Why I Am Not A Christian == by Bertrand Russell

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Introductory note: Russell delivered this lecture on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall. Published in pamphlet form in that same year, the essay subsequently achieved new fame with Paul Edwards' edition of Russell's book, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays ... (1957).
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As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is "Why I Am Not a Christian." Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word Christian. It is used these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians -- all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on -- are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions.


What Is a Christian?
Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in our meaning of Christianity. I think, however, that there are two different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature -- namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and in immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. I think you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think you have any right to call yourself a Christian. Of course, there is another sense, which you find in Whitaker's Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshipers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians. The geography books count us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense, which I suppose we can ignore.Therefore I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things: first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant him a very high degree of moral goodness.
But for the successful efforts of unbelievers in the past, I could not take so elastic a definition of Christianity as that. As I said before, in olden days it had a much more full-blooded sense. For instance, it included he belief in hell. Belief in eternal hell-fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.


The Existence of God
To come to this question of the existence of God: it is a large and serious question, and if I were to attempt to deal with it in any adequate manner I should have to keep you here until Kingdom Come, so that you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in a somewhat summary fashion. You know, of course, that the Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason. That is a somewhat curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas. They had to introduce it because at one time the freethinkers adopted the habit of saying that there were such and such arguments which mere reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist. The arguments and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic Church felt that they must stop it. Therefore they laid it down that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to prove it. There are, of course, a number of them, but I shall take only a few.

The First-cause Argument
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. 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.

The Natural-law Argument
Then there is a very common argument from natural law. That was a favorite argument all through the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony. People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further for explanations of the law of gravitation. Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to give you a lecture on the law of gravitation, as interpreted by Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate, you no longer have the sort of natural law that you had in the Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depths of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. That is, no doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea that natural laws imply a lawgiver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were, you are then faced with the question "Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?" If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. 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. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver. In short, this whole argument about natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am traveling on in time in my review of the arguments. The arguments that are used for the existence of God change their character as time goes on. They were at first hard intellectual arguments embodying certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times they become less respectable intellectually and more and more affected by a kind of moralizing vagueness.

The Argument from Design
The next step in the process brings us to the argument from design. You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy argument to parody. You all know Voltaire's remark, that obviously the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because 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 adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.
When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. 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? Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending -- something dead, cold, and lifeless.

I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that, they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries about much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things.


The Moral Arguments for Deity
Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations, and we come to what are called the moral arguments for the existence of God. You all know, of course, that there used to be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument, and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his mother's knee. That illustrates what the psychoanalysts so much emphasize -- the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very early associations have than those of later times.
Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say there would be no right or wrong unless God existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God that made this world, or could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up -- a line which I often thought was a very plausible one -- that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.


The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice
Then there is another very curious form of moral argument, which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world. 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. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say, "After all, I only know this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also." Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, "The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say, "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment"; and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say, "Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice, and so far as that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a moral argument against deity and not in favor of one." Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about are not what really moves people. 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.


The Character of Christ
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree that that was so. I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the way, but I could go with Him much further than most professing Christians can. You will remember that He said, "Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-tse and Buddha some 500 or 600 years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept. I have no doubt that the present prime minister , for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a figurative sense.
Then there is another point which I consider excellent. You will remember that Christ said, "Judge not lest ye be judged." That principle I do not think you would find was popular in the law courts of Christian countries. I have known in my time quite a number of judges who were very earnest Christians, and none of them felt that they were acting contrary to Christian principles in what they did. Then Christ says, "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." That is a very good principle. Your Chairman has reminded you that we are not here to talk politics, but I cannot help observing that the last general election was fought on the question of how desirable it was to turn away from him that would borrow of thee, so that one must assume that the Liberals and Conservatives of this country are composed of people who do not agree with the teaching of Christ, because they certainly did very emphatically turn away on that occasion.

