Book Review: Why I'm Not a Christian

Over the last Easter break, I got tired of reading fiction, and decided to dabble in some philosophy. Anything that was well written and accessible, and funnily enough, there's more than you'd think. One of the books recommended on the shelves in the shop I was in was a collection of articles and speeches by Bertrand Russell, entitled Why I'm Not a Christian.

It probably sounds like a Richard Dawkins-esque attack on the lack of evidence for religious belief, which bluntly discards religion as a sort of senseless craze, and discredits the history of theology which supports it. Far from it. Russell was writing and talking from about 1895 to 1960 on this topic, and never really made it his academic specialism. He was a logician and mathematician who simply had a few things to say about religion. It just so happens that he puts arguments I have always believed myself far better than I can.

Firstly, that the arguments in support of Christianity are almost identical to those supporting other dogmas which we now discredit as being either dangerous or irrational. For instance, the idea that the beliefs are worth supporting because they're good for society or it helps to uphold moral values - regardless of whether or not they are actually true - is a slippery slope. It's like telling children that the bogeyman is out to get them to keep them in bed, or lying to your wife about cheating on her. It assumes people are willing to settle for untruths, and sets up a very bad social precedent.

Regardless of whether the moral principles of Christianity are 'good', its history is pretty dismal. From crusades to inquisitions, to attacks on its strongest ideologues, like Thomas Paine or Martin Luther, Christian institutions have done at least as much harm as they have good. Russell argues that any ideology which claims to have an unquestionable access to truth, coupled with a sense of owning moral values, will inevitably result in haughy, judgemental and eventually punitive behaviour. He draws analogies with Russian communism, indicating that the various strands of Christianity have followed an almost identical path. The purges, genocides, pogroms all stem from that same dangerous cocktail of dogma and moral superiority.

Russell puts it far better than I do, of course, and one chapter even transcribes a debate between Russell and a leading contemporary theologian, arguing about the requirement of a God to talk of a meaningful universe; a debate which has largely been railroaded by the Dawkinses of this sensationalist world.

More's the Pity.