In my blog post “Is there a God?“, I pointed out some of the weaknesses in Stephen Hawking’s reasoning for saying there is no God. I suggested he should have stuck with science, where he had expertise, instead of commenting on areas where he was out of his depth. But I made the rash commitment of responding to the arguments of two philosophers, Bertrand Russell and Richard Carrier on why they were not Christians. Philosophers being trained in argument and logic are obviously going to be a tougher challenge. I responded to Richard Carrier HERE. This post is in response to Russell’s essay “Why I Am Not A Christian“.
“Why I am not a Christian” was initially given as a lecture by Bertrand Russell in 1927 and subsequently written and published as an essay, along with other essays in a book entitled “Why I Am Not A Christian”. At least Russell avoids the arrogance of Carrier, who claimed to have conclusively shown that God does not exist and that Christianity is false. Russell limits himself to saying why he is not a Christian.
Quite rightly Russell starts with a definition of a Christian. Unfortunately he gets it wrong. He defines a Christian as someone who believes in God and who believes that Jesus, if not divine, is at least the best and wisest of men. A Christian very simply is someone who believes that Jesus is the Son of God and came into the world to save it. Starting with his incorrect description, Russell gives his reasons for not being such a person. The following is my critique of his reasons for not being a person such as he describes.
Belief In God
Russell could just have said that he didn’t believe in God and saw no reason for doing so. But he starts with disagreeing with attempts to “prove” the existence of God. But why bother? Nobody has ever conclusively “proved” the existence or non-existence of God. Those who believe in God tend do so because of personal experience and those experiences will differ from person to person.
Suffice it to say that the Holy Bible promises that “ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find and knock and the door will be opened”. If people do not bother to ask, seek or knock, they may never receive. However, in my own case, I really didn’t do any of those things and was given faith anyway. I thank God for his amazing Grace, because it happened shortly before discovery of my brain tumour.
The Nature Of Jesus
Russell then sets out to say why he doesn’t consider Jesus the “best and wisest of men”, which he started out by erroneously suggesting is a requirement to call oneself a Christian.
What he does is deliberately misinterpret some of Jesus’s sayings and then use his misinterpretation against Jesus. He also mentions areas in which he considers that Christians do not follow what Jesus said. Whic is surprising for a philosopher to bring up as an argument against Christianity because it is totally irrelevant. Following are some examples:
He told a rich man to sell up everything and give it to the poor and follow Him. Russell misinterprets this as applying to everyone and criticising Christians for not doing that. The correct interpretation is that this man, asking Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life, loved his wealth too much to give it up. Jesus perceived this and so said what he said. By no stretch of the imagination is it an instruction to all wealthy people to sell up and give everything to the poor. In reality, there have been and are many wealthy Christians who have used their wealth to provide employment and have given from 50% to 90% of their income to charity. In this way their wealth does much more good than if they were to give it all up in one go. There is a good article on such philanthropists HERE.
In the same way he misinterprets Jesus’s statement “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire” (Matthew 18 v.8)). This is clearly metaphorical in that most of us have accumulated some baggage, some habits, whatever, prior to conversion, that we have to shed in order to follow Jesus. And we have the Holy Spirit, the Divine Helper, to help us to do that. It is astonishing how many people, on receiving Jesus, instantly stop drunkenness, smoking, swearing or whatever it is that is holding them back.
He also misinterprets “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (Matthew 7 v.1) as implying that Christians who are judges in court are going against their faith. It doesn’t mean that at all. It refers only to judging people with respect to their morality in respect of God’s law and God’s expectations and has nothing to do with society’s laws, whether civil or criminal. I don’t know Russell’s motivation for what can only be deliberate misinterpretations. They don’t do his argument any good.
Conclusion
Russell’s failure is simply to take bits of the scripture and misinterpret them instead of looking at them as a whole. Interestingly, we just covered a passage in our Bible study that has a bearing on this – 2 Corinthians 4 v.4 “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God”. The god of this age, meaning the devil, has effectively blinded the minds of unbelievers to the Gospel. This is evident in that atheists who have made up their minds that God does not exist are completely blinded to the fact that he does and mock the experience of those who believe, whereas those who keep an open mind are not blinded and are more likely to come to understand the beauty and simplicity of the Gospel.
What surprise me so much about many atheists is that they are so determined in their belief that God does not exist. Make no mistake that it is a belief just the same as belief that God is. That passage from the letter to the Corinthians above can be the only reason that they are so bigoted – an accusation often unjustly directed at Christians.
Addendum – Hell
Since writing this, I have taken an interest in Biblical Greek. I took Greek O-Level some 65 years ago and actually passed, much to my teacher’s surprise. I have to admit that I really didn’t enjoy it and never got to grips with it. If not always bottom of the class I must have been near it. Strangely, I was always top of the class, or near it, in Latin. But really the Classics were not for me. Maths and Physics were what I enjoyed. Anyway, now that it has a purpose, I am eager to understand Koine Greek (Κοινη) which is the language of the New Testament (most, if not all). Add to that, I am reading that probably much of Jesus’s ministry was likely in the Greek language.
This new-found interest in Greek has got me interested in the original meanings and use of words for Heaven, Hell and Paradise. I am doing more research on this and plan to document my results, either online or in a book, depending on how substantial it is.
Anyway, it is relevant to this post because one of Russell’s criticisms of Jesus is his warning some people they are destined for “Hell”. So I wanted to discover whether it was true and what it really meant. So I went back to the original Greek. The word translated as Hell is γέεννα, anglicised as Gehenna. Gehenna was actually Jerusalem’s rubbish dump, where fires were kept burning to control pests and disease. It is widely taken as a metaphor for “Hell”, being a fiery place where souls are tortured for eternity. Perhaps it is not such a metaphor after all. Perhaps it is a way of saying that those who have spent a life opposing God will be ended and discarded.
In common with a lot of people, whether God-loving or God-hating, I think that an eternity of torture is a bit harsh for a lifetime of disobedience. If God created mankind as an immortal soul, then God is the only one who can undo that immortality – by metaphorically throwing them onto a fiery rubbish dump, so suffering briefly, not eternally. This is pure conjecture at this point and I need to do more research.
The reason that I am mentioning this is that “orthodoxy” may not necessarily be correct. It is not that I spend any time on pondering what happens after death, even though closer than many as an 80-year-old with cancer. My belief is that, however we lived our lives, we will accept God’s judgment as just, when it comes to the time. I actually have a distaste for statements too often made that someone is destined for Hell, or even for Heaven. I imagine that God doesn’t like people pre-judging what He will do either.