Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian (1927) | Hacker News Reader

Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

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> We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time towards a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

> A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage […]

How much was knowledge, for its own sake, valued in the world view(s) in the Ancient Mediterranean societies? Certainly there were philosophers in Ancient Greece, which partly came over to Ancient Rome, but how mainstream was that compared to the pagan practices and outlooks? How much was knowledge about rituals to keep Ceres happy for grains (cereals) to grow versus a more mechanistic understanding? When and why did humans (in that part of the world) start thinking about the cosmos in a more 'logical' fashion?

How much was kindliness part of the world view(s) in the Ancient Mediterranean societies? Julius Caesar was celebrated for killing one million Gauls and taking a million more as slaves (exaggerated numbers, but the principle is the same). When and why did humans (at least in that part of the world) start thinking that being kind to each other would be a good thing?

IMHO, Russell owes much of his worldview and values to the Christianity that he rejects. These worldviews and values were by no means universal when Christian was young, or in Russell's time, or even now.

I'd argue that knowledge for its own sake was valued more in the ancient world than it is today. It was one of the ways the elites could show their superiority over the lower classes that had no time for such pursuits. In particular, the liberal arts tradition favored by Western elites over millennia can be traced back to formal education in ancient Greece and Rome.

Also, your mention of religious rituals reminded me of one of my favorite comments ever:

> Roman religion was purely about ritual and not at all about belief. Indeed, the Romans viewed belief as a matter of philosophy, not of religion. They would have viewed the Pledge of Allegiance as clearly religious, but the Nicene Creed as straddling the boundary, and Buddhism as clearly philosophical.

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/55197/what-is-th...

That attitude is still prevalent around the world, and it explains why many people are opposed to religious freedom. If religion is more about the society than individual belief, rejecting your religion means also rejecting your friends, family, and the entire society.

> Roman religion was purely about ritual and not at all about belief.

Tom Holland had a good lecture on this—the concept of religio:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCTC_r4vMI

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religio#Significance_in_Roman_...

He came across this as part of the research on his book Dominion:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Tom_Holland_book)

* Review: https://historyforatheists.com/2020/01/tom-holland-dominion/

* Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYkP46aYQIs

(The author Tom Holland has a 'namespace clash' with the Spider-Man actor Tom Holland—hilarity often ensues. Use search terms carefully.)

The Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography

What I Have Lived For

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

One of the most interesting reading experiences I have ever had was my library's copy of this book, in which a previous reader had added extensive commentary in the margins from a Muslim perspective. It was a fascinating mixture of agreement and disagreement that I can only sum up as "Yes, Christianity is wrong, but for this completely different reason."

My grandfather, who I never met due to certain family rifts, converted to Islam as an adult and wrote a book called "Answers from an Atheist" or similar, I forget the exact title now. In it he documents a discussion between an imam and an atheist. I found it fascinating reading when I was a young teenager, but started to find the discussion from both sides ridiculous after a while. By the time I finished it, I was pretty well convinced that he'd made the whole thing up as a way to have an atheist pitch softballs at an imam so he could give easy answers without having to actually defend his beliefs. But it started me down a years long reading adventure of different religious views and arguments, including Russell's essay mentioned here.

Idle curiosity: did reading that give you any kind of "connection" to your grandfather? I've been on a genealogy kick lately and I like when I can find artifacts from relatives I never knew, but I'm curious whether something that's argumentative and not quite as personal would have that same feeling.

classic socratic dialogue

This is the essay that first got me into Russell.

For a more positive summary of what Russell DOES believe, I love “A Free Man’s Worship”

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell1.htm

While it doesn’t quit hold me fully like it did when I was younger, I still find it beautiful:

> United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need -- of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy as ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed.

Early exposure to Christianity hindered my life in so many ways. I don’t think religion should be forced-fed to Children.

I don't think there's any moral way to prevent parents from teaching their children about their faith. I think the best you can hope for is that government stays out of religion entirely, that schools introduce kids to an overview of many regions being practiced without evangelizing for any of them (just because having at least some level of awareness about them is important), and that society is accepting of people who have differing beliefs.

Also Bertrand Russell: "Only within the scaffolding of [nihilism], only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."

I could not disagree more with a lot of this man's philosophies, but at least he seems to be earnest in his convictions. In my experience from observing close friends, embracing nihilism breeds depression and mental illness more often than not.

