I haven't read much Betrand Russell up to now, despite his towering reputation in Anglo philosophy. But I've long heard reference to the classic essay which gives this collection its title. I enjoyed Evan Thompson's reworking of its inspiration in Why I am Not a Buddhist, and of course I just read C.S. Lewis give us the other side of the argument in Mere Christianity, so when I found a copy of these, "essays on religion and related subjects" at the cat bookstore, I figured it was about time.
Unfortunately, I found Russell rather narrow-minded and disappointingly early modern on the question of religion. He dismisses all religion as mere childish superstition that we, as triumphantly rational early 20th century adults, can finally dispense with. The tone of condescending irony here is thick enough to frost your cake and eat it too. It's not that there isn't a lot of truth in what he says. The monotheistic version of religion dominant in the West has undoubtedly done a lot of harm over its 2000 year history. As Experiments in Mystical Atheism (among others) argued at some length, concluding that a single God created the world in order to test human faith and judge our worthiness represents a deep and perverse diminishment of the potential of human experience. I am not a Christian either. Nor am I superstitious.
But I do have some respect for the impulse to look beyond ourselves to some sort of larger frame of existence that the religion represents. Christianity may not be my preferred version of this larger universe, but to dismiss this impulse entirely out of rationalistic hubris seems to me deeply misguided. In addition, Russell offers us nothing in its place, and instead merely sneers at what he considers a feebleminded attempt to evade the 'hard' realities of materialistic science. He speaks of human flourishing and argues for a 'rational' morality that would support this, but in the end he can produce nothing more than the utilitarian pursuit of the greatest individual pleasure for the greatest number. 100 years after he wrote about it, everyone today has lived this utilitarian utopia, and it turns out that it isn't all it was cracked up to be. It shows little promise of making us universally happy and tolerant. We can, of course, argue that the problem is that we have **still** only incompletely inculcated the scientific and rational worldview, that we still have yet to fully slay the dragon of ancient superstition and cruelty that Russell thinks religion represents. However, isn't it time to ask ourselves how long we should run this experiment? Jesus believed that many of those hearing his preaching would live to see the final judgement. Similarly, we might ask Russell how long should we wait for scientism and social management to solve all our problems.
Unfortunately, I found Russell rather narrow-minded and disappointingly early modern on the question of religion. He dismisses all religion as mere childish superstition that we, as triumphantly rational early 20th century adults, can finally dispense with. The tone of condescending irony here is thick enough to frost your cake and eat it too. It's not that there isn't a lot of truth in what he says. The monotheistic version of religion dominant in the West has undoubtedly done a lot of harm over its 2000 year history. As Experiments in Mystical Atheism (among others) argued at some length, concluding that a single God created the world in order to test human faith and judge our worthiness represents a deep and perverse diminishment of the potential of human experience. I am not a Christian either. Nor am I superstitious.
But I do have some respect for the impulse to look beyond ourselves to some sort of larger frame of existence that the religion represents. Christianity may not be my preferred version of this larger universe, but to dismiss this impulse entirely out of rationalistic hubris seems to me deeply misguided. In addition, Russell offers us nothing in its place, and instead merely sneers at what he considers a feebleminded attempt to evade the 'hard' realities of materialistic science. He speaks of human flourishing and argues for a 'rational' morality that would support this, but in the end he can produce nothing more than the utilitarian pursuit of the greatest individual pleasure for the greatest number. 100 years after he wrote about it, everyone today has lived this utilitarian utopia, and it turns out that it isn't all it was cracked up to be. It shows little promise of making us universally happy and tolerant. We can, of course, argue that the problem is that we have **still** only incompletely inculcated the scientific and rational worldview, that we still have yet to fully slay the dragon of ancient superstition and cruelty that Russell thinks religion represents. However, isn't it time to ask ourselves how long we should run this experiment? Jesus believed that many of those hearing his preaching would live to see the final judgement. Similarly, we might ask Russell how long should we wait for scientism and social management to solve all our problems.
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