This expresses a lot of what I’ve been thinking lately. I never said much because either way, it’s difficult to talk about the Pope when you know little about Catholicism. Then again, what does Time know about Catholicism?
SEE WHAT ELSE WE’VE SAID ABOUT THE POPE
Why Bertrand Russell is not a Christian is a 25 page rage against Bertrand Russell’s religious views written by Reverend Ralph Allen Smith. It is in response to a brilliant lecture by Bertrand Russell titled Why I am not a Christian; I have written a review on that already. This essay serves to criticize Russell’s reasoning against Jesus and his reasoning for a secular worldview. It spends little time arguing for the Existence of God, although the author seems to imply he could argue that too if he wanted.
Reverend Smith begins by explaining that the existence of God is an unnecessary component of the Christian faith. This is in Catholic doctrine as well as in many Protestant faiths directly: that God does not need to be rationally deductible, only provable by means of Christianity alone. Smith, after explaining this, quickly and rashly states that Russell didn’t spend enough time thoroughly explaining why the rationale for God isn’t all too rationale. For some reason he doesn’t say how.
The first section, the smaller one, is absolute bogus and completely avoids answering any questions, but I love the second larger section. This one deals with why Russell’s worldview is insufficient (and thus Christianity, at the very least, is better), and why Russell’s tirade against Christianity is flat out stupid. He’s right about that.
Russell insists that Jesus was immoral on the grounds that anyone who believes in Hell is immoral. In other words, whether or not Hell is immoral by itself, if you tell people it exists you are immoral, even if you earnestly beleive it. For rational people like you and I, that’s crazy talk. I was astonished he would say something like that – and I read and re read his essay a number of times to make sure that was what he was earnestly saying. It was. Perhaps he isn’t so logical of a philosopher.
It gets worse though, and more controversial. Russell’s worldview, in the mind of the author and I, is by far the most irrational. It is a worldview completely absent of meaning and coherency, devoid of purpose and order. It is a worldview of nothing but chaos and randomness, but yet, there is a savior: morality! The cherished secular worldview of Bertrand Russell involves denying any purpose of life while simultaneously demanding altruism in life. It requires you to stand for open mindedness and rationality while simultaneously succumb to your altruistic evolutioned brain. There is no purpose of your existence, but you have to be a good person anyway. This is coming from Russell, a man who has cheated on several wives and dozens of women. This is coming from Russell, an icon of logic and pure thinking. This is coming from the idol of many atheists and secularists: and yet he was no more than an illogical fool when it comes to the subject of ethics and religion. This is hypocrisy and doublethink!
To conclude, this essay is A MUST READ for anyone who reads Russell’s lecture. I recommend for anyone. Now as I am not Christian, I find his argument that all Atheists know Christianity is true in their hearts but deny it anyways quite dubious, and as a Muslim I refuse to accept that God does not have to be rationally deductible for religion to be true, but his disparage against Russell still holds. His disparage against the secular worldview is short, blunt, and brilliant. I can only hope that truth and free thought can one day emerge within all of us.
“God has given me the power to give life to the dead, sight to the blind, sound to the deaf; but He did not give me the power to heal the fool of his foolishness.” –Jesus (Al-Razi)
Quote ascribed to Jesus by Islamic sources. Hadith collected by classical jurist Muhammad Al-Razi.
Why I am not Christian is a collection of essays written by secular philosophers and academics. I am only writing on the most famous essay of the collection, a transcript of a lecture given by the famed Bertrand Russell at the National Secular Society. This lecture was a short rebuttal to every well known argument for God and some of the arguments for Christianity. His lecture has been renowned by many as a quick, concise deconstruction of religious thinking and apologism. That is too quick of a judgment.
His lecture first goes through the well known arguments for God, pretty much all of which can be seen in The Reason for God book I wrote a review on. Russell briefly runs through explaining each argument, and then points out a particular flaw in said argument that deconstructs the entire conclusion. He does not spend the time to give a full rebuttal and his alternative worldview to each argument, but it was not necessary to prove the theist apologist wrong. As I explains in my The Reason for God review, I do not find any of the mainstream arguments for God’s existence entirely convincing, but I also do not find any of the mainstream arguments against God’s existence convincing either. There are additional argument that we rarely hear about that keep me in theism, and I’ll one day explain them.
In short, his arguments against the theist appeals were quite convincing. His shockingly short rebuttals were satisfactory for the point he wanted to convey, although much more could have been discussed. For example, he dismisses the First Cause argument on the basis that the universe could have been the first cause without God and then proceeds to talk about other arguments. Brutally short and concise, Russell gets the point across without unnecessary commentary. He later starts talking about religious thinking and Jesus, and his views on both.
His dismissal of religious thinking as incompatible with science shows his ignorance of history and utter arrogance for an academic of his esteem. To claim a clash between faith and reason at the level in which Russell does is a moronic outcry secularists have tried for centuries in this plea for academic legitimacy that they once did not have. Now that they do, they insist that this legitimacy is only for them and delude their audiences with dogmatic bullcrap about how men of religion are less intelligent or not free thinking. Academic arrogance of this kind is usually only seen in extreme right wingers or children, but Russell proves to be an exception.
