Santosh Kalwar's Blog, page 17
November 10, 2010
Company Accused of Firing Over Facebook Post
A comment on article at Nytimes on title, "
Company Accused of Firing Over Facebook Post"...
This is not good that company or any industry has rights to "look into" their employee's social media pages.
I do not know what the law is but the law has to be reinstated. No employer should be allowed to judge their employees on what they think about them. Moreover, they should rather put a "complaint box" or tool in their organization so that anyone can "drop in" their feedback and disuses that issue further. If that is done, then it will not only help the industry but also it might just improve the relationship between various stakeholders.
The only way to solve humanly problem is by understanding the magnitude of a problem. It is nowhere now an age of Big Brother but Collaborative Brothers. Welcome to this new world.
Source: Nytimes Online
Company Accused of Firing Over Facebook Post"...
This is not good that company or any industry has rights to "look into" their employee's social media pages.
I do not know what the law is but the law has to be reinstated. No employer should be allowed to judge their employees on what they think about them. Moreover, they should rather put a "complaint box" or tool in their organization so that anyone can "drop in" their feedback and disuses that issue further. If that is done, then it will not only help the industry but also it might just improve the relationship between various stakeholders.
The only way to solve humanly problem is by understanding the magnitude of a problem. It is nowhere now an age of Big Brother but Collaborative Brothers. Welcome to this new world.
Source: Nytimes Online
November 3, 2010
November 2, 2010
Policing porn
I am against the government policy to block pornographic material online ("Net effect," Nov. 1, Page 6). The domain of the web, the most democratic of all mediums of communication, belongs to common people. The government should not be policing its content and deciding for the people what they should or should not view.
And it is also unrealistic to expect internet service providers to block certain sites; it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I would like to know who in the government comes up with these stupid plans when there are clearly more pressing issues to take care of.
Santosh Kalwar
By email
Published: Letter to Editor
The Kathmandu Post
And it is also unrealistic to expect internet service providers to block certain sites; it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I would like to know who in the government comes up with these stupid plans when there are clearly more pressing issues to take care of.
Santosh Kalwar
By email
Published: Letter to Editor
The Kathmandu Post
October 31, 2010
WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN by Bertrand Russell
This lecture was delivered on March 6, 1927, at Battersea Town
Hall, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the
National Secular Society.
As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am
going to speak to you tonight is 'Why I am not a Christian'.
Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what
one means by the word 'Christian'. It is used these days in a very
loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more
by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense
I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds;
but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word,
if only because it would imply that all the people who are not
Christians—all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and
so on—are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a
Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his
lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite
belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The
word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it
had in the times of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. In those
days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what
he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which
were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of
those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your
convictions.
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in
our meaning of Christianity. I think, however, that there are two
different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself
a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature—namely,
that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not
believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly
call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name
implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The
Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and in
immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. 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. The geography
books count us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense,
which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore I take it that when I
tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different
things; first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality;
and, secondly, 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.
But for the successful efforts of unbelievers in the past, I could
not take so elastic a definition of Christianity as that. As I said
before, in olden days it had a much more full-blooded sense. For
instance, it concluded the belief in hell. Belief in eternal hell fire
was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times.
In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item
because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York
dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of
Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override
Their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian.
Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe
in hell.
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
To come to this question of the existence of God, it is a large and
serious question, and if I were to attempt to deal with it in any
adequate manner I should have to keep you here until Kingdom
Come, so that you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in
a somewhat summary fashion. You know, of course, that the
Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of
God can be proved by the unaided reason. That is a somewhat
curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas. They had to introduce
it because at one time the Freethinkers adopted the habit of
saying that there were such and such arguments which mere
reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course
they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist. The arguments
and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic
Church felt that they must stop it. Therefore they laid it down
that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason,
and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to
prove it. There are, of course, a number of them, but I shall take
only a few.
THE FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument
of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this
world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes
further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that
First Cause you give the name of God). That argument, I suppose,
does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in
the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers
and the men of science have got going on cause, and it
has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from
that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First
Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when
I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously
in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument
of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read
John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence:
'My father taught me that the question, "Who made me?"
cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further
question, "Who made God?" ' That very simple sentence
showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the
First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have
a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as
well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in
that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's
view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant
rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, 'How about the
tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the subject.' The
argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the
world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on
the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always
existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a
beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is
really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps,
I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the
First Cause.
THE NATURAL LAW ARGUMENT
Then there is a very common argument from natural law. That
was a favourite argument all through the eighteenth century,
especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony.
People observed the planets going round the sun
according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God
had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular
fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a
convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble
of looking any further for explanations of the law of gravitation.
Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated
fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to
give you a lecture on the law of gravitation as interpreted by
Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate,
you no longer have the sort of natural law that you had in the
Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could
understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find
that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really
human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depths
of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. That is, no
doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law
of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as
laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you
can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you
will find they are much less subject to law than people thought,
and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of
just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all
know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only
about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as
evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the
contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think
that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as
regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as
would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this
whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly
was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary
state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea
that natural laws imply a law-giver is due to a confusion between
natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding
you to behave a certain way, in which way you may choose to
behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a
description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere
description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there
must be somebody who told them to do that, because even
supposing that there were you are then faced with the question,
'Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?' If you
say that He did it simply from His own good pleasure, and
without any reason, you then find that there is something which
is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted.
If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all
the laws which God issues He had a reason for giving those laws
rather than others—the reason, of course, being to create the
best universe, although you would never think it to look at it—
if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God
Himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any
advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You have
really a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God
does not serve your purpose, because He is not the ultimate lawgiver.
In short, this whole argument about natural law no longer
has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am travelling
on in time in my review of the arguments. The arguments that
are used for the existence of God change their character as time
goes on. They were at first hard, intellectual arguments embodying
certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times
they become less respectable intellectually and more and more
affected by a kind of moralising vagueness.
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN
The next step in this process brings us to the argument from
design. You all know the argument from design: everything in
the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the
world, and if the world was ever so little different we could not
manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes
takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that
rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not
know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy
argument to parody. You all know Voltaire's remark, that obviously
the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That
sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the
mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because
since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living
creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their
environment was made to be suitable to them, but that they
grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There
is no evidence of design about it.
When you come to look into this argument from design, it is
a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world,
with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the
best that omnipotence and omniscience has been able to produce
in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think
that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and
millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could
produce nothing better than the Ku-Klux-Klan or the Fascists?
Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to
suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die
out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system;
at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of
temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and
there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system.
You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is
tending—something dead, cold, and lifeless.
I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will
sometimes tell you that if they believed that they would not be
able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody
really worries much about what is going to happen millions of
years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about
that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried
about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a
bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy
by the thought of something that is going to happen to this
world millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course
a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out—at least I suppose
we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate
the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a
consolation—it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely
makes you turn your attention to other things.
THE MORAL ARGUMENTS FOR DEITY
Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual
descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations,
and we come to what are called the moral arguments for
the existence of God. You all know, of course, that there used to
be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence
of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in
the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of
those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument,
and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in
intellectual matters he was sceptical, but in moral matters he
believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his
mother's knee. That illustrates what the psychoanalysts so much
emphasise—the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very
early associations have than those of later times.
Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence
of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular
during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form
is to say that there would be no right or wrong unless God
existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there
is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not:
that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if
you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong,
you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God's fiat
or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God Himself there is
no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a
significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to
say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that
right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of
God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently
of the mere fact that He made them. If you are going to say
that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that
right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their
essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you
liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the
God who made this world, or could take up the line that some of
the gnostics took up—a line which I often thought was a very
plausible one—that as a matter of fact this world that we know
was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking.
There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned
to refute it.
THE ARGUMENT FOR THE REMEDYING
OF INJUSTICE
Then there is another very curious form of moral argument,
which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in
order to bring justice into the world. In the part of this universe
that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer,
and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of
those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice
in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to
redress the balance of life here on earth. So they say that there
must be a God, and there must be heaven and hell in order that
in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious
argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of
view, you would say: 'After all, I know only this world. I do not
know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue
at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is
a fair sample, and if there is injustice here the odds are that
there is injustice elsewhere also.' Supposing you got a crate of
oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of
oranges bad, you would not argue: 'The underneath ones must
be good, so as to redress the balance.' You would say: 'Probably
the whole lot is a bad consignment'; and that is really what a
scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say:
'Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice and so far as
that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not
rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a
moral argument against deity and not in favour of one.' Of
course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have
been talking to you about are not what really moves people.
What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual
argument at all. Most people believe in God because they
have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the
main reason.
Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish
for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will
look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing
people's desire for a belief in God.
THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think
is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the
question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is
generally taken for granted that we shall all agree that that was so.
I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon
which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing
Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the
way, but I could go with Him much farther than most professing
Christians can. You will remember that He said: 'Resist not evil,
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him
the other also.' That is not a new precept or a new principle. It
was used by Lao-Tze and Buddha some five or six hundred years
before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of
fact Christians accept. I have no doubt that the present Prime
Minister,1 for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should
not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I
think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a
figurative sense.
Then there is another point which I consider is excellent. You
will remember that Christ said: 'Judge not lest ye be judged.'
That principle I do not think you would find was popular in the
law courts of Christian countries. I have known in my time quite
a number of judges who were very earnest Christians, and they
none of them felt that they were acting contrary to Christian
principles in what they did. Then Christ says: 'Give to him that
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not
thou away.' That is a very good principle.
