logo

29 pages 58 minutes read

Bertrand Russell

Why I Am Not a Christian

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1927

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Themes

Christian Morality

One of the main themes of “Why I Am Not a Christian” is the idea of Christian morality, precisely the sense of superior morality that many Christians hold. Russell thoroughly examines and argues this idea. One of the first things he clarifies is the colloquial use of the word Christian versus its definition: “[Christian] 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” (1). This quote investigates the idea that Christian moral superiority is so infused into culture that simply being Christian means one must be a good person.

Later in the text, he interrogates the idea of God’s fiat, His will, being inherently good and moral—and the idea that those who follow the word of the Lord must be too. He contends that the ideas of right and wrong—morality in general—must be independent of God’s will in some way. If not, then it’s not significant or valid to say that God is good since a person can’t determine whether his actions are good or bad given that everything he does and creates is considered innately good. Bertrand explains his argument by noting, “[I]f you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong […] 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” (9).

When Russell examines the actions of Jesus Christ and the start of the Christian faith himself, he considers the role of Christian morality. Russell argues that even in the Gospel, Christ is judgmental and damns all who don’t believe in him, something that Russell doesn’t see as a credit to Jesus’s character and sense of morality: “I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hellfire 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” (15). In this quote, Russell attributes much suffering to Christians—for example, the Crusades, the witch trials, and the Spanish Inquisition. Russell argues that if the morals of Jesus, the founder of Christianity, can so quickly be brought into question, then no one who is Christian can believe they have a superior sense of morality. He adds that since Christians can’t have an inherently superior sense of morality to anyone else, it seems ludicrous to base government policy on the concept.

Logic and Knowledge Undermining Christian Authority

Another prevalent theme in the text is how logic and information can easily undermine Christian authority. In “Why I Am Not a Christian,” Russell does so by thoroughly examining all the prevalent arguments for why someone should (or must) be a Christian. The whole lecture is based on how Russell intends to probe each philosophical argument used by Christian authorities to prove why much of Christianity is, in his perspective, logically flawed. To Russell, science and logic have made Christian explanations outdated, and the Church having to offer arguments about why God and Christ are real and why people should have faith in the Church is proof of it:

[T]he Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of God can be proved by unaided reason. 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 (3).

Russell brings up the history of how “freethinkers” questioned the existence of God as proof to reason against the arguments constructed by the Church. One argument he targets is the idea of First Cause, the idea that for something to have come into being, something must have caused it, and that by going far enough back, one would come to God because He was the first cause of everything:

That argument, I suppose, does not carry much weight nowadays because, in the first place, the cause is not quite what it used to be […] the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have (4).

Here, Russell references the understanding of evolution and the Big Bang Theory, both scientific theories that strongly undermine traditional authority’s explanation of existence. He wonders how humanity can understand that atoms and natural selection made the universe and where God fits in all of that.

Another example of this theme is in how Russell examines natural law. He quickly undermines this argument through logic, ending that section with this quote:

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 moralizing vagueness (7).

Here, Russell explains that the Church’s arguments have lost much of their relevance, and as knowledge and logic continue to evolve, the arguments become far less convincing.

Societal Progress

The prospect of societal progress is at the heart of “Why I Am Not a Christian.” The whole reason for Russell’s creating this lecture was a conviction that he must make this argument for the sake of society’s progress. To Russell, the goal of progress is to invite in a better world—but Christian values have repeatedly held that back. Simply put, the institution of the Church has impeded human and societal progress. Russell believes that by outlining why he’s not a Christian, he can explain why Christianity is illogical and stands in the way of progress. He notes that Christianity encourages people to value the wisdom of men who are long dead instead of looking forward and accepting new knowledge and beliefs that intend to end suffering.

Russell first touches on this idea while exploring the idea of proof for God’s existence and continues to bring it up in every subsequent section. He mentions that many arguments proving God’s existence are outdated and that simply accepting those arguments has stopped people from pushing for a deeper understanding of the world. He states that in Newton’s time, when people settled on the idea that God is the entity who made the planets move the way they do, it was done for the sake of ease: “That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further […]” (5).

Beyond simply stating that Christianity held back progress because it was easier than looking for better answers, Russell argues that relying on Church doctrine to determine what is and isn’t acceptable in society has very real consequences. These determinations ultimately impact government policies and laws. One example Russell gives is the sanctity of marriage in the Catholic Church. He supposes that if a “naive” young woman were to marry a man with syphilis, the Catholic Church would prioritize the sacrament of marriage above the woman’s well-being. If they conceived, the woman would be forced to carry the fetus to term, regardless of whether the couple wanted it or not.

The Church has many ways that, through its insistence on what it chooses to call morality, it inflicts “undeserved and unnecessary suffering” (17) on all sorts of people. To Russell, by holding back solutions to very real problems, the Church is actively impeding societal progress toward a better world.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text