He then proceeds to dismiss Jesus as “the best and wisest of men.” Now most non-Christians will agree that Jesus was not “the best and wisest of men”, but Russell’s reasoning stems from academic dishonesty and hypocrisy. Many of the fellow secularists of his time relented that Jesus was the pinnacle of moral character in the history of man while not supernatural in any way. Russell first states that “historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all” as if he has never entered through a university door before. The existence of Jesus is not questioned by any legitimate historian of our time for a number of well documented reasons that I assume Russell rejects because he lacks the level of reason he so preciously propagates. Let me be clear: Jesus, beyond a doubt, existed during the Roman occupation of Palestine by all historical accounts.What he did and who he was is what is up for debate.
Russell continues his dismissal of Christ on the grounds that Christ believed in his imminent second coming. I won’t address whether or not Russell interpreted scripture right, but this has almost nothing to do with Christ’s moral character or wisdom for that matter. Russell throws another red herring in his dismissal of Christ in that Christ warned of a hellfire, something Russell doesn’t find moral. This kind of skewed logic isn’t even shown by extreme right wingers or children. I find murder of innocents wrong, and if my friend was going to be murdered I would certainly try to warn him. Likewise, Christ believed of a coming hell, and chose to warn his companions of its coming. Whether Christ was right or wrong is irrelevant, Russell seems to insist that it is immoral either way to warn someone of something you find immoral that may happen to them.
In conclusion, the secular philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell brilliantly shatters every mainstream argument for God’s existence in a few minutes of reading. His criticisms of Christianity, however, fall short and are academically dishonest and rationally inconsistent. I honestly advice that you only read the first part of Russell’s essay, and not waste your time with his criticisms of Jesus and Christianity. If you do choose to read the whole thing, you have been warned.
TO BE CONTINUED with a review on the essay Why Bertrand Russell was not a Christian by Rev. Ralph Allan Smith.
My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?
The author of this book is a sheer badass and a genius. His lectures, speeches, and debates are amazing and they have opened my mind over the years. I owe almost all of my understanding of New Testament history to Ehrman, and his views and opinions while quite controversial are certainly academic and not original. This work of his is world renowned and respected, and there are few of its kind. As the back cover of the book explains, his ideas and examples are not original nor unknown to academics of this field, but the public has absolutely no idea and little resources to know these ever important things.
Nevertheless, I hated this book. Quite frankly it was written poorly and organized in a jumbled hargle bargle. It must be remembered that this book is one of the first of its kind though, and I commend his iniative. The book first explains how Ehrman shifted his faith from a non practicing Christian to a born again to a Christian scholar to an agnostic. Now I don’t know numbers, but a large number of people in his profession are agnostic because of the blurred origins of the Christian bible (but certainly not all). He then explains how the complicated field of New Testament criticism and the history of searching for New Testament origins from various brave scholars of the past. The book devotes the rest of its time to various parts of the New Testament that he believes aren’t authentic. Some of these are well accepted fabrications by scholars, others are a bit more controversial (he thankfully tells us which is which).
Written poorly and shoddily organized, its difficult to follow through with what he is saying or even to remember it all, but he goes through events such as the Jesus’s encounter with the female adulterer and explains how this was a clear fabrication. Other more controversial include who wrote Peter (was it actually Peter?). Either way, simple internet searches can get you the results that Ehrman explains poorly in his book. One thing I should note though, is that while Ehrman’s views are scholarly legitimate, he is one of the most critical scholars and few share all of his views together. If you want to learn about New Testament criticism, I don’t recommend this book, and you’re time is better spent watching Ehrman’s lectures on YouTube(he is ridiculously entertaining when not not writing books) or reading some articles on the internet.
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” –John 8:32
This is a beautiful quote when ripped out of context from the Bible. It is still beautiful in context, but in a very different sense. Please realize that if you haven’t researched this quote you are wrong about its interpretation. It’s still a good quote though, either way.
There are multiple interpretations. Here is one.
This is probably the best movie I have seen in my entire life. And chances are, assuming you are normal, you’ll hate it. The entire movie takes place in a single room. The entire movie is dialogue. There is no action, no side plots, no love story or intense music. It’s a philosophical discussion, straight and simple, about a professor who reveals to his friends that he has been alive for 14,000 years.
Or has he? That is the question the friends mull over. One of them is an anthropologists, another a psychologists, and so on. They are the best equipped people in the world to discuss that question, and yet they arrive to no answer. He has no artifact to prove it – since after all, spending years in prisons and lifetimes as a slave would see to that not happening. He cannot say something, or remember something that a normal human wouldn’t but could be proven – because he tells us that his memories are jumbled, and for almost his entire life he had no concept of history, or the future for that matter. What he knows of himself, that he was born in Central Europe, or that he traveled to India, is only known by his modern study of anthropology in conjunction with his jumbled memories.
He claims to have me the Buddha, and to have traveled to Palestine at the time of Christ: because he was the Christ. He says he did no miracles, did no raising from the dead, or any of that. He preached a simple message: to be good to people. He challenged the authority of the Romans, and when they crucified him, they failed because he had learn certain breath techniques in India that gave the appearance of death. Then he rose again, and when some people saw him they refused to accept his story, and made up their own: that he was the Son of God.Can this be proven? No. Can this be disproven? No. All we have is the word of some friend of ours. But why would he lie? These are the questions the friends ask, and they arrive to no conclusion by the end the movie. Certain events happen at the end that prove his story true, but nevertheless, the philosophical discussion remains intact. Before certain revelations, the man finally says he was lying to satisfy one of his religious friends who bubbled with rage at his comments of The Messiah, but does him even saying that he was a liar prove he was lying? You could ask questions for eternity – but it remains a question of faith.
Whispers of Satan 