Why I Am Not A Christian
by Bertrand Russell
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957)
At present, when we are witnessing a campaign for the revival of religion which is carried on with all the slickness of modern advertising techniques, a restatement of the unbeliever’s case seems particularly desirable.
Page v.
There has been amazingly little opposition to most of the encroachments of ecclesiastical interests.
Page vii.
There are unfortunately many others who would still persecute if they could and who do persecute when they can.
Page viii.
With very few exceptions, the religion which a man accepts is that of the community in which he lives, which makes it obvious that the influence of environment is what has led him to accept the religion in question.
Pages xi.
The harm that is done by a religion is of two sorts, the one depending on the kind of belief which it is thought ought to be given to it, and the other upon the particular tenets believed.
Pages xi-xii.
The conviction that it is important to believe this or that, even if a free enquiry would not support the belief, is one which is common to almost all religions and which inspires all systems of State education.
Page xii.
A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering.
Page xii.
Only those who slavishly worship success can think that effectiveness is admirable without regard to what is effected.
Page xii.
I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian.
Page 1.
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.
Page 2.
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.
Page 4.
We now find that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really human conventions.
Page 5.
The whole idea that natural laws imply a law-giver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws.
Page 5.
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.
Page 6.
Since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that the environment was made to be suitable to then, but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.
Page 6.
You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending - something dead, cold, and lifeless.
Page 7.
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.
Page 8.
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 form 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.
Page 9.
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 n 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 form superlative excellence.
Page 12.
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.
Page 13.
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.
Page 15.
Every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized Churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
Page 15.
Churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant.
Page 15.
It has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness.
Page 16.
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.
Page 16.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is not wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand.
Page 16.
The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms.
Page 17.
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.
Page 17.
Religion is primarily a social phenomenon. Churches may owe their origin to teachers with strong individual convictions, but these teachers have seldom had much influence upon the Churches that they founded, whereas Churches have had enormous influence upon the communities in which they flourished.
Page 18.
The teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do with the ethics of Christians. The most important thing about Christianity, from a social and historical point of view, is not Christ but the Church.
Page 18.
There is nothing accidental about this difference between a Church and its Founder. As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth.
Page 19.
They become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress.
Page 19.
It is not only intellectually, but also morally, that religion is pernicious. I mean by this that it teaches ethical codes which are not conducive to human happiness.
Page 19.
The conception of Sin which is bound up with Christian ethics is one that does an extraordinary amount of harm, since it affords people on outlet for their sadism which they believe to be legitimate, and even noble.
Page 20.
I do not think there can be any defence for the view that knowledge is ever undesirable.
Page 21.
A person is much less likely to act wisely when he is ignorant than when he is instructed.
Page 21.
Almost every adult in a Christian community is more or less diseased nervously as a result of the taboo on sex knowledge when he or she was young.
Page 22.
The fundamental doctrines of Christianity demand a great deal of ethical perversion before they can be accepted.
Page 22.
If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when he decided to create man.
Page 22.
The objections to religion are of two sorts - intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that the is no reason to suppose any religion true: the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are, and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow.
Page 23.
If we believe the Christian religion, our notions of what is good will be different from what they will be if we do not believe it. Therefore to Christians the effects of Christianity may seem good, while to unbelievers they may seem bad.
Page 23.
So far as scientific evidence goes, the universe has crawled by slow stages to a somewhat pitiful result on this earth, and is going to crawl by still ore pitiful stages to a condition of universal death. If this is to be taken as evidence of purpose, I can only say that the purpose is one that does not appeal to me.
Page 25.
The natural impulse if the vigorous person of decent character is to attempt to do good, but if he is deprived of all political power and of all opportunity to influence events he will be deflected from his natural course and will decide that the important thing is so be good. This is what happened to the early Christians: it led to a conception of personal holiness as something quite independent of beneficent action, since holiness had to be something that could be achieved by people who were impotent in action. Social virtue came therefore to be excluded from Christian ethics.
Page 25.
With this separation between the social and thee moral person there went an increasing separation between soul and body, which has survived in Christian metaphysics.
Page 26.
I think it is clear that the net result of all the centuries of Christianity has been to make men more egotistic, more shut up in themselves, than nature made them.
Page 26.
The intolerance that spread over the world with the advent of Christianity is one of its most curious features, due, I think, to the Jewish belief in righteousness and in the exclusive reality of the Jewish God.
Page 27.
