Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Why I am not Bertrand Russell

It was the great philosopher who wrote "Why I am not a Christian". Reading his book as a teenager helped me to work out why I was a Christian, and what kind of Christian I was.

Since those early days being Christian has become even more problematic to me. Being Christian in an intellectually honest way I have never found easy. But I can with more conviction say why I am not a humanist:

Because human reality is not the whole of reality as we know it, and most of reality is unknown to us and perhaps unknowable. 

What's more:

Human beings are not obviously to be preferred to other animals or creatures. They're just more closely related. I believe my 185 million greats grandfather was a fish.