Derek Wong
English 306
Argumentative Writing
"Why I Am Not a Christian," By Bertrand Russell (page 816)
Coincidence or Divine Intervention?
This past Sunday, as with every Sunday, my parents awaken me to watch my grandma (she needs to be watched constantly for medical reasons) while they attend the Sunday morning service at their local church. For the past year they have made the effort (although not always successful) to attend church. It occurred to me that they never actually state why they started to attend church and why they have continued for so long. After every service, my father will come home and tell me how wonderful it was and how I would enjoy it, never pointing out what the sermon was about or what he learned. My mother on the other hand seems to just drudge tiredly through the door, change her clothes, and fall back asleep. This got me to wonder what should one believe in, is it really worth the time to go to church every week (or perhaps at all?), to believe in something that we can never truly prove (or disprove for that matter), and what arguments are there for both sides.
I grew up on the basis that living as a "Christian" was the best way. From the age of four to the age of eighteen I have always attended a Catholic school. This meant that for fourteen years of the nineteen years I have been on this earth, I learned about the various books of the Bible, the extensive history of the Catholic Church, and the lifestyle that God "says" we should live by. It was there that I was engrained with the idea that God (or at least a superior being) existed. As I was growing up, I had a few friends that tried to prove that God does not exist. After reading "Why I Am Not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell, I regret that I wasn’t living in the 19th century because there are certain points that he makes in his piece that has caught my attention. However since he died about ten years before I was born, I’ll address anyone who has an opinion on the issue of God’s existence (I am sure that is the majority of people out there).
In Bertrand Russell piece of "Why I am not a Christian" he questions God’s existence with the question of "why is there evil in this world?" Russell seems to be targeting and making the assumption that people only believe in God purely because of faith, but this is not necessarily true. He makes several arguments to help disprove that God does not exist, and I shall address the two that are the most prominent. The first will be the Moral Arguments for Deity and the second will be the Remedying Injustice Argument. The logic that Russell uses is that God can not exist if there is so much evil in this world, however I will show that because of the evil in this world God must therefore exist.
In my life, whenever people ask me what school I graduated from and I would respond by saying a catholic school, they would always follow up with "do you believe in God?" This was always been a hard question to answer, and it still is. Most of the time, I will just say a few words like "yes, I believe in at least a God," or "Well can you prove to me that God does not exist?" However, every once in a while, I’ll get the automatic response of "…then why is the world so bad…" This brings up the first argument: Moral Argument for Deity.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant first brought up the Moral Argument for Deity in which he states that without God there can be no existence of right and wrong. However, Russell argues that if right and wrong exist independently of each other, and if God is good, then right and wrong must have preceded God’s existence and therefore God can not be omnipotent since he can not create something that has existed before he did.
One of the strongest arguments root in the very question of the creation of right and wrong. Russell does an excellent job in his persuasion tactic. Here, he asks a series of questions where regardless of your answer, you will be forced to conclude that God does not exist according to his answers. Allow me to break down his questioning and his answers:
I must admit that upon reading and following the logic and questioning
incorporated by Russell, a shadow of doubt was cast onto the my own belief that God exist. In his argument, Russell makes the tactical flaw that his answers to each of his questions are automatically accepted and that there could no other alternative. However, there are alternatives. It can be taken that God’s very essence is the quality of justice and that under the quality of justice, the concept of right and wrong fit in.
Many times we compare two things and determine which one is better. For example, "what clothes should I wear today? Should I wear black or blue jeans? If I do wear black jeans, would my black shoes match my jeans, or should I wear the blue shoes to contrast? What looks better? ... Etc." C.S. Lewis gives a great example to illustrate this point: If a man falls into water, he feels wet because he is not water animal…a fish would not feel wet." Another example would be a straight line. If I told you to draw a straight line, then you would do so (or at least try to). How do you know that your line is straight? You referenced the line you drew with the image of a straight line (assuming that you learned how to correctly identify a straight line) in your mind. Then you compare if it is straight. Finally, you come to a conclusion of "yes, this line is straight!" or "no, this is not a straight line ... I am an idiot...why can’t I use a straight ruler to draw a straight line?!"
We can use the very same reasoning to say that we will know a just action and an unjust action when we see it. However, the question is asked of, "Where did we get this concept of justice? " We were born with the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong (although, many times we don’t always act like we know). It is important to point out that we did not learn the concept of right and wrong from our family or school (you only learned the words associated with those concepts), but it is an innate characteristic of humans. Since we have the ability to determine the difference between just and unjust, right and wrong, good and bad, we can say that the world is unjust (or just if you are a true optimist). Regardless of your point of view you proved that you do know the difference between fair and unfair. We can conclude that this knowledge must have come from God since we did not inherit or learn this concept.
Let’s say for example, you believe that we were born with the engrained characteristic to see the difference of right and wrong, your next question would be then to ask, "why, then does God allow there so much suffering in the world?" This leads me to Russell’s most prominent argument, Remedying Injustice.
Russell asks in paragraph 8, "…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 omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce..." Now, this is a reasonable question: "why is there suffering in the world if there exists an omnipotent being?" However, further into his argument (paragraph 8), he states, "…you (referring to God) could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?.." Let us look closer at this point. At first glance the statement seems to be an extension of his argument, but at a closer look Russell is actually implying that God can not be omniscient because of the "evils" in the world that he created. In short, God is not powerful enough to create something better than the Ku Klux Klan and the other evils of the world.
Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions are being made about the range of power that God has made. His first assumption is that God is omniscient and omnipotent, which is valid, his second assumption is that God is not capable of making anything better than the Fascists, and third, the implication that in this world there is nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan and Fascists.
Hypocrisy is the theme here. If you make the assumption that God is omniscient, then how can you place a limit on his range, this is contradictory. The third assumption is the most flawed. He constantly throughout the piece reminds us that there are people in the world that have done bad deeds. This tactic of only mentioning selected information and facts can be very effective and can help persuade your audience. However I would like to point out that he does not mention the fact that we do have good-hearted people that help other people and do benefit society. For example, Mother Theresa helping the impoverished in India, Princess Diana helping to defuse the landmines in Africa, Gandhi paving a new way of a non-violence lifestyle, Martin Luther King Jr. showing all races may live in peace, and even Oprah Winfrey, who helps people with low self-esteem problems recover, have all contributed to the betterment of our society. People, know the difference between right and wrong, but they do not always practice what is right. People have been given the ability to choose their actions, but these actions are not just limited to just actions, they also include unjust actions.
In short, there is no easy answer to the question of "Does God exist?" However, I would like to leave my dedicated readers one last thought. Before completion of this paper, I had previous written a conclusion. It was summing up the point that because we know the difference of right and wrong, we know that God exist. However, my conclusion has now changed, in fact a good portion of my paper changed compared to the numerous rough drafts preceding it. This coming weekend my friends planned on going out to an activity. To confirm the details, I had called one of friends, Marie, who I was driving to the activity and was a Christian. Marie told me that just by chance she went to Bible study tonight (the night I finished my paper) because "God told her too" and they discussed this very issue of believing in God. She explained to me her point of view and her life experience (which helped me fully realize certain key areas to the argument). She wondered why she had to go bible study on this particular night...coincidence?...or divine intervention?