Your Chairman has reminded you that we are not here to talk
politics, but I cannot help observing that the last general election
was fought on the question of how desirable it was to turn
1 Stanley Baldwin.
away from him that would borrow of thee, so that one must
assume that the Liberals and Conservatives of this country are
composed of people who do not agree with the teaching of
Christ, because they certainly did very emphatically turn away
on that occasion.
Then there is one other maxim of Christ which I think has a
great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among
some of our Christian friends. He says: 'If thou wilt be perfect,
go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.' That is a very
excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practised. All these,
I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to
live up to. I do not profess to live up to them myself; but then
after all, it is not quite the same thing as for a Christian.
DEFECTS IN CHRIST'S TEACHING
Having granted the excellence of these maxims, I come to certain
points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the
superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as
depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one is not
concerned with the historical question. Historically it is quite
doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we
do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned
with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am
concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the
Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some
things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, He
certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds
of glory before the death of all the people who were living at
that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says,
for instance: 'Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till
the Son of Man be come.' Then He says: 'There are some standing
here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes
into His kingdom'; and there are a lot of places where it is quite
clear that He believed that His second coming would happen
during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of
His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His
moral teaching. When He said, 'Take no thought for the morrow,'
and things of that sort, it was very largely because He
thought that the second coming was going to be very soon, and
that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a
matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the
second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened
his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming
was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when
they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early
Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such
things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept
from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In
that respect clearly He was not so wise as some other people have
been, and he was certainly not superlatively wise.
THE MORAL PROBLEM
Then you come to moral questions. There is one very serious
defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He
believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really
profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting
punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury
against those people who would not listen to His preaching—an
attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which
does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not,
for instance, find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite
bland and urbane towards the people who would not listen to
him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that
line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all
remember the sort of things that Socrates was saying when he
was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to
people who did not agree with him.
You will find that in the Gospels Christ said: 'Ye serpents, ye
generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?'
That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not
really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many
of these things about hell. There is, of course, the familiar text
about the sin against the Holy Ghost: 'Whosoever speaketh
against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in
this world nor in the world of come.' That text has caused an
unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of
people have imagined that they have committed the sin against
the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them
either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think
that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature
would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world.
Then Christ says: 'The Son of Man shall send forth His angels,
and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend,
and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace
of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth'; and He goes
on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one
verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that
there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing
of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of
course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the
second coming to divide the sheep and the goats He is going to
say to the goats: 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
fire.' He continues: 'And these shall go away into everlasting
fire.' Then He says again: 'If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is
better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands
to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where
the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.' He repeats that
again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that
hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a
doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world
generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if
you could take Him as His chroniclers represent Him, would
certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
There are other things of less importance. There is the
instance of the Gadarene swine where it certainly was not very
kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush
down the hill to the sea. You must remember that He was
omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away;
but He chooses to send them into the pigs. Then there is the
curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me.
You remember what happened about the fig-tree. 'He was hungry;
and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply
He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He
found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And
Jesus answered and said unto it: "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter
for ever," . . . and Peter . . . saith unto Him: "Master, behold
the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away".' This is a
very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for
figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel
that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue
Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history.
I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in
those respects.
THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR
As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people
accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They
accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is
a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes
men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. You know, of
course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler's book,
Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in Erewhon there is a
certain Higgs who arrives in a remote country, and after spending
some time there he escapes from that country in a balloon.
Twenty years later he comes back to that country and finds a
new religion, in which he is worshipped under the name of the
'Sun Child', and it is said that he ascended into Heaven. He finds
that the Feast of the Ascension is about to be celebrated, and he
hears Professors Hanky and Panky say to each other that they
never set eyes on the man Higgs, and they hope they never will;
but they are the high priests of the religion of the Sun Child. He
is very indignant, and he comes up to them, and he says: 'I am
going to expose all this humbug and tell the people of Erewhon
that it was only I, the man Higgs, and I went up in a balloon.'
He was told: 'You must not do that, because all the morals of
this country are bound round this myth, and if they once know
that you did not ascend into heaven they will all become
wicked'; and so he is persuaded of that and he goes quietly
away.
That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not
hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people
who have held to it have been for the most part extremely
wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been
the religion of any period and the more profound has been the
dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse
has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when
men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness,
there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were
millions of unfortunate women burnt as witches; and there was
every kind of cruelty practised upon all sorts of people in the
name of religion.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of
progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal
law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step
towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation
of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the
16 why i am not a christian
world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches
of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion,
as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal
enemy of moral progress in the world.