Then there is one other maxim of Christ which I think has a great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among some of our Christian friends. He says, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor." That is a very excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practised. All these, I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to live up to. I do not profess to live up to them myself; but then, after all, it is not quite the same thing as for a Christian.


Defects in Christ's Teaching
Having granted the excellence of these maxims, 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. I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance, "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." Then he says, "There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom"; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, "Take no thought for the morrow," and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought that the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In that respect, clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise.

The Moral Problem
Then you come to moral questions. 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 -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him.
You will find that in the Gospels Christ said, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell." That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many of these things about Hell. There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost: "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this World nor in the world to come." That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world.

Then Christ says, "The Son of Man shall send forth his His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"; and He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming He is going to divide the sheep from the goats, and He is going to say to the goats, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." He continues, "And these shall go away into everlasting fire." Then He says again, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into Hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." He repeats that again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him asHis chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.

There are other things of less importance. 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. Then there is the curious story of the fig tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever' . . . and Peter . . . saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.


The Emotional Factor
As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. You know, of course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler's book, Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in Erewhon there is a certain Higgs who arrives in a remote country, and after spending some time there he escapes from that country in a balloon. Twenty years later he comes back to that country and finds a new religion in which he is worshiped under the name of the "Sun Child," and it is said that he ascended into heaven. He finds that the Feast of the Ascension is about to be celebrated, and he hears Professors Hanky and Panky say to each other that they never set eyes on the man Higgs, and they hope they never will; but they are the high priests of the religion of the Sun Child. He is very indignant, and he comes up to them, and he says, "I am going to expose all this humbug and tell the people of Erewhon that it was only I, the man Higgs, and I went up in a balloon." He was told, "You must not do that, because all the morals of this country are bound round this myth, and if they once know that you did not ascend into Heaven they will all become wicked"; and so he is persuaded of that and he goes quietly away.
That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

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.


How the Churches Have Retarded Progress
You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man; in that case the Catholic Church says, "This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must endure celibacy or stay together. And if you stay together, you must not use birth control to prevent the birth of syphilitic children." Nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.
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."


Fear, the Foundation of Religion
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

What We Must Do
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. 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. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.


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Electronic colophon: This electronic edition of "Why I Am Not a Christian" was first made available by Bruce MacLeod on his "Watchful Eye Russell Page." It was newly corrected (from Edwards, NY 1957) in July 1996 by John R. Lenz for the Bertrand Russell Society.

Return to the Bertrand Russell Society Home Page.

http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

I have read his autobiography. There was very little of the milk of human kindness in him - everything was, for him, to be subjugated to (his) intelligence.

..ever read the Old Testament?

and, if we are going to get doctrinal, there is a substantive difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.

if you don't kiss his ass. :)

At any rate, what I would ask you is this: What does Russell's personality have to do with it? If Einstein were a racist child molester, would that have any bearing on the veracity of his theories?

attack the premise, attack the speaker. :eyes:

the Christian-bashing on DU, and wonder why those who feel compelled to wade in intellectually shallow waters cannot simply do so on their own part of DU. It is telling, I think, that the religious forum has always been more heavily trafficed than the old atheist forum .... but I suppose that is as much of the moth-to-flames nature of their insecurities as anything else.

In recent months, there is the New Wave of increasingly shallow attacks showing up on DU:GD. I had, at first, assumed that your post fell into that category, but because I have always enjoyed Bertrand Russell, I took a look. What a pleasant surprise! Thank you for posting an interesting read.

what is that supposed to mean? The fact I am not religious does NOT make me stupid.

I would hope that you do not assume that not being religious in and of itself makes a person intelligent. It likely is beneficial to judge each person/ post individually. The obvious example, which should not have to be pointed out, is that I expressed an appreciation for the OP. That in itself negates the question you posed, doesn't it?

I missed the boat, I guess...

:shrug:

So I'm not the only one thinking that Jesus was a self-righteous, unpleasant person. I mean it's all over the New Testament, why don't people SEE it what an arrogant man he was. Cursing a fig tree for not having fruit when he's hungry... that's Jesus, exactly. What a stupid, self-serving man. The world would have been a better place without him.

