Philosophers : 2) Bertrand Russell

Philosophers : 2) Bertrand Russell Starting this series, we remembered Jiddu Krishnamurti. Today let's go to Bertrand Russell M G Warrier Philosophers : 2 Bertrand Russell Introductory Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970) was a British philosopher, logician, essayist and social critic best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. His most influential contributions include his championing of logicism (the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic), his refining of Gottlob Frege’s predicate calculus (which still forms the basis of most contemporary systems of logic), his theories of definite descriptions, logical atomism and logical types, and his theory of neutral (the view that the world consists of just one type of substance which is neither exclusively mental nor exclusively physical). Russell's philosophy : Write-up shared by Vathsala Jayaraman, Chennai While talking about Bertrand Russel, his views about God and Religion surely occupy our mind. Russell sums up his views about religion quite plainly: “My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race” According to Russell, not only are most religious beliefs intellectually and morally pernicious, the religious point of view itself “is a conception quite unworthy of free men”. Throughout his life, Russell thus put significant effort into opposing religious ideas and institutions of all kinds.. Russell’s discussions about religion fall largely into four categories: his criticisms of arguments favouring the existence of God; His observation that religion has historically served to impede the advancement of knowledge; His observation that religion has regularly advanced theories of morality that are more harmful than good; and his analysis of religion, not simply as a body of belief but as a mode of feeling. The result was twofold: first, that many people came to understand religion as a subject about which they were entitled to develop their own beliefs and views; second, that arguments from ecclesiastical authority suddenly became less formidable and less influential than they had been for centuries. Russell himself reports that he received the Nobel award primarily for his anti-religious book, Marriage and Morals . If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If everything must have a creator, then God must have a creator. Alternatively, if God can exist without a cause, then it is just as likely that the world can exist without a cause. The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The argument that the complexity and purpose we find in the world shows that there must have been a creator, Russell points out that “Since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them, but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaption. The argument that God is needed to bring justice to the world, to ensure that at the end of time the scales of justice have been balanced, Russell asks what evidence we have that such remediation is ever going to occur. “In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life here on earth. So they say that there must be a God, and there must be heaven and hell in order that in the long run there may be justice” Russell also observed that religion is not simply a body of doctrine but also a vehicle for the expression of emotion. Societies as well as individuals, says Russell, need to choose whether the good life is one that is guided by honest inquiry and the weighing of evidence, or by the familiarity of superstition and the comforts of religion. Many ,after believing in God for many decades of life, are not sure whether their "belief" is appropriate or just a show. Is not the entity of God the outcome of their own helplessness to meet situations in life as and when they emerge? They pray to Him so that He, if He exists, may answer their prayers positively! If we go by the theory of Karma, which is becoming more and more convincing as a logical theory, what is the use of God? What is the logic of an entity like God? We have to necessarily reap the consequences of our past actions and God cannot undo those consequences. The idea of God then creates in us a feeling of dependence on an imaginary superior being and people run to a temple or a Gurudwara or Church for even simple day to day things in life. Is Man who is endowed with enormous power of his brain, his intellect, and his capacity to think so powerless as to become dependent? All our prayers across all religions are nothing but expressions of our own weaknesses. We want some one else to solve our problems. No religionist is ever clear about God. Different religions fight against each other in their quest for God. Tempers run high only because they are unsure about God even as they swear by God. Someone suggested a solution. Let us have an experiment : select a region or a town or city. Deprive it of all places of worship. People there will not pray, even without places of worship. Let them carry on like this for one year. Study the result. If all places of worship are scrapped and the moneys spent on them are diverted for human welfare, (will it be done so?) there will be tremendous progress in the world, poverty could be eliminated altogether and human beings can lead a much satisfied life all over the world. There will be no conflict of religions and no claims of superiority, no conversions, etc. There will be ONE religion and that will be the religion of MAN. If everything has a cause, God must have a cause too. Is not God then the product of that cause and therefore subordinate to it? Perhaps to avoid this tricky situation, Adi Sankaracharya propounded the theory that God did not create the myriad things of the Universe but manifested himself as the myriad things. But even this theory is not blemishless. For, what is the provocation for God to manifest Himself in different forms? Thus the Big Bang theory does not answer as to what existed before the explosion took place? An explosion could not have taken place with nothing in the field. I don't know whether for experiment if we remove temples churches etc and bring more or less a ban on worship, that will lead to tremendous welfare or a total downfall. Because you may place a ban on abhishekam and Pooja and not on the maanaseeka poojas performed by human beings. That may bring in a mental disaster though financial soundness may seem to prevail I strongly believe that Man created the concept of God and the concept became dangerously infectious. Those who claim to have "seen" God may have seen an apparition of a figure which in their imagination strongly represented God. Islam and Hinduism believe that God is formless. God is a supernatural power. It ultimately represents Oneness - Yet, all the teachings of prophets and saints advocate duality in effect : When Krishna says, Sarva Dharmaan parithyajya, Maam Ekam ( EVA) Sharanam Vraja, whom is He addressing? Himself the One ness? If there is no duality, whom is He asking to surrender? or a second person the duality, which is contrary to His concept of Oneness? If this "surrender" applies to millions of lives on Earth, there is an implied recognition that there are as many lives, not just One Oneness. This is what King Janaka felt. One day while doing puja, he asked himself, "If I am part of God, why should I do puja to that God? Whom am I worshipping?" Adi Shankara got the message from Shiva who appeared in the form of a Chandaala. But Adi Shankara did compose many verses which are against his own concept of Advaita. Can a society without God exist? In which the people recognize that they are themselves responsible for all the consequences of their lives. Because, centuries of belief in God through different religious practices have not ended human misery of one kind or the other. If there were to be a God, is God so cruel and unkind? He is on the contrary described as "Karunaa Saagara"! And if God also says that one has to suffer Karma Phala, and God cannot do anything, the concept of God falls to the ground instantaneously. All our prayers are useless meaningless rituals. The irony is that it is mostly believers who suffer a lot in this world and not non-believers. Why should Man then spend millions of dollars on places of worship for such a God throughout the world, across continents, even when believers often say that God is not going to be poorer if you do not worship Him? Conquest of Happiness This book by Russell was introduced to us by our Mathematics lecturer Raman Menon when I was in the Pre-University class (1959-60) in Government College, Madappalli. I could get the book from Kerala University Library in 1964. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222834 I THINK I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, 1 stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie aw'ake in the dark and weep for their sinS; They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. Walt Whitman