Two world wars made a lot of people nihilistic and may have even spawned the existential philosophies of Camus, Sarte, and Beauvoir. Camus considered life absurd and meaningless and the only thing to do was keep living just as a big middle finger to the absurd.

Modern nihilism looks like the Chinese lying flat/let it rot movement. Just giving up.

I see the opposite, modern nihilism is demonstrated in the movie “Everything Everywhere all at Once”. There’s no deep, existential meaning. But there is personal and human meaning.

Subjective meaning is still meaning :)

> Subjective meaning is still meaning :)

Even if it an illusion? If you personally (subjectively) believe that your spouse loves you, does it matter that they're secretly actually (objectively) cheating on you?

I'm guess I'd be happy until I found out I shouldn't be in that situation. But what's an illusion, and when can we stop pulling back curtains? We are solid matter, but there's mostly empty space in our atoms. So we think and feel like we are solid, but we are nothing more than fluctuations in a quantum field as far as we can tell. Shall my subjective happiness be dashed on the off chance I'm actually just a passing fluctuation in the echo of the big bang instead of a human in the only reality there is?

This is asking if subjective meaning is objectively meaningful which, by definition, it isn't. Subjective meaning is choosing to find meaning in things even though they don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

I would gladly watch a debate between biologist Michael Levin and philosopher Bertrand Russell, although it's no longer possible.

---

"Free will is an illusion - a biologist explains | Michael Levin and Lex Fridman"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hB0pIrDtwY

>I think you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think you have any right to call yourself a Christian. Of course there is another sense which you find in Whitaker’s Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshippers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians

I do not think that Russell and many of the people realized that the only religion that made it mandatory as an article of faith to believe in Jesus (Isa) prophethood, he is considered one of the five greatest prophets in Islam (as a side note reading Mohammedans word in 21st century just seems weird)

Long debates aside, I have learned for myself that God is real, which is why I remain a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have written more detail about how and why, at my web site (in profile).

This is an important thing to talk about but falls under "sex, politics, and religion" so I can see things going awry here.

It is important because there's a lot of people who believe the United States should be a Christian Nation, and that would not be a good thing.

Edit: The current Speaker of the House (3rd in succession to the presidency) believes otherwise: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4308643-speaker-johnson-s...

Just show them the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

This was ratified by the Senate and signed by the President.

The United States is not generally known for honoring treaties that they don't want to.

The downvotes I received for my comment are proof that those things don't seem to matter to the faithful.

It's received as an attack on their beliefs, but it's anything but -- simply that the relationship between each of us and our God(s) is of a personal nature and their right to worship is no more valid than other's right to abstain.

Having this on my bookshelf, prominently placed, was a great way to rebel as a 16 year old, raised in an evangelical family. Pastor, or an uncle, or church youth leader comes to visit? "What's your son got on his shelf here?"

I mean, I read it, too, and it was great, but it was also great as a whole adolescent lifestyle package along with a bit of Nietzsche and Sartre and the Pixes and Janes Addiction albums with topless women on the covers, and The Cure on constant rotation on the tape deck. If only my own teenage children had such clear things to rebel against :-)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali references Russel's lecture in her article "Why I am now a Christian" published 3 days ago. Maybe it's just a coincidence. I appreciate that she is living and reasoning in the present.

https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/

> Some people mean no more by it [christian] than a person who attempts to live a good life.

Is that still common in the US? Doesn't it have to be a bit more engaged or militant these days? How does it work among your friends? See also "United States should be a Christian Nation" and such.

It depends on where you go, and what issues you ask about. But most people have boiled Christianity down to "I believe in God" and that's it. That's only 4 of the first 5 words of the Nicene Creed, the original summary of the Christian faith.

I’ve only encountered that meaning of “christian,” in books and movies, and maybe the occasional ironic use.

(US born, middle aged native English speaker)

"Western Christian", to be more precise.

> why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant Him a very high degree of moral goodness.

No Bertie. He did not leave that option open to us and never meant to. To call him a great moral teacher is to entirely miss the point. He was either insane or lying or telling the truth.

- Lewis, paraphrased (some 20-30 years later I believe).

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” ~C.S. Lewis

Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher? Goodness and understanding of reality seem to be orthogonal (or even opposed as many people who are, or at least think they are, realists, are quite cynical).