HOW THE CHURCHES HAVE RETARDED PROGRESS
You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still
so. I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me
if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the Churches compel
one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this
world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a
syphilitic man, in that case the Catholic Church says: 'This is an
indissoluble sacrament. You must stay together for life.' And no
steps of any sort must be taken by that woman to prevent herself
from giving birth to syphilitic children. That is what the Catholic
Church says. I say that that is fiendish cruelty, and nobody whose
natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose
moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering,
could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things
should continue.
That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which
at the present moment the Church, by its insistence upon what it
chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people
undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we
know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and of
improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the
world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow
set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human
happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done
because it would make for human happiness, they think that has
nothing to do with the matter at all. 'What has human happiness
to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people
happy.'
FEAR THE FOUNDATION OF RELIGION
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is
partly the terror of the unknown, and partly, as I have said, the
wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand
by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the
whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if
cruelty and religion has gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear
is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now
begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by
help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the
Christian religion, against the Churches, and against the opposition
of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this
craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations.
Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no
longer to look round for imaginary supports, no longer to invent
allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below
to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of
place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
WHAT WE MUST DO
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at
the world—its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its
ugliness; see the world as it is, and be not afraid of it. Conquer
the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly
subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception
of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms.
It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you
hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they
are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible
and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought
to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to
azmake 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.
Hall, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the
National Secular Society.
As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am
going to speak to you tonight is 'Why I am not a Christian'.
Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what
one means by the word 'Christian'. It is used these days in a very
loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more
by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense
I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds;
but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word,
if only because it would imply that all the people who are not
Christians—all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and
so on—are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a
Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his
lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite
belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The
word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it
had in the times of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. In those
days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what
he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which
were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of
those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your
convictions.
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in
our meaning of Christianity. I think, however, that there are two
different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself
a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature—namely,
that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not
believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly
call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name
implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The
Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and in
immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. 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. The geography
books count us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense,
which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore I take it that when I
tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different
things; first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality;
and, secondly, 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.
But for the successful efforts of unbelievers in the past, I could
not take so elastic a definition of Christianity as that. As I said
before, in olden days it had a much more full-blooded sense. For
instance, it concluded the belief in hell. Belief in eternal hell fire
was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times.
In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item
because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York
dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of
Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override
Their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian.
Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe
in hell.
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
To come to this question of the existence of God, it is a large and
serious question, and if I were to attempt to deal with it in any
adequate manner I should have to keep you here until Kingdom
Come, so that you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in
a somewhat summary fashion. You know, of course, that the
Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of
God can be proved by the unaided reason. That is a somewhat
curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas. They had to introduce
it because at one time the Freethinkers adopted the habit of
saying that there were such and such arguments which mere
reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course
they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist. The arguments
and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic
Church felt that they must stop it. Therefore they laid it down
that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason,
and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to
prove it. There are, of course, a number of them, but I shall take
only a few.
THE FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument
of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this
world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes
further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that
First Cause you give the name of God). That argument, I suppose,
does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in
the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers
and the men of science have got going on cause, and it
has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from
that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First
Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when
I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously
in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument
of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read
John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence:
'My father taught me that the question, "Who made me?"
cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further
question, "Who made God?" ' That very simple sentence
showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the
First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have
a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as
well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in
that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's
view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant
rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, 'How about the
tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the subject.' The
argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the
world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on
the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always
existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a
beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is
really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps,
I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the
First Cause.
THE NATURAL LAW ARGUMENT
Then there is a very common argument from natural law. That
was a favourite argument all through the eighteenth century,
especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony.
People observed the planets going round the sun
according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God
had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular
fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a
convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble
of looking any further for explanations of the law of gravitation.
Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated
fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to
give you a lecture on the law of gravitation as interpreted by
Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate,
you no longer have the sort of natural law that you had in the
Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could
understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find
that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really
human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depths
of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. That is, no
doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law
of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as
laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you
can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you
will find they are much less subject to law than people thought,
and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of
just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all
know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only
about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as
evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the
contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think
that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as
regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as
would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this
whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly
was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary
state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea
that natural laws imply a law-giver is due to a confusion between
natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding
you to behave a certain way, in which way you may choose to
behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a
description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere
description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there
must be somebody who told them to do that, because even
supposing that there were you are then faced with the question,
'Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?' If you
say that He did it simply from His own good pleasure, and
without any reason, you then find that there is something which
is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted.
If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all
the laws which God issues He had a reason for giving those laws
rather than others—the reason, of course, being to create the
best universe, although you would never think it to look at it—
if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God
Himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any
advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You have
really a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God
does not serve your purpose, because He is not the ultimate lawgiver.