:popcorn:

there is no real, beyond all doubt historical proof that Jesus existed in the way it's presented in the Gospels.

all this are selfcontradicting stories, written 100 years after the man was dead, by people that didn't meet him. Nobody saw Jesus cursing a fig tree. The most probable was that there was a a preacher named Jesus at that time that probably differed from others. People AFTER him, specially Paul, coined a religion that fitted their thoughts and probably responded to a need in the minds of the people at those times, thus the spreading. Christianity became what it became because it suited in the end a powerful Roman emperor who understood that it could be used for maintaining his power.

Had the guy not done that, history had been different. We'd probably have different polytheistic religions in the west or be muslims if some Middle-Age King had converted because he found that this particular religion suited him...

the most important thing is that more than half of the American population has forgotten (or never really embraced) the precepts of Enlightment. It's difficult to go from the Middle-Ages to modern thinking in 100 years. Most Europeans don't take the Bible (Old and New) for granted, except a few. Discussions like this one hardly occur in Europe. It doesn't mean that there isn't a quest for spirituality, but it's not found by literal reading of more or less poorly translated scripts on goat pergaments.

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And do you mean harm like this, too? (From Sojourners, for bush's 2007 budget)

The man in the center is a Christian... you can learn more about this Christian @ http://www.cartercenter.org/

and here: “Waging Peace," an overview of the work of The Carter Center.

sometimes you can do good, based on sand. Or not knowing.

Or by ignoring the bad sides of your religion. But that doesn't make those bad sides and contradictions go away.

As I said, look at the source, the basis of Christianity. Jesus was no saint. He preached hate towards people that did not fit into his worldview. It's in the New Testament, and it's also in the Nag Hammadi gnostic stuff some people are so excited about.

... preaching hatred. (Note: Jesus' words are typically printed in red in most Bibles.)

I am not ignoring the RW fundamentalist side of Christianity, but guess what? All Christians are not like that... however, you are applying your statement, "... and they <Christians> are causing the harm to our society.", to all Christians, not just the radical RW. A rather broad-brush, bigoted statement, don't you think?

So, since "... they <Christians> are causing the harm to our society.", I thought I would give you the opportunity to clarify if the examples that I provided in my posts were the type of harm of which you were speaking.

...Bertrand Russells text above, especially the 2nd half of it? He cites questionable points of the Bible much better than I ever could.


However, here's some "chapter & verse" I find objectionable:

Luke 19, 26-27:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/luke-asv.html

19:26 I say unto you, that unto every one that hath shall be given; but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away from him.
19:27 But these mine enemies, that would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

Yes I know it's an allegory, but that doesn't change that the "nobleman" speaking in that parable is meant to represent Jesus.
So basically, according to
(26) Jesus has a very weird sense of social fairness - "If you have stuff - cool, well done, here, have some more! If you don't, you're a looser and thus deserve to suffer." Sweet. Bush couldn't be nastier.
(27) "If you find someone who disagrees with me - slay him." What a tolerant religion.


Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi Library), Jesus speaking:

http://www.webcom.com/gnosis/naghamm/gosthom.html

10. Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes."
16. Jesus said, "Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war.
For there will be five in a house: there'll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone."
55. Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."

I think that speaks for itself. You can ignore it, you can even do good while ignoring it, but that doesn't make it go away. Christianity is a religion based on intolerance for people of different beliefs right from the beginning.

Luke 19: 26-27... this parable is also told in Matthew 25: 14-30....

"For the Kingdom of Heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to every man according to his several ability, and straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them another five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained another two. But he that had received one went and dug in the earth and hid his lord's money.

After a long time the lord of those servants came and reckoned with them. And so he that had received five talents came and brought the other five talents, saying, `Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents. Behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.'

His lord said unto him, `Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.'

"He also that had received two talents came and said, `Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents; behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.'

