Quick Thoughts on Bertrand Russell

I just finished a fairly good sized collection of essays by Bertrand Russell, "generally recognized as one of the founders of analytic philosophy and most important logicians of the twentieth century."

Care to know my impressions?I found the read to be enjoyable in that it was intellectually stimulating. In fact, I will even go as far as to say it was quite a pleasure to read Russell. Many times I found myself cracking a grin at the raw angst he has towards religion as a whole. I found that much (though not nearly all) of Russell's frustration (and intellectual ammunition) came from the Church's condemnation of birth control and the pain that has been inflicted on women and children as a result. I wonder what Russell would make of today's issues of abortion and homosexuality? Many of his arguments carry over fairly well without much adjustment needed.

With that said and at the risk of sounding disrespectful to a man who did have a great mind, I have to say that I have somehow come to categorize at least some of what I read by Bertrand Russell in the same category as a Jerry Seinfeld act: insightful, almost convincingly... but ultimately nothing more than an amusement. There were times that he put so much stock in human intellect and science that I just couldn't take the argument seriously. But of course that is coming from me, a man living in the post-modern world.

Here are some of the quotes that I found to be of most interest:

"Christianity, I will admit, does less harm than it used to do; but that is because it is less fervently believed. Perhaps, in time, the same change will come over Communism; and if it does, that creed will lose much of what now makes it obnoxious."

"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."

"I do not believe that a decay of dogmatic belief can do anything but good. What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer."

"Dr. Barnes tells us that man 'knows right and wrong.' But, in fact, as anthropology shows, men's views of right and wrong have varied to such an extent that no single item has been permanent. We cannot say, therefore, that man knows right and wrong, but only that some men do. Which men? Nietzsche argued in favor of an ethic profoundly different from Christ's, and some powerful governments have accepted his teaching. If knowledge of right and wrong is to be an argument for immortality, we must first settle whether to believe Christ or Nietzsche, and then argue that Christians are immortal, but Hitler and Mussolini are not, or vice versa. The decision will obviously be made on the battlefield, not in the study. Those who have the best poison gas will have the ethic of the future and will therefore be the immortal ones." .... maybe I'm just sick, but that made me actually laugh out loud when I read it.

"I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentance: "My father taught me that the question, 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggest the further question 'Who made God?'" That very simple sentance showed me, as I still think, the fallace in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a turtoise; and when they said, 'How about the turtoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the subject.' The argument is really no better than that." ... only a smirk out of me here

"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. ... in Western countries the authorities have perfected somewhat milder forms of persuasion. Of these, schools are perhaps the most important: the young must be preserved from hearing the arguments in favor of the opinions which the authorities dislike, and those who nevertheless persist in showing an inquiring disposition will incur social displeasure and, if possible, be made to feel morally reprehensible. In this way, any system of morals which has a theologicalbasis becomes one of the tools by which the holders of power preserve their authority and impair the intellectual vigor of the young." ... boy, I have to say I see some truth in this stuff...