http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/humftp/E-text/Russell/agnostic.htm

What is an Agnostic?
Bertrand Russell

What Is an agnostic?

An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as
God
and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are
concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present
time.

Are agnostics atheists?

No. An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not
there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the
atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment,
saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or
for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of
God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so
improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case,
he
is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a
careful
philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were
asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the
Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive
arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the
Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the
atheists.

Since you deny `God's Law', what authority do you accept as a guide to
conduct?

An Agnostic does not accept any `authority' in the sense in which
religious people do. He holds that a man should think out questions of
conduct for himself. Of course, he will seek to profit by the wisdom of
others, but he will have to select for himself the people he is to
consider wise, and he will not regard even what they say as
unquestionable. He will observe that what passes as `God's law' varies
from time to time. The Bible says both that a woman must not marry her
deceased husband's brother, and that, in certain circumstances, she must
do so. If you have the misfortune to be a childless widow with an
unmarried brother-in-law, it is logically impossible for you to avoid
disobeying `God's law'.

How do you know what is good and what is evil? What does an agnostic
consider a sin?

The Agnostic is not quite so certain as some Christians are as to what
is
good and what is evil. He does not hold, as most Christians in the past
held, that people who disagree with the government on abstruse points of
theology ought to suffer a painful death. He is against persecution, and
rather chary of moral condemnation.

As for `sin', he thinks it not a useful notion. He admits, of course,
that some kinds of conduct are desirable and some undesirable, but he
holds that the punishment of undesirable kinds is only to be commended
when it is deterrent or reformatory, not when it is inflicted because it
is thought a good thing on its own account that the wicked should
suffer.
It was this belief in vindictive punishment that made men accept Hell.
This is part of the harm done by the notion of `sin'.

Does an agnostic do whatever he pleases?

In one sense, no; in another sense, everyone does whatever he pleases.
Suppose, for example, you hate someone so much that you would like to
murder him. Why do you not do so? You may reply: "Because religion tells
me that murder is a sin." But as a statistical fact, agnostics are not
more prone to murder than other people, in fact, rather less so. They
have the same motives for abstaining from murder as other people have.
Far and away the most powerful of these motives is the fear of
punishment. In lawless conditions, such as a gold rush, all sorts of
people will commit crimes, although in ordinary circumstances they would
have been law-abiding. There is not only actual legal punishment; there
is the discomfort of dreading discovery, and the loneliness of knowing
that, to avoid being hated, you must wear a mask with even your closest
intimates. And there is also what may be called "conscience": If you
ever
contemplated a murder, you would dread the horrible memory of your
victim's last moments or lifeless corpse. All this, it is true, depends
upon your living in a law-abiding community, but there are abundant
secular reasons for creating and preserving such a community.

I said that there is another sense in which every man does as he
pleases.
No one but a fool indulges every impulse, but what holds a desire in
check is always some other desire. A man's anti-social wishes may be
restrained by a wish to please God, but they may also be restrained by a
wish to please his friends, or to win the respect of his community, or
to
be able to contemplate himself without disgust. But if he has no such
wishes, the mere abstract concepts of morality will not keep him
straight.

How does an agnostic regard the Bible?

An agnostic regards the Bible exactly as enlightened clerics regard it.
He does not think that it is divinely inspired; he thinks its early
history legendary, and no more exactly true than that in Homer; he
thinks
its moral teaching sometimes good, but sometimes very bad. For example:
Samuel ordered Saul, in a war, to kill not only every man, woman, and
child of the enemy, but also all the sheep and cattle. Saul, however,
let
the sheep and the cattle live, and for this we are told to condemn him.
I
have never been able to admire Elisha for cursing the children who
laughed at him, or to believe (what the Bible asserts) that a benevolent
Deity would send two she-bears to kill the children.

How does an agnostic regard Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Holy
Trinity?

