Dear Bertrand Russell, 1969
Foreword to [Chapter 1] Religion
'I am not a Christian, and have not been a Christian since the age of fifteen.' /blockquote>Throughout his life Bertrand Russell opposed religion and rejected the idea of a supreme being-- views, need it be said, which have never ceased to provoke the orthodox. Indeed, the radical views of his free-thinking parents, Lord and Lady Amberley, were considered outrageous by the Victorian society of their day, Not that Russell was to be given the advantages of this somewhat disrespectful environment. The Amberleys died very young, and although they had wished that Bertrand and his elder brother be placed under the guardianship of two atheist friends, the will was set aside by a court order, and the boys were placed in the care of their grandparents.
Bertrand Russell Quotes 366
Bertrand Russell described those formative years as follows :
'My grandfather, the statesman, died in 1878, and it was his widow who decided the manner of my education. She was a Scotch Presbyterian, who gradually became a Unitarian. I was taken on alternate Sundays to the Parish Church and to the Presbyterian Church, while at home I was taught the tenets of Unitarianism. Eternal punishment and the literal truth of the Bible were not inculcated, and there was no Sabbatarianism beyond a suggestion of avoiding cards on Sunday for fear of shocking the servants. But in other respects morals were austere, and it was held to be certain that conscience, which is the voice of God, is an infallible guide in all practical perplexities.' *1 The result was not quite what his grandmother may have wished, though perhaps it might have been predicted that, given the same childhood regime, Russell was soon to develop an outlook not unlike that of his father. At the age of fifteen, to avoid detection, he was recording his religious doubts in Greek letters in a book he headed 'Greek Exercises'. By the time he was eighteen, shortly before going up to Cambridge, he had abandoned all uncertainty, become an atheist, and was later to recall in his Autobiography :
'Throughout the long period of religious doubt. I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject.'
The isolation of his youth ended in the liberation he found at Cambridge in the 1890s. Russell undoubtedly revelled in the atmosphere of those days and as late as 1961 was to recollect one of his contemporaries as follows: 'I knew Ralph Vaughan Williams well when he was an undergraduate . . . [he] was in those days a most determined atheist and was noted for having walked into Hall one day saying in a loud voice, 'Who believes in God nowa-days. I should like to know?'
But it was no mere whim to shock the devout that drove Russell to oppose religious dogma, for he considered all the great religions of the world not only untrue, but harmful. 'It is evident as a matter of logic, that since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true', he has written in 'My Religious Reminiscences', and further, 'The question of the truth of a religion is one thing, but the question of its usefulness is another. I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.'
That Bertrand Russell enjoyed demolishing the sacred cows of religious orthodoxy, whether they be Hindu or any other variety, is apparent from the following selection of letters. But underlying them all, clearly to be seen, is his deep sympathy and concern for the feelings of his fellow humans ; his desire that they should be freed from the harmful shackles of dogma and superstition and his firm opposition to false beliefs with their undesirable social consequences.
*1 From 'My Religious Reminiscences' reprinted in The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
