バートランド・ラッセル「いずれが正義か？」
* 原著：Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? 1930.Repr. in : Why I am not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, 1957
* 出典：牧野力(編)『ラッセル思想辞典』br>
（要旨訳です。）キリスト教会の正義の概念は色々な意味で社会的に望ましくない。第一に、知性と科学との価値を十分認めていない。この欠点は福音書から受け継がれた。
キリストは人々に幼児のようであれと教えている。（しかし）幼児には、微積分、通貨の原理、現代医学の闘病法も分らない。キリスト教会によれば、これらの知識を獲得することは、人間のどんな義務の部分にもならない。教会全盛時代には(its palmy days )、科学的知識の獲得は独断的な教義をもつ教会には危険な種であった。
he church's conception of righteousness is socially undesirable in various ways -- first and foremost in its depreciation of intelligence and science. This defect is inherited from the Gospels. Christ tells us to become as little children, but little children cannot understand the differential calculus, or the principles of currency, or the modern methods of combating disease. To acquire such knowledge is no part of our duty, according to the church. ... The church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days ; but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to a pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma.
ここに二人の男がいたと仮定しよう。Aは、熱帯の広大な地域で、マラリア病を撲滅させる研究作業の過程で結婚していない女性と時々性交渉をもっていたとする。Bは、全く見境なく毎年子供を生ませ、妻は疲労で死亡し、子供の面倒を全然みないので、半数の子は避けられたはずの原因で死亡した。だが、このBは一度も不義の性交渉をしていない。善良なキリスト教徒はBであり、道徳的ともみなされる。人類への積極的な功績よりも、教会認定の罪を避ける方に重点がある限り、有益な社会的貢献は軽視される。
ake, for example, two men, one of whom has stamped out yellow fever throughout some large region in the tropics but has in the course of his labors had occasional relations with women to whom he was not married; while the other has been lazy and shiftless, begetting a child a year until his wife died of exhaustion and taking so little care of his children that half of them died from preventable causes, but never indulging in illicit sexual intercourse. Every good Christian must maintain that the second of these men is more virtuous than the first. Such an attitude is, of course, superstitious and totally contrary to reason. Yet something of this absurdity is inevitable so long as avoidance of sin is thought more important than positive merit, and so long as the importance of knowledge as a help to a useful life is not recognized.
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