It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of Freethinkers.
Page 28.
If you abolish the reign of law, you also abolish the possibility or miracles, since miracles are acts of God which contr5avene the laws governing ordinary phenomena.
Pages 29-30.
The modern doctrines as to minute phenomena have no bearing upon anything that is of practical importance.
Page 30.
Everybody who has ever had to do with children knows that a suitable diet does more to make them virtuous than the most eloquent preaching in the world.
Pages 30-31.
Many children have bad habits which are perpetuated by punishment, but will probably pass away of themselves if left unnoticed.
Page 31.
The primary purpose of the State is clearly security against both internal criminals and external enemies. It is rooted in the tendency of children to huddle together when they are frightened, and to look for a grown-up person who will give them a sense of security. The Church has more complex origins. Undoubtedly the most important source of religion is fear: this can be seen at the present day, since anything that causes alarm is apt to turn people’s thoughts to God. … Religion has, however, other appeals besides that of terror; it appeals especially to our human self-esteem. If Christianity is true, mankind are not such pitiful worms as they seem to be; they are of interest to the Creator of the universe, who takes the trouble to be pleased with them when they behave well and displeased when they behave badly. This is a great compliment.
Page 32.
It is flattering to suppose that the universe is controlled by a Being who shares our tastes and prejudices.
Page 33.
The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice.
Page 33.
The three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit and hatred. The purpose of religion, one may say, is to give an air of respectability to these passions, provided they run in certain channels.
Page 34.
Man is a part of Nature, not something contrasted with Nature.
Page 38.
Mental phenomena seem to be bound up with material structure.
Page 39.
We also cannot suppose that an individual’s thinking survives bodily death, since that destroys the organization of the brain, and dissipates the energy which utilized the brain tracks.
Page 39.
The Christian God may exist: so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.
Page 40.
It is rational to suppose that mental life ceases when bodily life eases.
Page 40.
Survival of bodily death is … a different matter from immortality: it may only mean a postponement of psychical death.
Page 41.
Mind and matter alike are for certain purposes convenient terms, but are not ultimate realities.
Page 41.
Whoever considers conception, gestation, and infancy cannot seriously believe that the soul is an indivisible something, perfect and complete throughout this process. It is evident that it grows like the body, and that it derives both form the spermatozoon and from the ovum, so that it cannot be indivisible.
Page 41.
If we were not afraid of death, I do not believe that the idea of immortality would ever have arisen.
Page 42.
It is fear of nature that gives rise to religion.
Page 42.
If the world is controlled by God, and God can be moved by prayer, we acquire a share in omnipotence.
Page 42.
Belief in God still serves to humanize the world of nature, and to make men feel that physical forces are really their allies.
Page 42.
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.
Page 43.
Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
Page 43.
The great world, so far as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance and are best corrected by a little astronomy.
Pages 43-44.
In the world of values, Nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad, deserving of neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. … It is for us to determine the good life, not for Nature - not even for Nature personified as God.
Page 44.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Knowledge and love are both indefinitely extensible; therefore, however good a life may be, a better life can be imagined. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life.
Page 44.
Although both love a knowledge are necessary, love is in a sense more fundamental, since it will lead intelligent people to seek knowledge, in order to find out how to benefit those whom they love.4
Page 45.
Love at its fullest is an indissoluble combination of the two elements, delight and well-wishing.
Page 46.
Delight without well-being may be cruel; well-wishing without delight easily tends to become cold and a little superior.
Page 46.
I think that in all descriptions of the good life here on earth we must assume a certain basis of animal vitality and animal instinct; without this, life becomes tame and uninteresting. Civilization should be something added to this, not substituted for it.
Page 47.
Delight, in this actual world, is unavoidably selective, and prevents us from having the same feelings toward all mankind.
Page 47.
I do not believe that we can decide what sort of conduct is right or wrong except by reference to its probably consequences.
Page 48.
All moral rules must be tested by examining whether they tend to realize ends that we desire.
Page 48.
There is no conceivable way of making people do things they do not wish to do. What is possible is to alter their desires by a system of rewards and penalties.
Page 49.
The practical need or morals arises from the conflict of desires, whether of different people or of the same person at different times or even at one time.
Page 50.
To alter men’s characters and desires in such a way as to minimize occasions of conflict by making the success of one man’s desires as far as possible consistent with that of another’s. That I why love is better than hate, because it brings harmony instead of conflict into the desires of the persons concerned.
