A while back I quoted Bertrand Russell to Stephen (Mr. Quote himself) and
he quoted the following Russell passage back at me and explained that this
exact paragraph was, at least in part, what drove him into the arms of
Christianity:
"Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the
world which Science
presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals
henceforward must find a
home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end
they were
achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and
his beliefs, are but the
outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no
intensity of thought and
feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the
labours of the ages, all the
devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius,
are destined to
extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple
of Man's
achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in
ruins -- all these
things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no
philosophy which rejects
them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only
on the firm foundation
of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely
built."--From "A Free Man's Worship" You can find the entire essay at
http://www.PositiveAtheism.org/hist/russell1.htm
It bugged me that the usually positive and cheerful Russell who also wrote
this:
"What I believe is that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will
survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver
with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness in nonetheless
true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and
love lose their value because they are not everlasting."
Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not A
Christian".
would write something so baldly grim. Therefore I had a feeling it was out
of context. Stephen should have read on in the essay. He might have avoided
Christianity altogether! :-) This is the next paragraph:
"The savage, like ourselves, feels the oppression of his impotence before
the powers of Nature;
but having in himself nothing that he respects more than Power, he is
willing to prostrate
himself before his gods, without inquiring whether they are worthy of his
worship. Pathetic
and very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture, of
degradation and human sacrifice,
endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods: surely, the trembling
believer thinks, when
what is most precious has been freely given, their lust for blood must be
appeased, and more
will not be required. The religion of Moloch -- as such creeds may be
generically called -- is in
essence the cringing submission of the slave, who dare not, even in his
heart, allow the thought
that his master deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals is
not yet
acknowledged, Power may be freely worshipped, and receive an unlimited
respect, despite its
wanton infliction of pain."
And this, more characteristic of the cheerful and highly moral Russell I
know and love, is further down:
"Let us preserve our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of
perfection which life does not permit us to attain, though none of these
things meet with the approval of the unconscious universe. If Power is bad,
as it seems to be, let us reject it from our hearts. In this lies Man's
true freedom: in determination to worship only the God created by our own
love of the good, to respect only the heaven which inspires the insight of
our best moments. In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the
tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free
from our fellow-men, free from the petty planet on which our bodies
impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the
tyranny of death. Let us learn, then, that energy of faith which enables us
to live constantly in
the vision of the good; and let us descend, in action, into the world of
fact, with that vision
always before us."
Susan
----------
For if there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
this one.
--Albert Camus
http://www.telepath.com/susanb/
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