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WillowOne's Positions

Why I Am Not a Christian

Overview

A collection of essays built around the 1927 lecture of the same name. In it Russell works through the standard arguments for God in a few pages each: the first cause, natural law, the argument from design, and the moral arguments, and finds each wanting. He then turns to the character of Christ as presented in the Gospels, to the doctrine of Hell, and to his view that religion is founded primarily on fear. The other essays cover sexual ethics, free thought, and the 1940 affair in which Russell was barred from teaching at City College of New York on grounds of immorality.

Notes

Short, plain, and still the clearest version of most of the objections set out under Religious Apologetics. Russell's remark that if everything must have a cause then so must God, and that if God need not then neither need the world, is the whole of the First Cause Argument objection in one sentence. The essays have dated in places, and his tone is more acid than mine, but the arguments have not needed updating.

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