Why I Am Not a Christian

by Bertrand Russell

anybody calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature -- namely, that you must believe in God and immortality.

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.

Belief in eternal hell-fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times.

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.)

If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.

is there any reason why it should not have always existed.

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,

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 have been able to produce in millions of years.

there would be no right or wrong unless God existed.

if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not?

the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world.

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.

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.

"Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

"Judge not lest ye be judged."

"Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor."

"Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come."

"There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom";

"Take no thought for the morrow,"

any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell."

"Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this World nor in the world to come."

"The Son of Man shall send forth his 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";

"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire."

"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."

I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.