His lord said unto him, `Well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.'

"Then he that had received the one talent came and said, `Lord, I knew thee, that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strewed. And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth. Lo, there thou hast what is thine.'

His lord answered and said unto him, `Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strewed. Thou ought therefore to have placed my money with the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with interest.

Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him that hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

Regarding Jesus' social fairness... this parable is not about the wealthy deserving more, as you seem to have interpreted it. It is about the greed of the one who kept his goods to himself, rather than using them to benefit the community. It is the greedy one who is punished and whose gifts are taken away to be redistributed to those who would use them to benefit the community.


***************************************************

Further reading of Matthew...


Matthew 25: 31-46

"When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory. And before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, `Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye clothed Me; I was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me.'

Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, `Lord, when saw we Thee hungering and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee drink? When saw we Thee a stranger and took Thee in, or naked and clothed Thee? Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee?'

And the King shall answer and say unto them, `Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.'

"Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, `Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I hungered, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited Me not.'

Then shall they also answer Him, saying, `Lord, when saw we Thee hungering or athirst or a stranger, or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee?'

Then shall He answer them, saying, `Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me.'

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal."

Taking care of the least of these... pretty hateful, isn't it? :sarcasm:


*************************************

The New Testament includes the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the gospel of Thomas is not included... Christianity is not based on the Gospel of Thomas.

Edited to add: You (not Russell) stated that Jesus preached hatred; you failed to quote chapter & verse from the Bible where Jesus did that. I can provide chapter & verse where Jesus preached love, though.

of the Gospel of Thomas. Some people think these texts to be more authentic of what Jesus really said than the highly edited texts of the Bible.

Jesus preached hatred and hellfire for the disbelievers. Read Russells text. Jesus even blamed a fig tree for not bearing fruits.

I didn't expect to win this Bible-thumping competition. But you just have to accept that there always will be people that will not accept/believe the God/Jesus concept of the Bible. And they have pretty good reasons not to.

Here's a pic of the Andromeda galaxy, which is almost like ours. Within our galaxy, our sun is approximately where the red arrow is.



Why would a God (in the Christian sense) send his "only son" to our tiny grain of sand in space? We now know we're physically nothing special in the cosmos. The pic probably contains thousands (or much more) of other earthlike planets. The God/Jesus/Holy Spirit thing to me is a construct of people who tried to make sense of the world around them, but weren't in possession of the facts we now know. It doesn't make God obsolete, but it makes me think how right we really might be claiming humanity to be something so special the Christian God sends his only son to our solar system. It is improbable.

Get real, Christians, please.

... and Christianity. He, we, and it is/are hateful. You are certainly entitled to your opinions. Mine differs... I think Jesus taught important lessons... a very important one being love... another being taking care of the least of these. I try to follow his teachings.

I am not going to debate the entire Bible w/you, nor am I going to retry Scopes here. I offered you a bit of my view on Jesus, and on Christianity. Take it or leave it. (BTW, I can accept that you will leave it.)

And guess what? I know the earth is only a speck in the universe. And guess what else? The Old Testament was written by humans... fairly ignorant humans, writing in their ignorance... who "weren't in possession of the facts we now know", as you said.

among the early noncanonical gospels still available to us, it retains a special interest, providing unusual variants of familiar sayings attributed to the Christ: in particular, it may give some idea of what sort of document the hypothetical Q was, and it is much more palatable than some of the other Nag Hammadi gnostic texts.

If you haven't read it, I'd recommend at least a look: it's short, epigrammatic, and intriguing ...

Another poster calls me "dismissive"... and you reinforce that poster's comment with your post.

The Gospel of Thomas is not in the Bible. That is not "dismissive", unfairly or otherwise. Just a fact.

Christianity is not based on the Gospel of Thomas or any other Nag Hammadi texts. That is not "dismissive", unfairly or otherwise. Just a fact.

Perhaps you are unfairly making assumptions about me. I'd recommend that you quit assuming.