Page 51.
Superstition is the origin of moral rules.
Page 51.
The defenders of traditional morality are seldom people with warm hearts.
Page 52.
A certain percentage of children have the habit of thinking; one of the aims of education is to cure them of this habit.
Page 53.
Clergymen, almost necessarily, fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do not harm and they condone acts which do great harm.
Page 54.
Another bad effect of superstition on education is the absence of instruction about the facts of sex. The main physiological facts ought to be taught quite simply and naturally before puberty at a time when they are not exciting. At puberty, the elements of an unsuperstitious sexual morality ought to be taught. Boys and girls should be taught that nothing can justify sexual intercourse unless there is mutual inclination.
Page 54.
Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other’s liberty; they should be made to feel that nothing gives one human being rights over another, and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love.
Page 55.
In the absence of children, sexual relations are a purely private matter, which does not concern either the State or the neighbours.
Page 55.
The view that criminals are ‘wicked’ and ‘deserve’ punishment is not one which a rational morality can support.
Page 56.
The vindictive feeling called ‘moral indignation’ is merely a form of cruelty.
Page 56.
No doubt prison must be less pleasant than freedom; but the best way to secure this result is to make freedom more pleasant than it sometimes is at present.
Page 57.
We should treat the criminal as we treat a man suffering from plague. Each is a public danger, each must have his liberty curtailed until he has ceased to be a danger.
Page 57.
To live a good life in the fullest sense a man must have a good education, friends, love, children (if he desires them), a sufficient income to keep him from want and grave anxiety, good health, and work which is not uninteresting. All these things, in varying degrees, depend upon the community, and are helped or hindered by political events. The good life must be lived in a good society, and is not fully possible otherwise.
Page 59.
There is no short cut to the good life, whether individual or social. To build up the good life, we must build up intelligence, self-control and sympathy.
Page 60.
Men’s actions are harmful either from ignorance or from gad desires. ‘Bad’ desires, when we are speaking from a social point of view, may be defined as those which tend to thwart the desires of others, or more exactly, those which thwart more desires than they assist.
Page 61.
It is in moments of panic that cruelty becomes most widespread and most atrocious.
Page 62.
Everything that increases the general security is likely to diminish cruelty.
Page 63.
Only justice can give security; and by ‘justice’ I mean the recognition of the equal claims of all human beings.
Page 63.
To force upon man, woman or child a life which thwarts their strongest impulses is both cruel and dangerous.
Page 67.
Artificialities which gratify the desires of ordinary human beings are good, other things being equal. But there is nothing to be said for ways of life which are artificial in the sense of being imposed by authority or economic necessity.
Page 67.
The amount and kind of work that most people have to do at present is a grave evil; especially bad is the life-long bondage to routine. Life should not be too closely regulated or too methodical; our impulses, when not positively destructive or injurious to others, ought if possible to have free play; there should be room for adventure.
Page 67.
A single desire is no better and no worse, considered in isolation, than any other; but a group of desires is better than another group if all of the first group can be satisfied simultaneously, while in the second group some are inconsistent with others. That is why love is better than hatred.
Page 68.
The continuity of a human body is a matter of appearance and behaviour, not of substance.
Page 70.
All that constitutes a person is a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities of the sort we call habit.
Page 71.
The brain, as a structure, is dissolved at death, and memory therefore may be expected to be also dissolved.
Page 71.
It is not rational arguments, but emotions, that cause belief in a future life.
Page 72.
The universe may have a purpose, but nothing that we know suggest that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.
Page 73.
The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend.
Page 74.
The future, emotionally speaking, is more important than the past, or even than the present.
Page 76.
Emotionally, our view of the universe as good or bad depends on the future, on what it will be.
Page 77.
It may be contended that, although we can neve wholly experience Reality as it really is, yet some experiences approach it more nearly than others, and such experiences, it may be said, are given by art and philosophy.
Page 80.
In one sense … all experience is experience of the Deity, but in another, since all experience equally is in time, and the Deity is timeless, no experience is experience of the Deity.
Page 81.
The Protestant conception of goodness is of something individual and isolated … The Catholic has quite a different conception of virtue: to him there is in all virtue an element of submission not only to the voice of God as revealed in conscience, but also to the authority of the Church as the repository of Revelation. This gives to the Catholic a conception of virtue far more social than that of the Protestant, and makes the wrench much greater when he serer his connexion with the Church.
Page 84.