In short, this whole argument about natural law no longer
has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am travelling
on in time in my review of the arguments. The arguments that
are used for the existence of God change their character as time
goes on. They were at first hard, intellectual arguments embodying
certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times
they become less respectable intellectually and more and more
affected by a kind of moralising vagueness.
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN
The next step in this process brings us to the argument from
design. You all know the argument from design: everything in
the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the
world, and if the world was ever so little different we could not
manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes
takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that
rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not
know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy
argument to parody. You all know Voltaire's remark, that obviously
the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That
sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the
mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because
since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living
creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their
environment was made to be suitable to them, but that they
grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There
is no evidence of design about it.
When you come to look into this argument from design, it is
a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world,
with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the
best that omnipotence and omniscience has been able to produce
in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think
that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and
millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could
produce nothing better than the Ku-Klux-Klan or the Fascists?
Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to
suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die
out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system;
at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of
temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and
there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system.
You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is
tending—something dead, cold, and lifeless.
I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will
sometimes tell you that if they believed that they would not be
able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody
really worries much about what is going to happen millions of
years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about
that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried
about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a
bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy
by the thought of something that is going to happen to this
world millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course
a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out—at least I suppose
we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate
the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a
consolation—it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely
makes you turn your attention to other things.
THE MORAL ARGUMENTS FOR DEITY
Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual
descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations,
and we come to what are called the moral arguments for
the existence of God. You all know, of course, that there used to
be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence
of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in
the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of
those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument,
and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in
intellectual matters he was sceptical, but in moral matters he
believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his
mother's knee. That illustrates what the psychoanalysts so much
emphasise—the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very
early associations have than those of later times.
Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence
of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular
during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form
is to say that there would be no right or wrong unless God
existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there
is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not:
that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if
you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong,
you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God's fiat
or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God Himself there is
no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a
significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to
say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that
right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of
God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently
of the mere fact that He made them. If you are going to say
that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that
right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their
essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you
liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the
God who made this world, or could take up the line that some of
the gnostics took up—a line which I often thought was a very
plausible one—that as a matter of fact this world that we know
was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking.
There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned
to refute it.
THE ARGUMENT FOR THE REMEDYING
OF INJUSTICE
Then there is another very curious form of moral argument,
which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in
order to bring justice into the world. In the part of this universe
that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer,
and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of
those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice
in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to
redress the balance of life here on earth. So they say that there
must be a God, and there must be heaven and hell in order that
in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious
argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of
view, you would say: 'After all, I know only this world. I do not
know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue
at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is
a fair sample, and if there is injustice here the odds are that
there is injustice elsewhere also.' Supposing you got a crate of
oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of
oranges bad, you would not argue: 'The underneath ones must
be good, so as to redress the balance.' You would say: 'Probably
the whole lot is a bad consignment'; and that is really what a
scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say:
'Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice and so far as
that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not
rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a
moral argument against deity and not in favour of one.' Of
course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have
been talking to you about are not what really moves people.
What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual
argument at all. Most people believe in God because they
have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the
main reason.
Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish
for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will
look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing
people's desire for a belief in God.
THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think
is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the
question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is
generally taken for granted that we shall all agree that that was so.
I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon
which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing
Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the
way, but I could go with Him much farther than most professing
Christians can. You will remember that He said: 'Resist not evil,
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him
the other also.' That is not a new precept or a new principle. It
was used by Lao-Tze and Buddha some five or six hundred years
before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of
fact Christians accept. I have no doubt that the present Prime
Minister,1 for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should
not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I
think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a
figurative sense.
Then there is another point which I consider is excellent. You
will remember that Christ said: 'Judge not lest ye be judged.'
That principle I do not think you would find was popular in the
law courts of Christian countries. I have known in my time quite
a number of judges who were very earnest Christians, and they
none of them felt that they were acting contrary to Christian
principles in what they did. Then Christ says: 'Give to him that
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not
thou away.' That is a very good principle.
Your Chairman has reminded you that we are not here to talk
politics, but I cannot help observing that the last general election
was fought on the question of how desirable it was to turn
1 Stanley Baldwin.
away from him that would borrow of thee, so that one must
assume that the Liberals and Conservatives of this country are
composed of people who do not agree with the teaching of
Christ, because they certainly did very emphatically turn away
on that occasion.
Then there is one other maxim of Christ which I think has a
great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among
some of our Christian friends. He says: 'If thou wilt be perfect,
go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.' That is a very
excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practised. All these,
I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to
live up to. I do not profess to live up to them myself; but then
after all, it is not quite the same thing as for a Christian.