And I should read something simply because you recommend it? My, how special! Thanks for the recommendation. Guess what? I've read it. (I'm wondering... would you call it 'intriguing' if it was in the Bible?)

.. committees some years after the crucifixion.

Prior to these official statements of approval, the actual Christian communities which existed had access to a number of writings, some of which remain informative, others of which now seem merely bizarre.

The Nag Hammadi texts provide a useful, if somewhat limited window, on such a community in Egypt.

Your assertion, that "Christianity is not based on the Gospel of Thomas or any other Nag Hammadi texts," is true in the sense that most modern churchgoers will not cite Nag Hammadi, and most of these texts appear, in fact, to have been excluded from the canon for good reason.

Still, in the effort to read the Bible, which provides ancient writings from foreign lands, perhaps such old noncanonical texts provide real insight: much of the interest in Nag Hammadi and similar discoveries came from Biblical scholars.

I find the Bible intriguing enough to attend a midweek Bible study at my church regularly, though I think a number of other Christians find my interpretative style unpalatable.

Personally, I find Thomas refreshing, if somewhat offbeat. I certainly had no intention of offending you. We apparently have somewhat different views about the Bible and Christianity.

... supposed dismissiveness of Thomas. I was not dismissing what Thomas had to say, nor was I dismissing his Gospel; I was stating that his Gospel was not included in the Bible, and that was the text which I was referencing when asking for a chapter & verse stating that Jesus preached hatred (as that poster claimed). (BTW, the Gospel of Thomas doesn't substantiate that poster's claim, either.)

Yes, I'm aware that a select committee chose the texts to be included in the Bible; they excluded the Gospel of Mary, too. And yes, these excluded texts have value & insight.

.. the nonsense you were responding to, except that I expressed the view that Thomas sheds important light on early Christianity ...

Thanks for the clarification; I appreciate it. :hi:

posted in wrong thread.

Luke 12: 51-53

Suppose ye that I have come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay, but rather division. For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided: three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

This refers to the conflict w/in families... families being torn apart... some will follow Jesus, others will refuse to do so. Jesus asks for commitment, to the point of severing relationships with those who refuse to follow him... this is the division that he brings.

Jesus says "peace on earth...nay, rather division". That is not about mere families being torn apart, that is about the earth being torn apart. Furthermore, why can there be no coexistence, according to this passage? Does this mean that you must accept Jesus and nothing else? Because that is what it seems to suggest.

These are simply speculative thoughts, by the way.

Also, I hope you haven't responded to this before, but what about the passages of Mark and John? Many of them are very intolerant. Also, Corinthians (I forget the author) is as well.

the notion that the more religious a democratized society is, the worse it tends to fare on measures of societal health - i.e. STD rates, teenage pregnancy rates, abortion rates, homicide rates, etc.

Why are you responding to my post? Are you aware of the content of the post (since deleted, for cause) to which I was responding? If not, why on earth would you step into this discussion w/o knowing what it was about?

No, I'm not aware of the content of the deleted post - though I do know what deleted posts tend to look like before they are banished.

BR refers to the harm that religion causes society, and seeing as how you were providing a multitude of examples of where religious organizations do "helpful" things for society, I figured I would counter with at least one example of where it can be argued that religion actually does cause harm to society - though maybe not in a direct sense.

Instead of chiding me for stepping into a discussion without having read the deleted post (though having read the replies to it), you might want to illuminate for me what was deleted (of course, leaving out the statements for which it was deleted)if I am somehow mistaken in the spirit of my reply.

.. and the Christian base communities (CBCs) that formed much of the backbone of the popular movements for justice in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s: it is true that the Catholic institutional hierarchy eventually set out to attack this movement, but it was a grassroots Catholic movement of undeniable religious nature, based on a radical reading of the gospels as prophetic cries for social justice ...

that no religious groups ever work for positive social change? I don't think that I did. Did I say that all Christians are evil? Nope, didn't say that either.

