Why I am not a hindoo

[Otto]

Swing:
> http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

Thanks for posting the url with an essay "Why I Am Not A Christian" by
Bertrand Russell that supports my point that believing in a Christian god in
the second half of the 20th century had meant to be an anachronism.

I have read the translation decades ago but never did see the original. I
like the style of the writing, the slight irony in it.

"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 from 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."

I always loved that argument about the gadarene swine:

"There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not
very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down
the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He
could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into
the pigs."

"You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in
humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the
diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races,
or every mitigation of slavery, 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."

And this in 1927 -- remarkable.

Otto