Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not a Christian”-Employment Relations- Do you think evolutionary biology would better explain what we find in nature than the God hypothesis?
Russell’s task in this selection consists in a review of a number of popular arguments in favor of God’s existence with the purpose of offering objections to them. These arguments are versions of the teleological and cosmological arguments as well as a review of moral arguments and arguments that stem from a seeming need to address injustice.
Russell dismisses a version of the cosmological argument quickly. He contends that there is no greater reason to suppose that God exists as a first cause than a other conceptions of the origins of the universe that have it that the universe is uncaused or that the universe has always existed.
The teleological argument is considered in roughly two forms: both on a grand scale of a universe governed by natural laws and in the case of particular biological organisms that appear to have design like properties. On the first point, Russell contends that it is unclear why we should infer from the view that there are natural laws to the view that there is some lawgiver if not every regularity is one in which we suppose that regularity is a law in need of some lawgiver. Further, if the analogy is between human laws and natural laws, perhaps we ought to distinguish between human laws as commands and natural laws as descriptions of reality. Further, it might be wondered why laws that govern our universe are the ones that are the best and if so, whether that places limitations on God’s power or the extent of those laws’ purview.
In the case of design, Russell offers an occasion to consider if natural science provides a better account of design like organisms or parts of organisms in nature and whether or not a truly great God is evidenced by a world that contains seemingly less than ideal things.
Finally, Russell dismisses moral arguments in favor of God’s existence as those that would cast God as either arbitrary in decisions about what is to be right or wrong or else bound to command the rightness of actions by their nature as determined by something other than what God commands.
Prompts
1) Do you think all laws imply that there is some lawgiver? If yes, what distinguishes laws that imply as much from other kinds of regularities? What do you make of the analogy between human laws and natural laws?
2) Do you think evolutionary biology would better explain what we find in nature than the God hypothesis? If so, why? If not, why not?
3) Do you find Russell’s response to the Moral Argument in favor of God’s existence convincing? What do you think the best response would be on behalf of the theist?
Multiple-Choice Questions
- Why does Russell believe that the theist is convinced that the universe must have had a beginning?
- The inadequacies of modern science.
- An inability to imagine otherwise given their experience.
- A refusal to believe that time could be cyclical.
- Refusal to let evidence impact decisions reached on the basis of faith alone.
- Russell initially questions the Natural-Law Argument by…
- Calling into question whether regularities are natural laws.
- Declaring that nature is not probabilistic.
- Bringing up the point that science often changes.
- Wondering if God’s natural laws are able to be violated.
- What problem does the theist have, according to Russell, if she claims that God brings into existence only the best laws?
- Theism does not provide an account of what these laws are; only science does.
- God would be subject to God’s own laws so there would be no benefit to positing God’s existence to explain them.
- God’s commands with regard to what laws exist would be arbitrary.
- We would have to explain why God would be powerful enough to author such laws.
- Why does Russell believe that our universe isn’t designed as well as it could be?
- God couldn’t possibly be perfect.
- The universe we live in has some depressing consequences as a result of its design.
- We could imagine a perfect universe and it’s not the one we live in.
- There are a lot of terrible things that happen.
- What does Russell think about the role of evolutionary biology in his arguments?
- It is the only thing that could explain design like properties in nature.
- Humans design things in order to match what’s required by their needs and desires.
- It’s possible that evolution and intelligent design could both be true.
- It provides a better explanation of why nature is the way it is than intelligent design.
- Why does Russell claim that morality can’t have its origins in God’s commands?
- In religious texts, we find examples of commands by God that seem morally repulsive.
- If morality originated from God’s commands, no one would have the ability to decide for themselves how to live their lives.
- God seems to be silent on important moral matters.
- God could have commanded anything—even things that seem morally wrong in any case.
- Why does Russell claim that it is of no help to the theist if she claims that God would always command what is morally right?
- If that is what the theist is claiming, we don’t need God to explain the origins of morality.
- It just seems false that God always commands what is right.
- It would be hard to follow God’s advice about what, morally speaking, we ought to do.
- Nothing is, in fact, right or wrong; people just wishfully thing that is.
- Why believe the seeming existence of evil is a problem for the theist?
- The atheist has a better account about the origins of wrongdoing.
- It doesn’t seem like the best designed universe would still contain evil.
- It would force the theist to claim that the KKK and Fascists were in fact good people.
- If God is the origin of morality, then God must have not created evildoers.
- What does the Argument for the Remedying of Injustice claim?
- God must exist in order to give evildoers what they deserve.
- Human justice is insufficient to influence people’s behavior in the correct direction.
- We can’t know what God deems just and unjust.
- We have a great deal of evidence that there is justice in our universe.
- What does Russell demonstrate by his analogy involving oranges?
- God thinks fruit sucks.
- We can know what God means to do to the unjust.
- Evil people always get what they deserve in the end.
- Our evidence is that the universe is probably not just given our evidence.
T/F Questions
- Russell is agnostic.
- Russell’s arguments are mainly a problem for a Judeo-Christian conception of God.
- Russell thinks the progress of modern science presents a number of problems for various theistic arguments.
- Russell thinks that the prospect of life ending in our universe leads makes people depressed.
- The philosopher Immanuel Kant was a theist on the basis of the cosmological and teleological arguments.
