which is not necessarily a first cause in time) is that the only other alternative is an infinite series if one assumes that the world is caused at all. Mr. Russell seems to have no problem with this notion. However, his attempted refutation of the Thomistic argument falters on two important points: (1) St. Thomas did not say that ‘everything must have a cause,’ but rather that ‘contingent things must have a cause,’ and (2) Mr. Russell simultaneously accepts and rejects his version of the Principle of Causality, which renders his entire argument impotent and self-defeating. Furthermore, Mr. Russell’s comments on the ‘natural-law’ argument also falters on two key points: (1) once examined, the ‘natural-law’ argument falls back on the ‘design argument, of which Mr. Russell should have had much more to say than a mere two pages if he really desired to refute it, and (2) the ‘natural-law’ argument, especially as it was understood after Newton’s monumental advances in physics, served the cause of Deism in such persons as John Toland and Immanuel Kant, rather than Christianity, in that the notion that there are inviolable natural laws, led many philosophers of the age to attempt to discredit belief in miracles. Since Mr. Russell does not deal with the moral argument as such, I will make no further comments on his attempted refutations of arguments for God’s existence.

The remainder of Mr. Russell’s paper is a series of straw-man arguments. For example, the notion that Christ, when speaking of his coming, was always referring to the Second Coming rather than his coming into the Church, or any other ‘coming,’ for that matter, is a matter of sectarian interpretation, and to side with one sect over another is not the same thing as to prove that Christ’s statements were false. His statement that it is ‘doubtful whether Christ ever existed,’ is simply outdated and no modern biblical or historical scholar would take it seriously. Furthermore, his statement that Christ’s belief in hell is a serious moral flaw on His character relies on a whole string of narrow interpretations of the New Testament and historical Christian belief, such as the nature of hell and the nature of justice. If Mr. Russell believed in heaven, would he seriously expect to find such figures as Napoleon, Caesar, or Genghis Khan there? In conclusion, it seems that Mr. Russell lacked either the proper respect or the proper knowledge requisite for making relevant and convincing arguments against Christianity as a worldview.