CUPRINS

1. Introducere - pag. 7
2. Bibliografie - pag. 24

3. CAP. 1 - Temeiuri ale conflictului - pag. 26
4. CAP. 2 - Revolutia copernicana - pag. 35
5. CAP. 3 - Evolutia - pag. 59
6. CAP. 4 - Demonologie si medicina - pag. 86
7. CAP. 5 - Sufletul si corpul - pag. 108
8. CAP. 6 - Determinismul - pag. 135
9. CAP. 7 - Misticismul - pag. 156
10. CAP. 8 - Scopul cosmic - pag. 171
11. CAP. 9 - Stiinta si etica - pag. 197
12. CAP. 10 - Concluzie - pag. 213

13. Index - pag. 220 ( )

12/11/21

Of the books I've read by Russell so far I think he is the easiest on religion here. I see two reasons for this. One, he never talks about sexual repression which is the subject that consistently gets him riled up about the church, and two, at the time this was written (1935) he was optimistic that the days of Christianity fighting progress were behind us and saw the real threats coming from the state. He was keenly aware that the governments of Russia, Germany and, to a lesser extent, his own Britain were throwing their citizens' freedoms under the bus. His later work shows that he later abandoned the optimism he had towards Christianity, but the important thing to remember is that he was pretty darn optimistic here.

The nice thing about the book is Bertand doesn't particularly take a stand on whether or not religion and science are incompatible. Indeed his optimism about the future of Christianity suggests that at the time of this writing he thought that they could coexist. The first half is really just a history of instances when the church determined that science was incompatible with its teachings. The first few chapters are each dedicated to a specific scientific discovery the the church ardently opposed, often with the power of the state and serious threats against the scientists involved. This included discoveries like that the sun was the center of the solar system, that the earth was not a mere 6,000 years old and that the strata of rocks not only pointed to a very, very old earth, but did not show any evidence of a worldwide flood. He briefly mentions evolution, but doesn't seem to realize just how troublesome it would continue to be to many religious people.

Later chapters move away from the structure of relating the history of science being repressed by the church. This is of course because the church no longer had the power or, in Russell's opinion, the inclination to directly oppose science. Instead he focuses on religious schools of thought (not necessarily Christian) that are ideologically incompatible certain scientific thought. There's a chapter on determinism and the threat it poses to the doctrine of damnation (though it should be mentioned that Russell makes it clear that right now there is no way to know if determinism does in fact describe the movements of all things). Then he discusses mysticism and cosmic purpose. Sadly, because these two concepts really describe countless subsets of belief I found the chapters insufficient to really address them completely.

He finishes off with a chapter addressing the popular criticism of science that it doesn't say anything about morality. He did an excellent job talking about how, while technically true this doesn't mean that dependence on science will lead to immorality. Quite the contrary. He dismisses the idea of intrinsic morality and a conscience as illusions covering up the fact that morality is learned. Ultimately he ends up breaking down exactly what subjective morality is. He's 100 percent in step with Spinoza's Ethics though he more fully addresses the real world effect of a world where each person has their own personal morality which may in some ways contradict his fellows'. If nothing else that chapter alone deserves a read as it is the most complete and concise treatment of community and ethics I have come across.

The reason I made a fuss at the beginning of this review about Russell's relatively lenient attitude toward religion here and the fact that he himself does not declare religion and science incompatible is because of the introduction that was given to this book. It was written by Michael Ruse and by the time I had finished it I was certain that he hadn't read a word of Russell prior to getting the gig writing his intro. And after reading the book I'm not sure Ruse ever got around to reading this one either. He seems to think that it is Russell that asserts science and religion cannot coexist when Russell only recounts instances in which religion sees science as incompatible with itself, mostly in the past. To make matters worse Ruse doesn't seem to have a clue what either Russell or Spinoza thought of ethics, though that doesn't stop him from claiming that without religious morality Hitler's actions cannot be considered immoral. This is of course ludicrous since the entire basis of both Russell's and Spinoza's "good" is the fulfillment of the well-being of the individual and his community. It doesn't take a genius to know that the Nazis acted to annihilate the well-being of millions of people for the benefit of a few. I was stupefied that someone so ignorant of Russell and his ideas was given the task of writing his intro, it's really quite shameful. I've never come across such a poorly researched introduction before in my life. ( )

