Why I am Not a Christian (Routledge Classics)

by Bertrand Russell (Author), Bertrand Russell (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1975

  $5.43

• Used

  Paperback
  1986

  $18.48

  Devastating in its use of cold logic, (The Independent), the classic essay collection that expresses the freethinker s views to religion and challenges set notions in today s society from one of the most influential intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Dedicated as few men have been to the life of reason, Bertrand Russell has always been concerned with the basic questions to which religion also addresses itself questions about man s place in the universe and the nature of the good life, questions that involve life after death, morality, freedom, education, and sexual ethics. He brings to his treatment of these questions the same courage, scrupulous logic, and lofty wisdom for which his other work as philosopher, writer, and teacher has been famous. These qualities make the essays included in this book perhaps the most graceful and moving presentation of the freethinker's position since the days of Hume and Voltaire. I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue, Russell declares in his Preface, and his reasoned opposition to any system or dogma which he feels may shackle man s mind runs through all the essays in this book, whether they were written as early as 1899 or as late as 1954. The book has been edited, with Lord Russell s full approval and cooperation, by Professor Paul Edwards of the Philosophy Department of New York University. In an Appendix, Professor Edwards contributes a full account of the highly controversial Bertrand Russell Case of 1940, in which Russell was judicially declared unfit to teach philosophy at the College of the City of New York. Whether the reader shares or rejects Bertrand Russell s views, he will find this book an invigorating challenge to set notions, a masterly statement of a philosophical position, and a pure joy to read.

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $19.83

  While its tone is playful and frivolous, this book poses tough questions over the nature of religion and belief. Religion provides comfortable responses to the questions that have always beset humankind - why are we here, what is the point of being alive, how ought we to behave? Russell snatches that comfort away, leaving us instead with other, more troublesome alternatives: responsibility, autonomy, self-awareness. He tells us that the time to live is now, the place to live is here, and the way to be happy is to ensure others are happy.