Moderns do not always realize to what extent the Renaissance was an anti-intellectual movement. In the Middle Ages it was the custom to prove things; the Renaissance invented the habit of observing them.
Page 85.
The Catholic free-thinker … tends to eschew solemnity both moral and intellectual, whereas the Protestant free-thinker is very prone to both.
Page 85.
Jews and Protestants are mentally indistinguishable.
Page 86.
One may say, broadly speaking, that Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbours good. Hence the social character of Catholicism and the individual character of Protestantism.
Page 87.
Perhaps if Americans could be made to believe that marriage is sin they would no longer feel the need for divorce.
Page 88.
The French Revolution produced the romantic admiration of absurdity, based upon the experience that reason led to the guillotine.
Page 91.
If we wish to see a period truly, we must not see it contrasted with our own, whether to its advantage or disadvantage; we must try to see it as it was to those who lived in it.
Pages 91-92.
In every epoch, most people are ordinary people, concerned with their daily bread rather than with the great themes of which historians treat.
Page 92.
In England, as in America, the foreigner is a morally degrading influence, and we all owe a debt of gratitude to the police for the care which they take to see that only exceptionally virtuous foreigners are allowed to reside among us.
Page 109.
It is much commoner for a woman to be nice than for a man.
Page 109.
To be a nice person it is necessary to be protected from crude contact with reality, and those who do the protecting cannot be expected to share the niceness that they preserve.
Page 110.
In general, nice people leave the policing of the world to hirelings because they feel the work to be not such as a person who is quite nice would wish to undertake. There is, however, one department which they do not delegate, namely the department of back-biting and scandal.
Page 110.
The chief characteristic of nice people is the laudable practice of improvement upon reality. God made the world, but nice people feel that they could have done the job better.
Page 111.
Whoever invented the phrase ‘the naked truth’ had perceived an important connection. Nakedness is shocking to all right-minded people, and so is truth.
Page 112.
England has brought to perfection the almost invisible and half-unconscious control of everything unpleasant by means of feelings of decency.
Page 112.
The immovable moral convictions of nice people become linked with the defence of property.
Page 113.
Nice people very properly suspect pleasure wherever they see it. They know that he that increaseth wisdom increaseth sorrow, and they infer that he that increaseth sorrow increaseth wisdom. They therefore feel that in spreading sorrow they are spreading wisdom; since wisdom is more precious than rubies, they are justified in feeling that they are conferring a benefit in so doing.
Page 113.
The day of nice people, I fear, is nearly over; two things are killing it. The first is the belief that there is no harm in being happy, provided no one else is the worse for it; the second is the dislike of humbug, a dislike which is quite as much aesthetic as moral.
Page 114.
The essence of nice people is that they hate life as manifested in tendencies to co-operation, in the boisterousness of children, and above ll in sex, with the thought of which they are obsessed. In a word, nice people are those who have nasty minds.
Page 114.
New knowledge is the cause of the economic and psychological changes which make our age at once difficult and interesting.
Page 116.
In our struggles with physical nature we no longer have need of God to help us against Satan.
Page 116.
It is no longer Satan who makes sin, but bad glands and unwise conditioning.
Page 116.
Sin is what is disliked by those who control education.
Page 116.
New knowledge of our times has been thrust so rudely into the mechanism of traditional behaviour that the old patterns cannot survive, and new ones for good or evil have become imperative.
Page 117.
The smallness of the modern family has given parents a new sense of the value of the child. … Modern scientific care of children is intimately bound up with the smallness of the modern family.
Page 118.
Most enlightened people live in an unreal world, associating with their friends and imagining that only a few freaks are unenlightened nowadays.
Page 121.
There is nothing bad in sex, and the conventional attitude in this matter is morbid.
Page 123.
Our society is becoming so closely knit that reform in any one direction is bound up with reform in every other and no question can be adequately treated in isolation.
Page 123.
The question whether a code is good or bad is the same as the question whether or not it promotes human happiness.
Page 125.
Jealousy, I believe, has been the most potent single factor in the genesis of sexual morality. Jealousy instinctively rouses anger; and anger, rationalized, becomes moral disapproval.
Page 128.
What we do has its origin in our heredity, our education, and our environment, and that it is by control of these causes, rather than by denunciation that conduct injurious to society is to be prevented.
Page 130.
What we have to do positively is to ask ourselves what moral rules are most likely to promote human happiness.
Page 130.
Virtue which is based upon a false view of the facts is not real virtue.
