The entries Why He Was Not A Christian and Why I Am A Christian are directly linked and ought not to be separated.
The bottom line of this second part of my discussion of Bertrand Russell’s repudiation of religion is that, in spite of my general agreement with much of what he says against religion, I am by no means swayed into a similar repudiation stance, and I do remain a Russian Orthodox Christian for a very good reason which I am going to explain in the course of this entry.
First, his arguments against religion and my response to them, some of which repeats the similar passages in the preceding entry. On the question of all religions being untrue, on the grounds that each of them has a claim on truth, thus denying truth to all the rest, this crippling weakness of the world’s religious totality is mainly due to the excesses of religious practices and dogmas, than to some inherent fatal flaw of religion as such. After all, faith implies a belief, that is, an opinion of sorts, and from the upholding of such different opinions it does not follow that one faith should exclude and demonize other faiths, and that fanaticism is something inherent in all religions. The history of religious wars shows one the most reprehensible sides of religious practices, and as such ought to be condemned. On these grounds, I strongly denounce the practice of religious missions into other cultures for the purpose of conversion, proselytizing, and catholicization of one religion at the expense of all others.
With regard to the Scholastic efforts to prove the existence of God beyond reasonable doubt, which extend into the present day and age, I believe that I have ridiculed them enough in various places of this section, to be able to move on to other things now.
As for the Christian belief in hell, epitomized in the Church Fathers’ (Tertullian) promise to the believers of being able to watch the torments of unbelievers, as if it were the most wholesome type of entertainment in Heaven, its revolting nature has also been sufficiently exposed by me by now, to dwell on this subject any longer. As I have also said, the words and teachings of Christ, some of them indeed extremely controversial, ought not to be frivolously interpreted to mean certain things which they may not have intended to mean at all. In my own approach to the Bible, I stop short of finding fault with the Scriptures, whenever I do not like something. It is a matter of one’s faith to accept the overall integrity and truth of the Holy Writings, and to attribute any major discrepancies and improprieties we encounter, merely to our imperfect perception of the hidden mystical substance of whatever we find puzzling and unacceptable, rather than to the imperfections of the Writings themselves.
The most interesting portion in Russell’s previously quoted 1957 Preface is the following sentence: "With very few exceptions, the religion, which a man accepts, is that of the community in which he lives, which makes it obvious that the influence of the environment is what led him to accept the religion in question." Here, in this observation, he touches upon the essence of particular religions, as integral, that is inseparable, parts of cultural identities of the peoples of the world. He somehow does a disservice to this understanding by diminishing the cultural status of religion by his choice of words: “the community in which he lives.” It is wrong to thus implicitly equate a great culture with some stray cult that may have by chance taken hold of a certain community of people, forcing the young to adhere to the folly of their misguided parents. Only a great culture legitimizes a particular religion and makes it great. All transitory fads and pseudo-cultures account for fake religions and cults, all of which ought to be condemned and repudiated. It may be argued that some great cultures have sprung out of some puny fads as well, but no matter how they may have thus started, having been sanctified by time and changing generations, they have proven their bona fides to the world, and have deserved universal acceptance. As a more general criterion of acceptance, show me a new vibrant bona fide culture, and I will gladly recognize the legitimacy of its new religion. In the modern era, such new culture was Mormonism in America, and I have already commented on its legitimacy within the core community of its adherents in the state of Utah, yet denied it legitimacy outside its cultural borders.
Returning to the question why I am a Christian, I must admit that I am such not because I believe in some kind of superiority of Christianity over other world religions, and not because I have any proof whatsoever that my religion is incontrovertibly factual and that its facts are true. I have not come to Christianity by an impartial comparative analysis of religions, or by liking it more, over the rest. I am a Christian, or to put it more precisely, a Russian Orthodox Christian, because I was born and remain a Russian, a particle of one of history’s greatest cultures and proud of it, and, of course, my particular religion is an integral part of the Russian culture, the two of them unthinkable without each other.
Lord Bertrand Russell did not understand that Soviet Russia’s religion was not Communism, but Russian Orthodox Christianity. It was hard for him to understand this "riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma," to use Winston Churchill’s perceptive admission, concerning his own lack of understanding of Russia. One is always at a disadvantage looking at Russia from the outside, but my reader is fortunate to be allowed to look at Russia from the inside, that is, through the eyes of her consummate insider, me…
The bottom line of this second part of my discussion of Bertrand Russell’s repudiation of religion is that, in spite of my general agreement with much of what he says against religion, I am by no means swayed into a similar repudiation stance, and I do remain a Russian Orthodox Christian for a very good reason which I am going to explain in the course of this entry.
