Has anyone managed to rebut Betrand Russell's "Why I am Not a Christian?"
>There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.
> If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary.
>Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?
>I come to certain points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one is not concerned with the historical question. Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one.
more in next post
>>1227954
>There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching
>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.
> That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."
>The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings.
>>1227957
>I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
I guess I'm not profoundly humane then.
>>1228056
I guess not, but that means Christ isn't either.
>>1227954
There isn't any real way to rebut subjective opinions on the quality of a given belief system. You can however rebut the claims that the supernatural events in the bible actually happened by pointing out the relative lack of extra biblical sources for said events.
>>1227954
This first post is garbage, there have been other philosophers that BTFO'd Christianity much better.
>>There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.
Hot opinion you got there, to bad there's nothing to either prove or disprove it metaphysically (even though infinte caustaion not exisitng makes more sense). Physicists did however find out that the universe does have a beginning.
>> If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary.
> if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law
How is this implied anywhere?
>Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?
Humans have free will.
>I come to certain points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one is not concerned with the historical question. Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one.
?
Russell is fucking trash.
>>1228349
GO FUCK YOURSELF AND FORUM AN OPINION. TRY AND CONVINCE YOUR FREINDS YOUR RIGHT. BUT YOU PROBABLY DONT HAVE ANY.
>>1228704
>Xtian btfo by pure logic
>says it's just personal opinions
Never change
>>1227954
>The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.
Goes on to make all these assertions
Why can't we dismiss those as 'the poverty of imagination' too?
>>1230278
>being a cuck that wants to LARP and do jack shit
>>1227954
He knows better now. Don't follow him to hell.
>>1227954
>>1227957
>all that strawmanning
>all those logical fallacies
>all that "muh feelings are above reason"
Honest question: why is this hack so famous?
>>1230538
He was part of one of the most important philosophical traditions in (fairly) recent history.
>>1230538
>why is this hack so famous?
He gave autistic STEMfags a religion to sperg on about.
It's truly amazing that is entire life's work eventually collapsed on itself like an autismal black hole.
>>1230679
Positivism is a fucking joke
Yeah let's have the autist who thinks monism means only one object exists (seriously, look it up, this nigga thought he refuted monism by looking outside his window lmfao) tell us about the transcendent ground of reality
>>1228323
>Hot opinion you got there, to bad there's nothing to either prove or disprove it metaphysically
That's his point.
>Physicists did however find out that the universe does have a beginning.
They actually did not.
>How is this implied anywhere?
If he made the laws because they were good, then the "goodness" exists outside of him and he is subject to it.
>>1230538
>why is this hack so famous?
Because he elegantly btfo your stupid religion in his spare time, for one thing.
>>1230917
There were earlier, better authors who BTFO'd God.
Russell was just the first one who tipped his fedora while doing it. Which is why STEMcucks worship him.
>>1230909
God and the Good are synonymous you pleb fuck