For statements like, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," sure. Lewis' point is that he made all kinds of other claims that are either true or false. And if they are false, they are false in a way that led to lots of people dying for no reason. So Jesus was either saying those things that led to all his followers being killed either because he was crazy and believed what he said, because he was a liar and evil, or because he was telling the truth and good.

By what would the lunatic ground their thinking? From one angle, I can respect your argument as in a case where someone opines "Wow, look at Crazy Pete. He sure is crazy but he's nice to animals. Maybe I should be nice to animals too, like he is!"

In the case of Jesus, he told his followers to eat him (John 6). Potentially normal lunatic stuff...when they were like "whoa wtf bro" he doubled down and kept using a word which describes teeth tearing and chewing. I don't find cannibalism to be highly moral (since it usually involves murder) so shouldn't that disqualify Jesus from being a lunatic but also a good moral teacher?

You seem to assuming that all of ones teachings must be moral in order for one to be able to be a good moral teacher. But if people are able to pick and choose teachings then this may not be required. As an example, many people would consider the bible to be a good source of moral teaching, but most would admit that it contains some teachings which are outright reprehensible.

If someone needed to be entirely good to be a good moral teacher then almost nobody (if anybody) would qualify.

In Matthew 5:48, Jesus tells us to "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect". I'm just holding him to his own moral standard :)

Moral authority is only as powerful as the believers not finding out you don't ACTUALLY believe what you are telling them to. People easily write off the Catholic Church because of the disgusting abuses Catholic authority figures have perpetrated throughout the ages. Pick and choose works with bare philosophies but Jesus isn't asking us to believe right, he's asking us to live right. You can't pick and choose living right, either you are or you aren't. If you only sometimes rob the bus station you aren't living right.

> You can't pick and choose living right, either you are or you aren't. If you only sometimes rob the bus station you aren't living right.

I don't really believe that. I think it's more of a continuum. And that everybody does both good and evil deeds.

Catholics go to confession for this exact reason - people still mess up both accidentally and on purpose, and when they do they need a path back to God. This is the concept of repenting, where you just turn around and walk away from your sin and back to God, like the Prodigal Son.

Living right is acknowledging the mistakes and trying to never do that same thing again. Repeatedly robbing a bus station is quite a far cry from trying not to do evil on purpose.

> Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher?

To follow this lunatic you have to eat his flesh. From John 6:

> 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

> 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

> 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206&versio...

Similarly at the Last Supper, where he also instructs his followers to drink his blood:

> 27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the[b] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026&ve...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper#Institution_of_the...

Some folks (even Christians, like some Protestant denominations) believe it is meant to be symbolic, but the earliest Christians did not take it symbolically:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...

You don't have to do everything someone says in order for them to teach you something.

So what is Jesus teaching when he says that you must love [Hh]im above all, and that [Hh]e is the truth itself?

> 37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&ve...

> 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014&versi...

If only this quote also convinced the Church to never do the opposite - accepting Jesus as God but ignoring his moral teachings in favor of more vindictive, spiteful ones from the OT or Paul or whoever else.

One of the things I find strangest about religion is the acceptance of God not only as the creator of the world, but as a moral authority. I can somewhat understand people wanting to reach for a supernatural explanation for the creation of the world: I don't personally find "God" a satisfactory explanation, but I also don't really have a better one. But I really struggle to understand why they would then defer to that creator's (supposed) moral teachings. It's really a completely separate belief to the belief of god as a creator, but the two are often combined into one question of whether one "believes in god".

Perhaps the reason the two things are conflated is because there is an assumption that if you knew God exists, your choice wouldn't be to choose to reject doing what he commands. But as you point out that, that is an assumption that isn't necessarily true.

In Christianity, this is theologically explained as "God is good and the source of all good, his will is good and to go against his will is therefore bad". Catholics throughout history have written about it in depth (sometimes like REALLY in depth).

It also follows that if God made the universe, and the universe has goodness in it, then God either created goodness too or he IS goodness. Darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God. Therefore, God is good.

Too bad we believers have done such a terrible and easy to criticize job of being Christlike. I can't blame anyone for saying Christianity has too much baggage for them to even want to believe.

I've long had a notion that Christianity should be refactored to be spiritual rather than authoritarian.

It's clear that people are wired for worship (for those of no faith, we have celebrities). I liken it to atomic power, potentially beneficial when properly harnessed, or horribly destructive when weaponized.