First, his arguments against religion and my response to them, some of which repeats the similar passages in the preceding entry. On the question of all religions being untrue, on the grounds that each of them has a claim on truth, thus denying truth to all the rest, this crippling weakness of the world’s religious totality is mainly due to the excesses of religious practices and dogmas, than to some inherent fatal flaw of religion as such. After all, faith implies a belief, that is, an opinion of sorts, and from the upholding of such different opinions it does not follow that one faith should exclude and demonize other faiths, and that fanaticism is something inherent in all religions. The history of religious wars shows one the most reprehensible sides of religious practices, and as such ought to be condemned. On these grounds, I strongly denounce the practice of religious missions into other cultures for the purpose of conversion, proselytizing, and catholicization of one religion at the expense of all others.
With regard to the Scholastic efforts to prove the existence of God beyond reasonable doubt, which extend into the present day and age, I believe that I have ridiculed them enough in various places of this section, to be able to move on to other things now.
As for the Christian belief in hell, epitomized in the Church Fathers’ (Tertullian) promise to the believers of being able to watch the torments of unbelievers, as if it were the most wholesome type of entertainment in Heaven, its revolting nature has also been sufficiently exposed by me by now, to dwell on this subject any longer. As I have also said, the words and teachings of Christ, some of them indeed extremely controversial, ought not to be frivolously interpreted to mean certain things which they may not have intended to mean at all. In my own approach to the Bible, I stop short of finding fault with the Scriptures, whenever I do not like something. It is a matter of one’s faith to accept the overall integrity and truth of the Holy Writings, and to attribute any major discrepancies and improprieties we encounter, merely to our imperfect perception of the hidden mystical substance of whatever we find puzzling and unacceptable, rather than to the imperfections of the Writings themselves.
The most interesting portion in Russell’s previously quoted 1957 Preface is the following sentence: "With very few exceptions, the religion, which a man accepts, is that of the community in which he lives, which makes it obvious that the influence of the environment is what led him to accept the religion in question." Here, in this observation, he touches upon the essence of particular religions, as integral, that is inseparable, parts of cultural identities of the peoples of the world. He somehow does a disservice to this understanding by diminishing the cultural status of religion by his choice of words: “the community in which he lives.” It is wrong to thus implicitly equate a great culture with some stray cult that may have by chance taken hold of a certain community of people, forcing the young to adhere to the folly of their misguided parents. Only a great culture legitimizes a particular religion and makes it great. All transitory fads and pseudo-cultures account for fake religions and cults, all of which ought to be condemned and repudiated. It may be argued that some great cultures have sprung out of some puny fads as well, but no matter how they may have thus started, having been sanctified by time and changing generations, they have proven their bona fides to the world, and have deserved universal acceptance. As a more general criterion of acceptance, show me a new vibrant bona fide culture, and I will gladly recognize the legitimacy of its new religion. In the modern era, such new culture was Mormonism in America, and I have already commented on its legitimacy within the core community of its adherents in the state of Utah, yet denied it legitimacy outside its cultural borders.
Returning to the question why I am a Christian, I must admit that I am such not because I believe in some kind of superiority of Christianity over other world religions, and not because I have any proof whatsoever that my religion is incontrovertibly factual and that its facts are true. I have not come to Christianity by an impartial comparative analysis of religions, or by liking it more, over the rest. I am a Christian, or to put it more precisely, a Russian Orthodox Christian, because I was born and remain a Russian, a particle of one of history’s greatest cultures and proud of it, and, of course, my particular religion is an integral part of the Russian culture, the two of them unthinkable without each other.
Lord Bertrand Russell did not understand that Soviet Russia’s religion was not Communism, but Russian Orthodox Christianity. It was hard for him to understand this "riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma," to use Winston Churchill’s perceptive admission, concerning his own lack of understanding of Russia. One is always at a disadvantage looking at Russia from the outside, but my reader is fortunate to be allowed to look at Russia from the inside, that is, through the eyes of her consummate insider, me…
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