Since an agnostic does not believe in God, he cannot think that Jesus
was
God. Most agnostics admire the life and moral teachings of Jesus as told
in the Gospels, but not necessarily more than those of certain other
men.
Some would place him on a level with Buddha, some with Socrates and some
with Abraham Lincoln. Nor do they think that what He said is not open to
question, since they do not accept any authority as absolute.

They regard the Virgin Birth as a doctrine taken over from pagan
mythology, where such births were not uncommon. (Zoroaster was said to
have been born of a virgin; Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess, is called
the
Holy Virgin.) They cannot give credence to it, or to the doctrine of the
Trinity, since neither is possible without belief in God.

Can an agnostic be a Christian?

The word "Christian" has had various different meanings at different
times. Throughout most of the centuries since the time of Christ, it has
meant a person who believed God and immortality and held that Christ was
God. But Unitarians call themselves Christians, although they do not
believe in the divinity of Christ, and many people nowadays use the word
"God" in a much less precise sense than that which it used to bear. Many
people who say they believe in God no longer mean a person, or a trinity
of persons, but only a vague tendency or power or purpose immanent in
evolution. Others, going still further, mean by "Christianity" merely a
system of ethics which, since they are ignorant of history, they imagine
to be characteristic of Christians only.

When, in a recent book, I said that what the world needs is "love,
Christian love, or compassion," many people thought this showed some
changes in my views, although in fact, I might have said the same thing
at any time. If you mean by a "Christian" a man who loves his neighbor,
who has wide sympathy with suffering, and who ardently desires a world
freed from the cruelties and abominations which at present disfigure it,
then, certainly, you will be justified in calling me a Christian. And,
in
this sense, I think you will find more "Christians" among agnostics than
among the orthodox. But, for my part, I cannot accept such a definition.
Apart from other objections to it, it seems rude to Jews, Buddhists,
Mohammedans, and other non-Christians, who, so far as history shows,
have
been at least as apt as Christians to practice the virtues which some
modern Christians arrogantly claim as distinctive of their own religion.

I think also that all who called themselves Christians in an earlier
time, and a great majority of those who do so at the present day, would
consider that belief in God and immortality is essential to a Christian.
On these grounds, I should not call myself a Christian, and I should say
that an agnostic cannot be a Christian. But, if the word "Christianity"
comes to be generally used to mean merely a kind of morality, then it
will certainly be possible for an agnostic to be a Christian.

Does an agnostic deny that man has a soul?

This question has no precise meaning unless we are given a definition of
the word "soul." I suppose what is meant is, roughly, something
nonmaterial which persists throughout a person's life and even, for
those
who believe in immortality, throughout all future time. If this is what
is meant, an agnostic is not likely to believe that man has a soul. But
I
must hasten to add that this does not mean that an agnostic must be a
materialist. Many agnostics (including myself) are quite as doubtful of
the body as they are of the soul, but this is a long story taking one
into difficult metaphysics. Mind and matter alike, I should say, are
only
convenient symbols in discourse, not actually existing things.

Does an agnostic believe in a hereafter, in Heaven or Hell?

The question whether people survive death is one as to which evidence is
possible. Psychical research and spiritualism are thought by many to
supply such evidence. An agnostic, as such, does not take a view about
survival unless he thinks that there is evidence one way or the other.
For my part, I do not think there is any good reason to believe that we
survive death, but I am open to conviction if adequate evidence should
appear.

Heaven and hell are a different matter. Belief in hell is bound up with
the belief that the vindictive punishment of sin is a good thing, quite
independently of any reformative or deterrent effect that it may have.
Hardly an agnostic believes this. As for heaven, there might conceivably
someday be evidence of its existence through spiritualism, but most
agnostics do not think that there is such evidence, and therefore do not
believe in heaven.

Are you never afraid of God's judgment in denying Him?

Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma,
but
this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large portion of the
human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in
consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He
would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt
His
existence.