Page 131.
Most moralists have been so obsessed by sex that they have laid much too little emphasis on other more socially useful kinds of ethically commendable conduct.
Page 132.
A democracy in which the majority exercises its powers without restraint may be almost as tyrannical as a dictatorship. Toleration of minorities is an essential part of wise democracy, but a part which is not always sufficiently remembered.
Page 134.
The fundamental difference between the liberal and the illiberal outlook is that the former regards all questions as open to discussion and all opinions as open to a greater or less measure of doubt, while the latter holds in advance that certain opinions are absolutely unquestionable, and that no argument against them must be allowed to be heard.
Pages 135-136.
Opinions which we disagree with acquire a certain respectability by antiquity, but a new opinion which we do not share invariably strikes us as shocking.
Page 136.
No man can pass as educated who has heard only one side on questions as to which the public is divided.
Page 137.
The interlocking power of stupidity below and love or power above paralyses the efforts of rational men.
Page 139.
All serious intellectual progress depends upon a certain kind of independence of outside opinion, which cannot exist where the will of the majority is treated with that kind of religious respect which the orthodox give to the will of God.
Page 142.
I could only admit a necessary being if there were a being whose existence it is self-contradictory to deny.
Page 146.
I think a subject named can never be significantly said to exist but only a subject described. And that existence, in fact, quite definitely is not a predicate.
Page 148.
The whole concept of cause is one we derive from our observation of particular things: I see no reason whatsoever to suppose that the total has any cause whatsoever.
Pages 151-152.
I’m not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I’m contending is that we don’t know that there is. I can only take what is recorded as I should take other records.
Page 157.
The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favour of its truth.
Page 158.
I feel that some things are good and that other things are bad. I love the things that are good, that I think are good, and I hate the things that I think are bad. I don’t say that these things are good because they participate in the Divine goodness.
Page 160.
I think right conduct is that which would probably produce the greatest possible balance in intrinsic value of all the acts possible in the circumstances, and you’ve got to take account of the probably effects of your action in considering what is right.
Page 162,
I don’t think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.
Page 163.
I do not myself think that the dependence o moral suppose religion is nearly as close as religious people believe it to be. I even think that some very important virtues are more likely to be found among those who reject religious dogmas than among those who accept them. I think this applies especially to the virtue of truthfulness or intellectual integrity. I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, o of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive.
Page 169.
Moral rules are broadly of two kinds: there are those which have no basis except in a religious creed; and there are those which have an obvious basis in social unity.
Page 170.
If a theology is thought necessary to virtue and if candid inquirers see no reason to think the theology true, the authorities will set to work to discourage candid inquiry. In former centuries, they did so by burning the inquirers at the stake.
Page 171.
As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what, is important for some other reason than that it is true, a whole host of evils is ready to spring up.
Page 172.
I can respect the men who argue that religion is true and therefore ought to be believed, but I can only feel profound moral reprobation for those who say that religion ought to be believed because it is useful, and that to ask whether it is true is a waste of time.
Page 172.
The Communist, like the Christian, believes that his doctrine is essential to salvation, and it is this belief which makes salvation possible for him. It is the similarities between Christianity and Communism that makes them incompatible with each other.
Page 173.
Christianity, I will admit, does less hrm than it used to do; but that is because it is less fervently believed.
Page 173.
Christianity has been distinguished from other religions gby its greater readiness for persecution.
Page 176.
The whole contention that Christianity has had an elevating moral influence can only be maintained by wholesale ignoring or falsification of the historical evidence.
Page 176.
Those who aim at founding a Church ought to remember this. Every Church develops an instinct of self-preservation and minimizes those parts of the founder’s doctrine which do not minister to that end.
Page 176.
What the world needs is reasonableness, tolerance, and a realization of the interdependence of the parts of the human family.
Page 178.
I think the important virtues are kindness and intelligence. Intelligence is impeded by any creed, no matter what; and kindness is inhibited by the belief in sin and punishment.
Page 179.
I do not believe that a decay of dogmatic belief can do anything but good.
Page 179.
What the world needs is not dogma, but an attitude of scientific inquiry.
Page 180.
I do not believe that controversy is harmful on general grounds. It is not controversy and open differences that endanger democracy. On the contrary, these are its greatest safeguards. It is an essential part of democracy that substantial groups, even majorities, should extend toleration to dissentient groups, however small and hover uh their sentiments may be outraged.
In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments enraged.
Pages 216-217.