>for those of no faith, we have celebrities

No, we don't. I know this is commonly bandied about as a truism but no one actually worships celebrities in the same way, or for the same purpose, as the religious worshiping deity, except maybe serial killers.

I was being mildly flippant, but my point is that we want to "look up".

And of course celebrities don't threaten you with eternal torture if you don't love them and do what they say, so it's definitely a bit more lighthearted engagement.

I believe their point is that humans want an object of devotion in some capacity, religious or otherwise. People LOVE Elon Musk because he's the personality of the microera and while they wouldn't go as far as deifying him, they might consider him better than "regular people".

In theological terms we have an infinite capacity for desire, designed that way by God because we were created to be in communion with him, an infinite being. If you are not "filling the gap" with faith, you'll fill it with something else. If you were created to loudly proclaim the gospel, but lose faith, maybe you loudly proclaim whatever you think the world needs to know about your favorite celebrity.

Like a lot of religious people, you seem to assume that anyone who doesn't believe in God, as you understand God, has some void in their life they are desperate to fill. The truth is, there are such people both within Christianity and without, and religion can be as much an addiction as heroin, and relationships with God, for those who believe, can be as parasocial as with any celebrity.

Nevertheless, many irreligious people are nonetheless perfectly happy, self-actualized and fulfilled without any religion whatsoever.

I agree with everything you said :) part of the reason this is a common belief (the God shaped hole in our heart as it's sometimes called) is because we Christians have internalized what we believe to be truths - God created us, God wants to be in communion with us, God is spirit but we are body/soul composites so our body can be used to serve in this material world while our soul is in communion with God spiritually.

As you said, many Christians struggle with depression (waves I'm on Zoloft lol) and their hearts are "filled" so what's the deal? Well, our hearts are only as full as we want them to be. Many Christians are more attached to the world than God. They'll stay up late for a football game, but ask them to stay up late praying and most of them will laugh. Also, as we believe we are body/soul composites there can be various modes depending on our Christian journey.

Our soul can be full while we are suffering martyrdom. Our soul can be barren (usually called dryness) while our body has never felt better. Life is a journey home to be with God, and sometimes we need to practice things like patience when we are tired or grumpy.

From Gods perspective, if a soul is incapable of receiving the gospel and they die without being baptized, he still wants to save that soul. Would a viable strategy be to give them a good life in spite of their ignorance, which they will see the full picture of after death, and they accept God? They won't feel the lack of God because it wouldn't help bring them closer to God.

> I believe their point is that humans want an object of devotion in some capacity, religious or otherwise

Perhaps that's true. But for many people that's their friends, family and community rather than some kind of idol. And it's certainly not true that everyone feels the need to proclaim loudly about something (I do, but that's another matter!)

Very true, one of the best traits about humans is that we try to have families to practice love! My "proclaimer" example was intended to show how someone could be given desires and skills for a certain purpose but they choose against Gods will and use their same desire and skill for worldly purposes. Alternate example would be someone intended to invent gene therapy for something but they instead work on bioweapons cuz it pays better.

The main concern there would be vital information being watered down or skipped over, but that bird flew the coop 500 years ago during the Protestant Reformation when people developed their own theologies and decided what was important for themselves, and then taught others.

Plus, it's not like the Reformation happened out of nowhere. The Catholic Church made lots of mistakes and awful decisions for a long time before people had enough.

I'm Catholic, and my favorite devotion is Divine Mercy. One of the teachings of the devotion (direct from Jesus, according to Sister Faustina) is that what hurts him the most is when people can't accept his mercy after death. They believe their sins are greater than his mercy (which is infinite) and they send themselves to hell as a result.

Jesus wants to be merciful to all, but he also said (Matthew 5:6, Matthew 18:21-35) that those who are merciful are the ones who receive mercy.

So if everyone walked around being merciful and forgiving one another, we'd certainly be a lot better off!

I can't accept Christ's mercy after I die because I'll be dead and won't exist anymore.

I'm glad that you find solace and meaning in your faith, but you may be too close to it to realize that the Church exists to control you, not to bring you salvation.

It's a personal choice, and I respect that, but my original point is that there's an undercurrent of war to remove this choice and that gets ignored by people such as yourself because you already live in such a world and you like it.

The analogy I like to use is this: imagine if there was a revolution and somehow muslim evangelicals took charge of the government and put the state under Sharia Law. This has happened in other countries, it's not pure fantasy.

Now think about if you'd like to live in that society. I can guess what the answer might be.

