Russelling with religion

 Bertrand Russell, the greatest philosopher of the 20^th century, was born on May 18, 1872. He is best known for his works on logic, knowledge, and mathematics; his A History of Western Philosophy is an elegant and entertaining overview of the thoughts and thinkers of the Western world from pre-Socratic times down to his day. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.

   In 1927 Russell gave a speech in London called “Why I Am Not a Christian.” He defined a Christian as one who a) believes in God and immortality, and b) believes, at the very least, that Jesus Christ was “if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men.”

   Addressing the first condition, Russell laid out some of the arguments for the existence of God. In short order he demolished:

• The First-cause Argument. “If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause,” Russell said. “If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God.”
•  The Argument from Design. (Everything in the world has been created so that we can live in it and appreciate it, and if it weren’t made just so, we could not live in it.) “It is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world…should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years,” Russell said.
• The Moral Argument. (There would be no right or wrong unless God existed.) Russell pointed out that if God created both right and wrong, then there was no difference in quality or truth between the two, and therefore it became meaningless to say that God is good.

   Turning to the second condition, concerning the character of Christ, Russell first admitted that Jesus said some wonderful things, among them “Turn the other cheek,” “Judge not lest ye be judged,” and “Sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor.” But he noted that he was consistently less than wise, as he firmly believed that his second coming would happen within the lifetimes of those he was addressing. And because he believed in hell, and angrily condemned those who did not heed his warnings about eternal punishment, Russell judged Jesus to be far less than a paragon of virtue. In fact he placed Socrates and Buddha above him.

   “The Christian religion, as organized in its churches,” Russell concluded, “has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world…

   “When you hear people in church debasing themselves…it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings…"

     And finally:

      “A good world needs knowledge, kindliness and courage; it does not need…a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.”    

They sometimes make me sick when I eat them, though

Poet Walt Whitman was born on this day in 1819.

"Animals do not make me sick discussing their duty to God," Whitman wrote.

Give an ear to this

Vincent Van Gogh was born on this day in 1853.

"I believe more and more," Van Gogh said, "that God must not be judged on this earth. It is one of his sketches that has turned out badly."

“Saint Augustine said that our hearts are restless because this is not our true home,” Sully told the assembled Great Books devotees, who were all present and accounted for.
“Where’s not our true home?” asked Robert. “The liberry?”

“No. he meant this earth.”  --  Chapter 27, The Misforgotten.

God's forever blowing bubbles

Today is the birthday of Francis Bacon, English philosopher and essayist. He wrote:

"The world's a bubble; and the life of man less than a span."

So he let his own water run

Today is the birthday of Anton Chekhov (born 1860), the Russian dramatist and short-story artist.


"And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryaobavich an aimless, unintelligible jest...The water was running, he knew not where or why...It had flowed into a great river, from the great river into the sea; then it had risen in vapor, turned into rain, and perhaps the very same water was running now before his eyes again...And why? For what purpose? -- "The Kiss."

   What had God hoped for, creating the universe? What was His goal? It had to have been a whim, Sully thought, a caprice, and given that, how could you take it seriously? How could you take yourself seriously? If God didn’t have a clue.  --  Chapter 21, The Misforgotten.

Now go, and sin no more

On this day in 1918, evangelist Billy Graham was born.


"Current evangelism is as far as one can go in the pursuit of faith without works. Graham has brought to perfection the notion of a global parish, that is, no parish at all. He is relieved of the need to make private visits, to gather boxes of old clothes in the church basement, to perform weddings, bury the dead, to encourage rummage-sales and pie-suppers. Not only is he relieved, but the saved are also...

"With their salvation kits, they are like patients making a single visit to a clinic and who are therefore recorded in the cure statistics." -- Elizabeth Hardwick.

   As a child Sully had thought about God only when he’d had to. Church was a dreary enough experience: The pastor’s perpetual pleas for donations, the highly unsatisfactory stories sandwiched in-between. The preacher’s exhortations to think of the Almighty as a friend and mentor were lost on Sully, who considered the whole business of God sending His own son down to suffer and die for his sake a pretty nasty one, not to mention a damn convoluted arrangement.  --  Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.

He's nuts, I should hope

First use of the atom bomb on this day in 1945.


"Cursed is every one who placeth his hope in man."  --  St. Augustine.

“Augustine said that because of that original sin we are all born into sin. We start out with a stain on us.”

“That’s heavy.”
“He said that our only hope was God’s grace. We have to hope that God looks kindly on us.”
“That ain’t worked out so far neither,” Red said.
“You got that right,” Joe chimed in.
“You’ve got me, don’t you?” Cubby piped. “Sweetie.”
“So God is sort of like a prison warden?” Jeffrey asked.
“You could say that. That’s a good analogy.”
                                                                                   -- Chapter 27, The Misforgotten.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, died on this day in 1910. 

"A sublime faith in human imbecility has seldom led those who cherish it astray."  --  Havelock Ellis.

...later he’d got to musing over whether there might be a special circle or at least a cubicle in Hell for those who said fuck you to priests. He’d always been amused by the idea of Heaven and Hell and even more by the incredible fact that most people, apparently, took the idea seriously. God loves me, but He’ll roast me like a peanut forever if I’m bad, was the way they had it figured. Even so, they went on being bad, bad, bad.  --  Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.

The eternal mystery

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, died on this day in 1930.

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes, solemnly, as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear?It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end?"

On Monday morning, the game was afoot. Sully, on his stool, was in a brown study.

“Let’s look at the facts in the matter,” he said, as Henny Cavanaugh, three seats away, yawned and lit up a cigarette. “Jimmy, give me another one.”
...“Have I stated the facts plainly enough?” he asked, squinting at Cavanaugh.
“What are you talking about?” Cavanaugh blew smoke from both nostrils and ordered a beer.
“The man, as I’ve pointed out, has no irregular habits. No distinguishing characteristics. Nothing to draw attention to himself. Therein lies the mystery.”
Cavanaugh coughed and yawned again.
“Don’t you see? How could anyone, in plain sight for so long, go completely unobserved? A purloined letter. I’m afraid the mystery, my dear chap, is in our selves.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Cavanaugh said.
“You make a piss-poor Watson, you know that?
                     --Chapter 14, The Misforgotten.
 

Never mind

On this day in 1633, Galileo recanted his assertion that the Earth moves around the sun.

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -- Galileo.

He’d always been amused by the idea of Heaven and Hell and even more by the incredible fact that most people, apparently, took the idea seriously. God loves me, but He’ll roast me like a peanut forever if I’m bad, was the way they had it figured. Even so, they went on being bad, bad, bad. -- Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.

Who wants company?

Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and philosopher, was born on this day in 1623. He said:

"We shall die alone."

As for God, Pascal had said that you might as well believe, because even if you were wrong nothing was lost, and if you were right, so much was to be gained. Which struck Sully as a pretty flimsy hook to hang a religion or a philosophy on, not to mention valid only if you bought into the assumption that God operated on the rewards-and-punishment system. That was a pretty threadbare kind of God to believe in, in his opinion. What kind of God made belief a prerequisite for His favor, anyway? A God who was afraid He wasn’t really real, it sounded like. -- Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.