All I was referring to was a statistical analysis that shows a weak to moderate correlation between a modernized democracy's "religiosity" based on census data and measures of societal health.

.. to fare on measures of societal health" seems an unfair generalization, given the fact that there have been democratic popular religious movements with widespread support ...

results from a study published in 2005 in the Journal of Religion and Society. It's not an unfair generalization (mostly because it's not a generalization at all - it's a specific claim supported by data). Here, however is an unfair generalization:

Religion and all it's followers are evil and contribute to the ills of modern society by hindering the progression of the sciences.

That's more of what an unfair generalization looks like, fyi.

namely, Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies (vol 7 - 1995), are provided without any meaningful statistical work, such as regression analysis.

While the plots are indeed interesting, they probably do not reflect what I would consider a good choice of societal health indicators, and perhaps what is most important about them is the extent to which the United States occurs as an extreme outlier: low belief in evolution, high homicide rate, high under age 5 mortality, and high abortion rate.

In short, the paper is interesting but misleadingly titled and unconvincing, at least for the use you claim for it ...

the article was without methodological flaw and should be held up as irrefutable evidence that religion is bad? No. I submitted that there *is* a correlation (which, by the way, there is). As far as the regression analysis, the author provides the explanation for why they were not performed:

Regression analyses were not executed because of the high variability of degree of correlation, because potential causal factors for rates of societal function are complex, and because it is not the purpose of this initial study to definitively demonstrate a causal link between religion and social conditions. Nor were multivariate analyses used because they risk manipulating the data to produce errant or desired results ,<5> and because the fairly consistent characteristics of the sample automatically minimizes the need to correct for external multiple factors (see further discussion below). Therefore correlations of raw data are used for this initial examination.

And, by the way, how is "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies" a misleading title?

.. which you considered flawed, especially in support of a sweeping generalization for which that study, upon examination, provides no real evidence.

But since you seem now to confess that you did exactly that, then perhaps you will also be graceful enough to retract your original claim ...

... which is a tome compared to the text above. They could just spend an additional hour reading Russell's text. It'll make them feel free (for the rest of their lives) to move away from that unfounded thought cage the Bible tried to trap them in.

Quite a deal if you ask me.

comment was based on my reaction that it was largely why he wasn't a Christian. I didn't find that very interesting.

As the the billions who read the bible, I seriously doubt that if all of them read Russell's text, it would dissuade them from reading the bible. If billions are reading the Bible, they are putting themselves at risk.

maybe 2, or 3 people of those billions would start to think ... a bit ... ;-)
Sometimes I'm just a bit too enthusiastic about the power of reasoning!

power of reasoning. However, the current American voters seem to be defying all reason in their support for Bush.

One is the importance of intelligence--using our minds. That is one big reason the religion of "Christianity" is so determined to promote doctrines and traditions. They stand against change, and our world is in constant flux. This is probably one reason "Christains" can be so judgemental and unforgiving.

I'd like to share my takes on one of Russell's points--hell. Christ was speaking to the Israelites who very definitely believed in hell and viewed God as the great Law-giver and Judge. Christ was working to change those concepts--he spoke of God as the loving Father, and the religious leaders were furious with that. They kept trying to trip Christ up by demading that he judge people (like the woman caught in adultery). Christ's response to those leaders was telling them in no uncertain terms that they were hypocrites and their hypocrisy put them in danger of hell (which is what judge not that ye not be judged means). What Jesus said then about hell was not his last statement about it. While on the cross, he looked at those same people and spoke the words, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." With those words, he made the question of eternal hell moot. Once the human race was forgiven, hell's days became numbered.

Christ's death was a tremendous attack against death and hell. Listen to Hebrews 2:14b "...that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." The final victory over death and hell will come at the great white throne judgement, Revelation 20:13-14 states "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works (see I Corinthians 3:13-15). And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. (see Hebrews 9:27)." After letting go of all the works and suffering evil has produced in their lives, individuals will find God wiping away their tears (Revelation 21:4).