A review by Bertrand Russell, famed agnostic philosopher, of the supposed conflict between religion and science over the last four centuries. I found this book quite useful for a term paper on the topic in college. ( )

In the first instance, I wish to repudiate the statement made by Manny on comment 72 here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/551961-lame?page=2#comment_number_73

I mean, I was gasping, possibly even moaning...but it wasn't because Bertrand is my pornography....

So we have here a guy who thought he could spend his life being opinionated about everything and telling it how it is until he changes his mind. Russell believed that facts weren't the way to change people's minds, only emotional arguments could do that, and this book is an example in point. He writes seductively, if you didn't happen to know first that he's a wanker, you might even start believing him. Not this little black duck. I've been to a Bertrand Russell School and wankers doesn't begin to cover it. Only a jolly big wanker could have come up with the idea of a type of school where the kids and the teachers all thought they were very special indeed.

In his opinion, science deals with facts and the truth, the rest of what we do - and I guess he is bagging his own discipline here - is just matter of opinion and some people shout louder than others. I was rather shocked to read, when he is discussing Nietzsche's idea that most men are just animals and there are supermen above them:

We have here a sharp disagreement of great practical importance, but we have absolutely no means, of a scientific or intellectual kind, by which to persuade either party that the other is in the right. There are, it is true, ways of altering men's opinions on such subjects, but they are all emotional, not intellectual.....questions as to 'values' lie wholly outside the domain of knowledge.

Hence my moaning. My 'Oh Bertrand'. Three of us sat there mulling over this. Anna, who is a physicist, clearly thought equality of man was something that could be intellectually demonstrated. Manny was doubting that this meant Bertrand would be racist. Me, I'm thinking we'll see about that.

If you go to the wiki page on Bertrand, one of the things you see is this:

On 16 November 1922, for instance, he gave a lecture to the General Meeting of Dr. Marie Stopes's Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress on "Birth Control and International Relations," in which he described the importance of extending Western birth control worldwide; his remarks anticipated the population control movement of the 1960s and the role of the United Nations.

This policy may last some time, but in the end under it we shall have to give way—we are only putting off the evil day; the one real remedy is birth control, that is getting the people of the world to limit themselves to those numbers which they can keep upon their own soil... I do not see how we can hope permanently to be strong enough to keep the coloured races out; sooner or later they are bound to overflow, so the best we can do is to hope that those nations will see the wisdom of Birth Control.... We need a strong international authority.
—"Lecture by the Hon. Bertrand Russell", Birth Control News, vol 1, no. 8 (December 1922), p.2

Another passage from early editions of his book Marriage and Morals (1929), which Russell later claimed to be referring only to environmental conditioning, and which he significantly modified in later editions, reads:

In extreme cases there can be little doubt of the superiority of one race to another[...] It seems on the whole fair to regard Negroes as on the average inferior to white men, although for work in the tropics they are indispensable, so that their extermination (apart from the question of humanity) would be highly undesirable.
—Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals, pg. 266 (1929)
....

Responding in 1964 to a correspondent's inquiry, "Do you still consider the Negroes an inferior race, as you did when you wrote Marriage and Morals?", Russell replied:

I never held Negroes to be inherently inferior. The statement in Marriage and Morals refers to environmental conditioning. I have had it withdrawn from subsequent editions because it is clearly ambiguous.
—Bertrand Russell, letter dated 17 March 1964 in Dear Bertrand Russell... a selection of his correspondence with the general public, 1950–1968. edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils.(London: Allen & Unwin, 1969, p. 146)

Ambiguous? This is just a straightforward lie on Russell's part. He quite clearly saw black people as inherently inferior and in his essay on Ethics in War, he states this unambiguously, posing the question:

Are there any wars which achieve so much for the good of mankind as to outweigh all the evils...?

and surely his pompous answer will make you gasp too:

By a 'war of colonization' I mean a war whose purpose is to drive out the whole population of some territory and replace it by an invading population of a different race. Ancient wars were very largely of this kind, of which we have a good example in the Book of Joshua. In modern times the conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maories, and other aborigines in temperate regions, have been of this kind. Such wars are totally devoid of technical justification, and are apt to be mor ruthless than any other war. Nevertheless, if we are to judge by results, we cannot regret that such wars have taken place. They have the merit, often quite fallaciously claimed for all wars, of leading in the main to the survival of the fittest, and it is chiefly through such wars that the civilized portion of the world has been extended from the neighborhood of the Mediterranean to the greater part of the earth’s surface. The eighteenth century, which liked to praise the virtues of the savage and contrast them with the gilded corruption of courts, nevertheless had no scruple in thrusting the noble savage out from his North American hunting grounds. And we cannot at this date bring ourselves to condemn the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization. In order that such wars may be justified, it is necessary that there should be a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives. It is necessary also that the climate should be one in which the invading race can flourish. When these conditions are satisfied the conquest becomes justified, though the actual fighting against the dispossessed inhabitants ought, of course, to be avoided as far as is compatible with colonizing. Many humane people will object in theory to the justification of this form of robbery, but I do not think that any practical or effective objection is likely to be made.

Such wars, however, belong now to the past. The regions where the white men can live are all allotted, either to white races or to yellow races to whom the white man is not clearly superior, and whom, in any case, he is not strong enough to expel. Apart from small punitive expeditions, wars of colonization, in the true sense, are no longer possible. What are nowadays called colonial wars do not aim at the complete occupation of a country by a conquering race; they aim only at securing certain governmental and trading advantages. They belong, in fact, rather with what I call wars of prestige, than with wars of colonization in the old sense. There are, it is true, a few rare exceptions. The Greeks in the second Balkan war conducted a war of colonization against the Bulgarians; throughout a certain territory which they intended to occupy, they killed all the men, and carried off all the women. But in such cases, the only possible justification fails, since there is no evidence of superior civilization on the side of the conquerors.

This speaks for itself, doesn't it? But nonetheless, let me say WOW. I realise that Russell lived in a time where it was normal to think black people were inferior, but he lived in a time when women were believed to be as well and yet he was outspoken for the idea of a better deal for women. Maybe it was as simple as he was going to get a shag out of the one and not out of the other, though in general intellectuals are more likely to be the other way, champions for man's equality but not women's.

In his review of this book, Manny says

Science, argues Russell, cannot pronounce on ethics, but this is for the simple reason that statements in the realm of ethics are not within the purview of objective knowledge in the first place: they can always be paraphrased as expressions of personal desire or preference, and hence are purely subjective. This argument is probably well known to modern philosophers, but I had not seen it before and Russell puts the case nicely.

But if Russell is saying that science cannot pronounce on ethics, he is also and much more importantly saying that only science can be the arbiter of truth and that if one cannot prove something with the basic methodology of science, it cannot be true, it can only be a matter of opinion. This belief he has, not only gives science exclusive - and dangerous - prerogative to own the truth, it also gives everybody else the right to do as they please, because nothing can be proved, nothing is 'true' outside the purview of science.

So when Manny says:

In the conclusion, Russell suddenly sobers up and tells you what he's really talking about. It's not the Christian Church; it's the new religions of Fascism and Communism, which, as he says, have already killed more intellectual dissidents than the Church did in the last three centuries. You remember that he's writing shortly before World War II. He can see what most people are still trying to pretend isn't there, and he has every reason to be desperately worried. All the clowning around was just to get your attention; you thought you'd avoided being fooled, but he's tricked you at a deeper level than you were expecting. Nice work, Russell.

I think the opposite. To read his relentless diatribe about all ethics being opinion and then have him say at the very end that scientists have to stand up against Hitler is bizarre. It doesn't work - how can it? It is merely one civilised opinion against another.

I don't understand how one can read this book and not be filled with the deepest of unease.

Every time I come across you, Bertrand, I'm unhappy. We must stop meeting; and not just like this. ( )