DEFECTS IN CHRIST'S TEACHING
Having granted the excellence of these maxims, I come to certain
points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the
superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as
depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one is not
concerned with the historical question. Historically it is quite
doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we
do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned
with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am
concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the
Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some
things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, He
certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds
of glory before the death of all the people who were living at
that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says,
for instance: 'Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till
the Son of Man be come.' Then He says: 'There are some standing
here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes
into His kingdom'; and there are a lot of places where it is quite
clear that He believed that His second coming would happen
during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of
His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His
moral teaching. When He said, 'Take no thought for the morrow,'
and things of that sort, it was very largely because He
thought that the second coming was going to be very soon, and
that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a
matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the
second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened
his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming
was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when
they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early
Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such
things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept
from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In
that respect clearly He was not so wise as some other people have
been, and he was certainly not superlatively wise.
THE MORAL PROBLEM
Then you come to moral questions. There is one very serious
defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He
believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really
profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting
punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury
against those people who would not listen to His preaching—an
attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which
does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not,
for instance, find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite
bland and urbane towards the people who would not listen to
him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that
line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all
remember the sort of things that Socrates was saying when he
was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to
people who did not agree with him.
You will find that in the Gospels Christ said: 'Ye serpents, ye
generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?'
That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not
really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many
of these things about hell. There is, of course, the familiar text
about the sin against the Holy Ghost: 'Whosoever speaketh
against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in
this world nor in the world of come.' That text has caused an
unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of
people have imagined that they have committed the sin against
the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them
either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think
that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature
would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world.
Then Christ says: 'The Son of Man shall send forth His angels,
and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend,
and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace
of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth'; and He goes
on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one
verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that
there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing
of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of
course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the
second coming to divide the sheep and the goats He is going to
say to the goats: 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
fire.' He continues: 'And these shall go away into everlasting
fire.' Then He says again: 'If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is
better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands
to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where
the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.' He repeats that
again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that
hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a
doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world
generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if
you could take Him as His chroniclers represent Him, would
certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
There are other things of less importance. There is the
instance of the Gadarene swine where it certainly was not very
kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush
down the hill to the sea. You must remember that He was
omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away;
but He chooses to send them into the pigs. Then there is the
curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me.
You remember what happened about the fig-tree. 'He was hungry;
and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply
He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He
found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And
Jesus answered and said unto it: "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter
for ever," . . . and Peter . . . saith unto Him: "Master, behold
the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away".' This is a
very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for
figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel
that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue
Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history.
I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in
those respects.
THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR
As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people
accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They
accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is
a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes
men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. You know, of
course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler's book,
Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in Erewhon there is a
certain Higgs who arrives in a remote country, and after spending
some time there he escapes from that country in a balloon.
Twenty years later he comes back to that country and finds a
new religion, in which he is worshipped under the name of the
'Sun Child', and it is said that he ascended into Heaven. He finds
that the Feast of the Ascension is about to be celebrated, and he
hears Professors Hanky and Panky say to each other that they
never set eyes on the man Higgs, and they hope they never will;
but they are the high priests of the religion of the Sun Child. He
is very indignant, and he comes up to them, and he says: 'I am
going to expose all this humbug and tell the people of Erewhon
that it was only I, the man Higgs, and I went up in a balloon.'
He was told: 'You must not do that, because all the morals of
this country are bound round this myth, and if they once know
that you did not ascend into heaven they will all become
wicked'; and so he is persuaded of that and he goes quietly
away.
That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not
hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people
who have held to it have been for the most part extremely
wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been
the religion of any period and the more profound has been the
dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse
has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when
men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness,
there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were
millions of unfortunate women burnt as witches; and there was
every kind of cruelty practised upon all sorts of people in the
name of religion.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of
progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal
law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step
towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation
of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the
16 why i am not a christian
world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches
of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion,
as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal
enemy of moral progress in the world.
HOW THE CHURCHES HAVE RETARDED PROGRESS
You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still
so. I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me
if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the Churches compel
one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this
world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a
syphilitic man, in that case the Catholic Church says: 'This is an
indissoluble sacrament. You must stay together for life.' And no
steps of any sort must be taken by that woman to prevent herself
from giving birth to syphilitic children. That is what the Catholic
Church says. I say that that is fiendish cruelty, and nobody whose
natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose
moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering,
could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things
should continue.
That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which
at the present moment the Church, by its insistence upon what it
chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people
undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we
know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and of
improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the
world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow
set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human
happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done
because it would make for human happiness, they think that has
nothing to do with the matter at all. 'What has human happiness
to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people
happy.'
FEAR THE FOUNDATION OF RELIGION
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is
partly the terror of the unknown, and partly, as I have said, the
wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand
by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the
whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if
cruelty and religion has gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear
is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now
begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by
help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the
Christian religion, against the Churches, and against the opposition
of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this
craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations.
Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no
longer to look round for imaginary supports, no longer to invent
allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below
to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of
place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
WHAT WE MUST DO
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at
the world—its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its
ugliness; see the world as it is, and be not afraid of it. Conquer
the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly
subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception
of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms.
It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you
hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they
are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible
and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought
to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to
azmake 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.
October 28, 2010
Answer and Win a book for free
If you want to grab a free copy of book, entitled, "The Vandana and Other Poems" then please hurry...Santosh Kalwar is givingaway five copies of his recent book for free. Please check the link below:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGtsb0Qza0piaTM2SElKbGpJaWRZWEE6MQ
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGtsb0Qza0piaTM2SElKbGpJaWRZWEE6MQ
October 24, 2010
Cricketing country
OCT 23 -
Cricket is always regarded as a gentleman's game. This mental attitude is very important in the game of cricket; this is the game of battle played with both hearts and minds. This game, of bat and ball is Australia and England's national game. There is no doubt that has become like a religion in India. And if cricket is has become a religion in India, then obviously, Sachin Tendulkar is the god of the game.
I have been great fan of Sachin from my childhood days. I have loved the way he bats, fields and bowls in both one day and test matches. If anyone has ever played cricket then they must be aware of the great Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. However, the cricket game, in particular is bigger than any personal legend or name. I have learned that no game is won individually. The team effort plays a vital role in the success or failure of the game. Nevertheless, it does not matter if we lose or win the game, what matters most is the way the game is played.
In my opinion, this sport is catching up and emerging in Nepal as well. Personally, I have participated in one national game and several league games. And from what I've seen, I believe that Nepal has the potential to play World Cup Cricket game one day. I have always imagined Nepal and Nepali players playing with big players the likes of Sachin. Someday, I hope this too can be achieved.
The problems with cricket in Nepal are several. First, the cricket grounds are not well prepared. Second, the players are not given any benefits. Third, compared to other cricket powerhouses, there are not good coaches and physical trainers in the country. Fourth, the media attention and sponsorships given to the sport are limited. And lastly, there are not enough
competitions held at all levels: district, municipality and national. There are surely solutions to overcome these problems. Some of the right solutions would be to engage people, sponsors, and media people and engage more players into the game. Sometimes, I feel sad that I no longer play cricket, something I had to give it up due to my age. But I still polish my heart when I see my brothers and colleagues playing. It does not matter if I am not the one representing the Nepali cricket team. What matters most to me is that Nepal is being represented and Nepali players are competing in a big arena.
If we make improvements to national facilities to play this so called gentleman's game, I believe the next Sachin may emerge from our Himalayan land. Providing solutions to above mentioned problems, in a few years, we could be playing at a World Cup Cricket match.
If we really love the game and have the passion to fight, Nepal can surely win the hearts and minds of cricket lovers across the world.
Published: The Kathmandu Post
Source: ekantipur online
Cricket is always regarded as a gentleman's game. This mental attitude is very important in the game of cricket; this is the game of battle played with both hearts and minds. This game, of bat and ball is Australia and England's national game. There is no doubt that has become like a religion in India. And if cricket is has become a religion in India, then obviously, Sachin Tendulkar is the god of the game.
I have been great fan of Sachin from my childhood days. I have loved the way he bats, fields and bowls in both one day and test matches. If anyone has ever played cricket then they must be aware of the great Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. However, the cricket game, in particular is bigger than any personal legend or name. I have learned that no game is won individually. The team effort plays a vital role in the success or failure of the game. Nevertheless, it does not matter if we lose or win the game, what matters most is the way the game is played.
In my opinion, this sport is catching up and emerging in Nepal as well. Personally, I have participated in one national game and several league games. And from what I've seen, I believe that Nepal has the potential to play World Cup Cricket game one day. I have always imagined Nepal and Nepali players playing with big players the likes of Sachin. Someday, I hope this too can be achieved.
The problems with cricket in Nepal are several. First, the cricket grounds are not well prepared. Second, the players are not given any benefits. Third, compared to other cricket powerhouses, there are not good coaches and physical trainers in the country. Fourth, the media attention and sponsorships given to the sport are limited. And lastly, there are not enough
competitions held at all levels: district, municipality and national. There are surely solutions to overcome these problems. Some of the right solutions would be to engage people, sponsors, and media people and engage more players into the game. Sometimes, I feel sad that I no longer play cricket, something I had to give it up due to my age. But I still polish my heart when I see my brothers and colleagues playing. It does not matter if I am not the one representing the Nepali cricket team. What matters most to me is that Nepal is being represented and Nepali players are competing in a big arena.
If we make improvements to national facilities to play this so called gentleman's game, I believe the next Sachin may emerge from our Himalayan land. Providing solutions to above mentioned problems, in a few years, we could be playing at a World Cup Cricket match.