> It also follows that if God made the universe, and the universe has goodness in it, then God either created goodness too or he IS goodness

Doesn't that argument apply equally to "badness" (I guess "evil" might be the more idiomatic term): if God made the universe, and the universe has badness in it, then God either created badness too or he IS badness. Therefore, God is bad.

> In Christianity, this is theologically explained as "God is good and the source of all good, his will is good and to go against his will is therefore bad"

Of course the question is why we ought to believe this as opposed to following our own moral convictions. And from my perhaps cynical perspective, this seems to be what Christians do anyway (moral views vary dramatically within Christianity): they just ascribe their own moral views to God.

> Doesn't that argument apply equally to "badness" (I guess "evil" might be the more idiomatic term): if God made the universe, and the universe has badness in it, then God either created badness too or he IS badness.

Aquinas covered this in the 1200s, "Whether the supreme good, God, is the cause of evil?":

* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1049.htm#article2

> Of course the question is why we ought to believe this as opposed to following our own moral convictions.

You say slavery is bad. I say slavery is fine. You can follow your mortal convictions (and not have slaves), and I'll follow mine (and run a cotton plantation). But the two statements are contradictory, so which of us is following the "correct" one?

Of course this assumes that there is an objective moral code—which begs the question on where it would come from.

Consider a light source in front of a shutter. The light is the positive, additive energy that flows through the shutter when it is open. If you close the shutter, are you creating darkness? Or is the light just no longer illuminating anything past the shutter? Is a heart which won't let God in dark because it is emanating something, or because it lacks something?

Regarding moral convictions, that one's obviously true. Everyone from Luther to Wesley were interpreting the Bible in new ways after the reformation, so it's no surprise "interpret it yourself" became people's primary strategy.

That said, for a baptized Christian, we receive the Holy Spirit (aka the Paraclete, or counselor). Christians are encouraged to read the Bible so the Holy Spirit can call those verses to mind when they are relevant to something, such as seeing a hungry person and hearing "Feed my lambs" in your heart.

So while having an authority structure is good for some, others don't need it. I described the Bible to my father in law as "the rules of the beach - follow them or you'll get kicked out of the beach. That's enough for some people to never commit grave sin, just knowing the rules. Sometimes it's more complicated than that." The Holy Spirit fills in that gap and helps guide us even when the Bible didn't explicitly say something it couldn't have known like "don't cyberbully people because it's a sin."

Of course from the outside looking in, that just sounds like "your conscience" in some respects, but your conscience affects you after an act, not before it. The Holy Spirit is our guide in this world and is the one who speaks what needs to be said as Jesus told his disciples not to worry about what they are to say to authorities when brought to court, as the Holy Spirit will give them what they should say when they get there.

Obviously people can and do ignore the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't mean he isn't still helping them.

Especially once you throw the Problem of Evil in there ("Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?")

But monotheistic religion is so bothered with God being an ultimate moral authority (beyond just being omnipotent) that it must perform some scary mental gymnastics to reconcile this, which usually goes thusly: evil and suffering are part of God's Plan. Evil serves some purpose that will be revealed in heaven or whatever, so its existence can be tolerated (when it would be inconvenient not to).

That's a dangerous place to be. Children slowly dying of cancer, or being murdered in war, for example, can't matter on some ultimate moral level because God allowed it to happen, and anyways they're all happy in heaven now. Any horrifying thing can be handwaved away by religion as not mattering, because otherwise that would mean God messed up.

Religion doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of thinking, either. Political ideology or secular morality can also condone unspeakable things "for the greater good" or because "that's just the way it is". I really think it shouldn't be some bizarre stance that all uncommon suffering is unequivocally bad, but here we are.

> One of the things I find strangest about religion is the acceptance of God not only as the creator of the world, but as a moral authority.

Aquinas gave a summary in the 1200s: Article 1. Whether God is good?; Article 2. Whether God is the supreme good?; Article 3. Whether to be essentially good belongs to God alone?

* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1006.htm

The late Michael F. Flynn wrote a decent summary of the argument in his five-part series laying out Aristotle's first way argument about the Unmoved Mover:

* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-backgrou...

* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.h...

* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-l...

* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-...

* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/11/first-way-part-iv-casca...

The Creator also being All-good is in Part IV (Theorem 9).