How do agnostics explain the beauty and harmony of nature?

I do not understand where this "beauty" and "harmony" are supposed to be
found. Throughout the animal kingdom, animals ruthlessly prey upon each
other. Most of them are either cruelly killed by other animals or slowly
die of hunger. For my part, I am unable to see any great beauty or
harmony in the tapeworm. Let it not be said that this creature is sent
as
a punishment for our sins, for it is more prevalent among animals than
among humans. I suppose the questioner is thinking of such things as the
beauty of the starry heavens. But one should remember that stars every
now and again explode and reduce everything in their neighborhood to a
vague mist. Beauty, in any case, is subjective and exists only in the
eye
of the beholder.

How do agnostics explain miracles and other revelations of God's
omnipotence?

Agnostics do not think that there is any evidence of "miracles" in the
sense of happenings contrary to natural law. We know that faith healing
occurs and is in no sense miraculous. At Lourdes, certain diseases can
be
cured and others cannot. Those that can be cured at Lourdes can probably
be cured by any doctor in whom the patient has faith. As for the records
of other miracles, such as Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, the
agnostic dismisses them as legends and points to the fact that all
religions are plentifully supplied with such legends. There is just as
much miraculous evidence for the Greek gods in Homer as for the
Christian
God in the Bible.

There have been base and cruel passions, which religion opposes. If you
abandon religious principles, could mankind exist?

The existence of base and cruel passions is undeniable, but I find no
evidence in history that religion has opposed these passions. On the
contrary, it has sanctified them, and enabled people to indulge them
without remorse. Cruel persecutions have been commoner in Christendom
than anywhere else. What appears to justify persecution is dogmatic
belief. Kindliness and tolerance only prevail in proportion as dogmatic
belief decays. In our day, a new dogmatic religion, namely, communism,
has arisen. To this, as to other systems of dogma, the agnostic is
opposed. The persecuting character of present day communism is exactly
like the persecuting character of Christianity in earlier centuries. In
so far as Christianity has become less persecuting, this is mainly due
to
the work of freethinkers who have made dogmatists rather less dogmatic.
If they were as dogmatic now as in former times, they would still think
it right to burn heretics at the stake. The spirit of tolerance which
some modern Christians regard as essentially Christian is, in fact, a
product of the temper which allows doubt and is suspicious of absolute
certainties. I think that anybody who surveys past history in an
impartial manner will be driven to the conclusion that religion has
caused more suffering than it has prevented.

What is the meaning of life to the agnostic?

I feel inclined to answer by another question: What is the meaning of
`the meaning of life'? I suppose what is intended is some general
purpose. I do not think that life in general has any purpose. It just
happened. But individual human beings have purposes, and there is
nothing
in agnosticism to cause them to abandon these purposes. They cannot, of
course, be certain of achieving the results at which they aim; but you
would think ill of a soldier who refused to fight unless victory was
certain. The person who needs religion to bolster up his own purposes is
a timorous person, and I cannot think as well of him as of the man who
takes his chances, while admitting that defeat is not impossible.

Does not the denial of religion mean the denial of marriage and chastity?

Here again, one must reply by another question: Does the man who asks
this question believe that marriage and chastity contribute to earthly
happiness here below, or does he think that, while they cause misery
here
below, they are to be advocated as means of getting to heaven? The man
who takes the latter view will no doubt expect agnosticism to lead to a
decay of what he calls virtue, but he will have to admit that what he
calls virtue is not what ministers to the happiness of the human race
while on earth. If, on the other hand, he takes the former view, namely,
that there are terrestrial arguments in favor of marriage and chastity,
he must also hold that these arguments are such as should appeal to the
agnostic. Agnostics, as such, have no distinctive views about sexual
morality. But most of them would admit that there are valid arguments
against the unbridled indulgence of sexual desires. They would derive
these arguments, however, from terrestrial sources and not from supposed
divine commands.