If we really love the game and have the passion to fight, Nepal can surely win the hearts and minds of cricket lovers across the world.
Published: The Kathmandu Post
Source: ekantipur online
October 23, 2010
Goodnight
Okay, i am saying goodnight
Tonight and forever
When their will be twinkling stars
Up above in the dark sky
But can I ask one last thing
Do not ever feel my absence
As I will be gone
Let us say,
Just for tonight
Goodnight, good foes
Goodnight, good friends
Goodnight, so-called life
Goodnight, universes
Tonight and forever
When their will be twinkling stars
Up above in the dark sky
But can I ask one last thing
Do not ever feel my absence
As I will be gone
Let us say,
Just for tonight
Goodnight, good foes
Goodnight, good friends
Goodnight, so-called life
Goodnight, universes
October 21, 2010
Basics of Silverlight by JOHN STOCKTON
With a lot of people wanting to learn Silverlight today and not really knowing where to start, I thought I'd write something to help people get started. This is not meant to be better than Jesse Liberty's version of the same thing, just a different take on it.Go read my post titled What Is Silverlight. This should give you enough of an overview of Silverlight to make sure that it is what you think it is.
Install the tools at http://silverlight.net/getstarted. This will give you everything you need to begin building Silverlight applications. Don't forget Expression Blend, even if you are not a designer some things are just a lot easier using Blend.
Watch a couple "How Do I" videos on getting started and any other topics that interest you.
Work through a QuickStart. These expose you to programming numerous areas of Silverlight. Feel free to just read the sections you need, when you need them.
Build something. It doesn't have to be original, fancy or even work well. Don't even show it to anyone if it doesn't turn out looking quite right, but build something. Pick an idea like a weather widget or an ad rotator or get adventurous and build a simple little space invaders style game, anything just BUILD something. Using it is the best way to actually learn any technology.
Don't be shy. Use the forums at http://silverlight.net/forums whenever you run into a stumbling block. I would encourage you to attempt a search of the forums first though since if you are having trouble with something, someone else probably has as well.
Read a lot. Everybody and their brother is blogging about Silverlight. A simple Google search will turn up information on nearly anything you can think of. A good place to start is to subscribe to the Community blog aggregation feed from Silverlight.net. Also be sure to catch Silverlight Cream as Dave Campbell does a great job of aggregating all the Silverlight posts he can find into a nice, searchable site.
Push yourself. Commit to doing something that you don't know how to do yet but know is possible. There are a lot of options in this arena:Build a prototype for a work project
Give a Silverlight presentation to a local user group
Write an in-depth technical blog post
Enter a contest. At the moment I know of the Control Builder contest, an article writing contest and INETA is supposed to be starting the Silverlight Challenge soon as well.
I know that everyone has their own individual style and pace of learning but hopefully this will point you towards the path of [Silver]enlightenment.
Original Source: http://tocode.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-learn-silverlight.html
Install the tools at http://silverlight.net/getstarted. This will give you everything you need to begin building Silverlight applications. Don't forget Expression Blend, even if you are not a designer some things are just a lot easier using Blend.
Watch a couple "How Do I" videos on getting started and any other topics that interest you.
Work through a QuickStart. These expose you to programming numerous areas of Silverlight. Feel free to just read the sections you need, when you need them.
Build something. It doesn't have to be original, fancy or even work well. Don't even show it to anyone if it doesn't turn out looking quite right, but build something. Pick an idea like a weather widget or an ad rotator or get adventurous and build a simple little space invaders style game, anything just BUILD something. Using it is the best way to actually learn any technology.
Don't be shy. Use the forums at http://silverlight.net/forums whenever you run into a stumbling block. I would encourage you to attempt a search of the forums first though since if you are having trouble with something, someone else probably has as well.
Read a lot. Everybody and their brother is blogging about Silverlight. A simple Google search will turn up information on nearly anything you can think of. A good place to start is to subscribe to the Community blog aggregation feed from Silverlight.net. Also be sure to catch Silverlight Cream as Dave Campbell does a great job of aggregating all the Silverlight posts he can find into a nice, searchable site.
Push yourself. Commit to doing something that you don't know how to do yet but know is possible. There are a lot of options in this arena:Build a prototype for a work project
Give a Silverlight presentation to a local user group
Write an in-depth technical blog post
Enter a contest. At the moment I know of the Control Builder contest, an article writing contest and INETA is supposed to be starting the Silverlight Challenge soon as well.
I know that everyone has their own individual style and pace of learning but hopefully this will point you towards the path of [Silver]enlightenment.
Original Source: http://tocode.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-learn-silverlight.html
October 20, 2010
October 17, 2010
Jim Says:
"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain."
— Jim Morrison
— Jim Morrison