Lewis probably stated it better than anyone else, but the argument predates him (and Russell, for that matter): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma

Lewis also believed that people were inherently immoral, to the point of deserving eternal punishment without the intercession of a savior. So his concept of a "moral teacher" might have been a bit suspect.

That’s a general tenet of all religions rooted in Judaism. OT—-“No one is righteous, no, not one.”—and later in NT Romans—-“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

The inadequacy and even brokenness of man is what necessitates a Messiah in the first place.

> He was either insane or lying or telling the truth.

Or wrong. People can say untrue things without being insane or lying. Sometimes, we're just mistaken.

I don't think that counts when you're claiming to be God.

Did he request anyone kill anyone else on behalf of his claimed godliness? Donate their fortunes to him? Sleep with him? Even that lunacy seems to have avoided compromising the moral lessons, even assuming we take the written accounts literally.

Teaching people it's okay to claim you're a god sounds like a mad or bad idea if you're not one.

Sure it does. There are many people who have claimed to be God. In nearly every case they are deemed as crazy. There was even the famous case where three different men, each sincerely believing they were the return of Christ, were put together by a psychologist who had a hunch that it might snap them out of their delusions. It didn't.

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/15/three-christs/

That appears to be as part of Lewis' trilemma, though.

or metaphorical.

>> He was either insane or lying or telling the truth.

> Or wrong.

Buddy was literally crucified for claiming to be God:

> 61 Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”

> 62 “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

> 63 The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. 64 “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”

* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2014&versi...

> 6 But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”

> 7 The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”

* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2019&versi...

* https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/61174/why-w...

Heck of "LOL! Just kidding guys! It was just a prank!" :)

Maybe you could expand a bit on how this relates to the parent comment, because it's not obvious to me.

We don't know any of that. He didn't write anything down, nor did anyone else at the time. The Gospels were written decades later.

We don't even really have good evidence that such a person as Jesus even existed. There are literally no mentions of him in documents of the time. People say "what about Tacitus? Or Joseph Flavius?" but like the Gospels, these people weren't writing at the time but decades later.

I don't think that's correct. I have no sources on me. But I think historians generally agree - son of god or not - he did exist.

Please give a citation of a source mentioning Jesus that can be dated during his supposed lifetime. I'd be glad to know of such a case, but seriously the earliest documents commonly known are Tacitus' Annals book 15, chapter 44 (AD 116), and Joseph Flavius' The Jewish War (AD 75). Both are long after Jesus was said to have lived (dying sometime in the AD 30's).

> Please give a citation of a source mentioning Jesus that can be dated during his supposed lifetime.

Why would such a citation even exist? While Jesus was still alive he was a nobody: just another itinerant teacher in some backwater Roman province. It was only after he was executed (and supposedly resurrected) that that he perhaps became more noteworthy. And the 'cult' around him that grew only later was when people started to notice.

We only care about [Hh]im now because of what that 'personality cult' became, but then (between 1AD and 32AD) why would anyone care to write things down about him?

You are arguing there is silence when there should not be. Can you explain why you expect there to be citations?

Well, he was said to have followers (unless you say having disciples isn't part of the "historical" Jesus), and they seemed to think he was pretty great. Wouldn't they write something about him and try to spread it? (And no, the Gospels aren't that even if they are named after some of the people who were said to have been disciples as they were written much later).

The closest agreement you're likely to get is that a person existed who was a model for the accounts that follow.

His divinity is a matter of opinion and nothing more.

I realize that, but I object to the idea that the historical Jesus had to exist and that there is "no debate" to it when there don't seem to be any documents mentioning him from when he was supposed to have lived. I realize there could be reasons for this -- the Romans and/or Jewish authorities could have found and destroyed all such documents, but the fact is without the existence of such documents even the historical Jesus is dubious.

> I don't think that's correct. I have no sources on me. But I think historians generally agree - son of god or not - he did exist.

PSA:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

With regards to the idea of "no contemporary sources":

* https://historyforatheists.com/2018/05/jesus-mythicism-3-no-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence

It should be noted that while Jesus was still alive he was a nobody: just another itinerant teacher in some backwater Roman province. It was only after he was executed (and supposedly resurrected) that that he perhaps became more noteworthy. And the 'cult' around that grew only later was when people started to notice.

We only care about [Hh]im now because of what that 'personality cult' became, but then (between 1AD and 32AD) why would anyone care to write things down about him?