Is not faith in reason alone a dangerous creed? Is not reason imperfect
and inadequate without spiritual and moral law?

No sensible man, however agnostic, has "faith in reason alone." Reason
is
concerned with matters of fact, some observed, some inferred. The
question whether there is a future life and the question whether there
is
a God concern matters of fact, and the agnostic will hold that they
should be investigated in the same way as the question, "Will there be
an
eclipse of the moon tomorrow?" But matters of fact alone are not
sufficient to determine action, since they do not tell us what ends we
ought to pursue. In the realm of ends, we need something other than
reason. The agnostic will find his ends in his own heart and not in an
external command. Let us take an illustration: Suppose you wish to
travel
by train from New York to Chicago; you will use reason to discover when
the trains run, and a person who though that there was some faculty of
insight or intuition enabling him to dispense with the timetable would
be
thought rather silly. But no timetable will tell him that it is wise, he
will have to take account of further matters of fact; but behind all the
matters of fact, there will be the ends that he thinks fitting to
pursue,
and these, for an agnostic as for other men, belong to a realm which is
not that of reason, though it should be in no degree contrary to it. The
realm I mean is that of emotion and feeling and desire.

Do you regard all religions as forms of superstition or dogma? Which of
the existing religions do you most respect, and why?

All the great organized religions that have dominated large populations
have involved a greater or less amount of dogma, but "religion" is a
word
of which the meaning is not very definite. Confucianism, for instance,
might be called a religion, although it involves no dogma. And in some
forms of liberal Christianity, the element of dogma is reduced to a
minimum.

Of the great religions of history, I prefer Buddhism, especially in its
earliest forms, because it has had the smallest element of persecution.

Communism like agnosticism opposes religion, are agnostics Communists?

Communism does not oppose religion. It merely opposes the Christian
religion, just as Mohammedanism does. Communism, at least in the form
advocated by the Soviet Government and the Communist Party, is a new
system of dogma of a peculiarly virulent and persecuting sort. Every
genuine Agnostic must therefore be opposed to it.

Do agnostics think that science and religion are impossible to reconcile?

The answer turns upon what is meant by `religion'. If it means merely a
system of ethics, it can be reconciled with science. If it means a
system
of dogma, regarded as unquestionably true, it is incompatible with the
scientific spirit, which refuses to accept matters of fact without
evidence, and also holds that complete certainty is hardly ever
impossible.

What kind of evidence could convince you that God exists?

I think that if I heard a voice from the sky predicting all that was
going to happen to me during the next twenty-four hours, including
events
that would have seemed highly improbable, and if all these events then
produced to happen, I might perhaps be convinced at least of the
existence of some superhuman intelligence. I can imagine other evidence
of the same sort which might convince me, but so far as I know, no such
evidence exists.

On Dec 14, 1:37 pm, "Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD" <lov...@thetruth.com>
wrote:

What on earth is *that* nonsense, Andrew? If I wanted a form letter,
I'd write my Congressman. Are you unable to describe why you thought
you would be the new senior partner there?

OTOH, there seems to be a slight bit of evidence for your side of that
story. It seems that Dr. Hildner wasn't able to retire, since you were
not able (for one reason or another) to replace him:

http://www.vitals.com/doctor/profile/9313863877#

<AUK restored>

-Panama Floyd, Atlanta.
aa#2015/Member, Knights of BAAWA!

It seems to me I heard somewhere that Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD wrote in
article
<57082948-05e9-4461-ac2f-8a8579ec3bef@r2g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>:

[Re Dr. Hildner]

Actually, his message has become rather famous among the readers in
the groups you invade--and solely because you yourself made his
private email to you a public document, a continuing source of truth
and occasional mirth in this dismal affair.  Hoist by your own petard,
doctor.

What compelled you to publish his private correspondence?

Such are the delusions of a mind that was already showing signs of
serious trouble at the time of that incident.