By the way, the ones that will be cast into the lake of fire are the inhabitants of the kingdom of evil--those angelic beings that followed Lucifer in his quest to rule over his peers and be like God(Isaiah 14:13-14). Many people do not understand that these inhabitants are often spoken of as men and nations in the Bible; Isaiah 14:16 refers to the fallen Lucifer as a man. This is one reason we need to be careful how we read the Bible. A rule of thumb to keep in mind--God loves the human race and will take vengenance on the evil ones who have so ruthlessly attacked his beloved ones.

Finally, blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the one unforgivable sin that will land an individual in the lake of fire. In order to commit this sin, one has to fully understand the truth, be totally set free from deception, and walk in the power of God. In other words, one has to be in the same position as Lucifer was before he decided to become like God. All the concept of this sin means is that God will never take our freedom of will away. But, before God "will let us go forever," He will work with us until we fully understand His love. I personally believe that no human being will ever blaspheme the Holy Spirit because once a person understands the love of God, he or she will not want to let go of Him.

I always thought there was a significant group in ancient Israel (the Sadducees) who did not believe in any kind of afterlife.



So's getting the one-way ticket to the fiery lake? Demons or humans or both?

When Christ talked to the Israelites, he talked about paradise and hell even though some may not have believed in the afterlife. He really taught the concept of God as the loving and forgiving father.

Of course, I can't prove who will be tossed into the fiery lake, but, from what I understand, just the demons will be there. What so many people don't seem to understand is that if God decided to forgive the human race, then the human race is forgiven. The problems we have don't come from God, but from the push of evil against us. And, that push of evil partially manifests as hatred and judgmentalism. When we really understand the truth of the biblical statement, "God is love," we will see a changed world.

Thank you for posting this. :thumbsup:

Russell is one of my favorite philosophers. Frankly, he's my favorite not for what he's most famous for (his treatise with Whitehead), but for his social and religious commentary and philosophy. For instance, he says that accepting dogma makes once mental stance intrinsically opposed to knowledge and progression of the sciences. Good stuff.

And as far as Russell not being kind, I've not read his autobiography, but I have read through "What I Believe", and in it he says that for him "the good life is one guided by knowledge and inspired by love". Doesn't sound too bad to me.

.. stood up well.

I remember a piece he wrote somewhere around 1900, arguing that Euclidean geometry was really the only possible geometry. This, of course, essentially ignored the accomplishments of Bolyai and Lobachevski, and had the unfortunate distinction of being followed not too long after by Einstein's general theory of relativity and its smashingly successful explanation of the precession of Mercury's perihelion.

The monumental positivist work, which he undertook with Whitehead, to carry out Frege's program of reducing mathematics to logic, required cumbersome postulates to render the theory of types of usable -- and within a few decades Godel almost entirely demolished the positivist program with his ingenious proof of the incompleteness of Peano arithmetic.

I first read "Why I am not a Christian" as a middle-school child many decades ago, and I admit it made a real impression on me at the time. Much of what Russell says is, of course, true: the apologetic arguments for the existence of G-d are mainly idiotic garbage; many people have strange emotional reasons for their religious notions; the churches have often been forces of reaction. But perhaps these are not necessarily good arguments against Christianity so much as arguments against what the theologian Kierkegaard dismissively called Christendom ...

I actually hated Freud. He had a tendency to attribute all human experiences to sets of unconscious drives and conflicts. Everything was sexualized (an umbrella? Come on, doc). Plus he was kind of a dick for what he did to my boy Alfred Adler. But all that aside, he was still a great thinker - and he is so for the same reason Bertrand Russell is.

Russell's theories might not have been dead on accurate, but even if they weren't he still did something monumental in the field of philosophy - he moved the ideological ball forward. He changed the direction of discourse down more beneficial avenues. It's the same thing that Freud did. Russell doesn't have to be right (though I do happen to think some of his ideas are pretty solid), he's already served his purpose.

You know that phrase, right? Standing on the shoulders of giants or some such...