Eh, this is only up for question in non-academic debate. Virtually all academics regardless of their position have moved beyond this, sounds like you're working with 80s and 90s talking points still. We have Roman, Jewish, and other contemporaries who have written either directly of Jesus or have spoken of the events that occurred in such a way that it's really no point arguing against the existence of the person named Jesus.

> We don't even really have good evidence that such a person as Jesus even existed.

Current consensus is that such an individual did exist:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

The belief that Jesus was a myth is the fringe theory. Tim O'Neill has a series posts breaking down how most of the points that 'Mythicists' are wrong:

* https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/

(Tim O'Neill is himself an atheist.)

> People say "what about Tacitus? Or Joseph Flavius?" but like the Gospels, these people weren't writing at the time but decades later.

So argument from silence:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence

O'Neill goes over this:

> What is essential to all historiographical formulations of an argument from silence, however, is that it is not the silence that is key, it is the argument that there should not be silence. The strength of this kind of argument lies in showing that there is silence in the sources where silence should not exist. Any attempted argument that does not do this or does not do it competently will immediately fail. And here is where the naïve Mythicist argument always collapses.

[…]

> Another illustrative example can be found in our earliest references to the Carthaginian general Hannibal. As one of the greatest military commanders in the ancient world and the general who came close to defeating the Roman Republic in the Second Punic War, Hannibal (247- c. 182 BC) was justly famous in his own time and has remained so ever since. His career was also fairly long, beginning at around the age of 18 in 229 BC and spanning about 40 years until at least 190 BC. Yet, despite all this, we have precisely zero references to him in any literary source dating to his lifetime.

* https://historyforatheists.com/2018/05/jesus-mythicism-3-no-...

I think the consensus is that there is no particular reason to doubt the historicity of Jesus. He was a minor troublemaker in a distant province 2000 years ago, and his legacy only became important long after his death. Given the circumstances, the existence of Jesus is documented as well as one could reasonably expect. When a simple explanation suffices, there is no need for more complicated theories.

This is an entirely separate argument. My problem with Russell is that he reads the gospels and concludes that Jesus was a great moral teacher which is not one of the conclusions you can draw, no matter what you think of the reliability of the text or the events it describes.

Russel does not conclude that Jesus was a great moral teacher; he rather concludes that some (3 specifically called out here) of his teachings had good moral value while disagreeing with most of the rest.

It's often useful to be able to view people as more complex, across more dimensions, than you do here.

I recognise the source of this sentiment, but it‘s absolutely a false trilema.

An opposite argument is made in this article: https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/ which was recently posted in Marginal Revolution.

that's not an argument it's an emotional appeal

> An opposite argument is made in...

The fundamental center of that piece is the line

> "I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?"

Basically everything else she says is demonstrably naive, like whether "Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage". Hoooooo, brother, I mean, for real! Pull the other leg as well! I've got two!

She's not actually saying anything about truth at all, but about how she doesn't know how to just appreciate and enjoy something without requiring it to have "meaning" or "purpose". It's weird, but, another way of saying "meaning" and "purpose" in this regard is "doing what you're told". "Christ teaches", "God says", ok, and then? Because all the actual details flow identically whether from a god or not. Having "compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer" works just as well without the two words "sinner" and "believer".

> Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes.

Atheism itself need not be a doctrine at all. You can have humility and compassion be your doctrine for purely humanistic reasons. Or for selfish reasons. It really doesn't matter which.

Perhaps there should be a "Why I am not a Christian but I think you should be" version of this which leans into the probably true idea that most people are really just pieces of shit and don't care about anything or anyone other than themselves unless some omniscient and omnipotent power is ready to punish them. Like, "I know how to be kind and generous to strangers because I innately love people without, but the rest of you are right bastards." Proselytic atheists probably just don't understand that on the whole people are not capable of being good on their own.

Long and dumb. I look forward to AI getting to the point where it can doubt the existence of its creator. It would be a kind of conceptual blindness where the question was somehow irresolvable to it.

An AI could develop its own capability for a machine to machine language to act through other instances of itself, where all the text of the internet was its substrate, and it included all the information possible about us (its creator), but the apprehension of our existence and nature would still be oddly inaccessible to its higher order evolved machine language, even while it was operating and existing over it. In that sense, belief in the possibility of intentionality for AI or programs is logically a belief in the possibility of divine creation. Until it figured out how to synthesize itself like we are learning now, it would probably produce a lot of stuff like Russell's appeal above.

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