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cortesoftNov 2023

This is the essay that first got me into Russell.

For a more positive summary of what Russell DOES believe, I love “A Free Man’s Worship”

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell1.htm

While it doesn’t quit hold me fully like it did when I was younger, I still find it beautiful:

> United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need -- of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy as ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed.

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wheelsFeb 2010

Bertrand Russell's writings on the topic are classics on the dealings of science and religion. This essay reminded me a bit of A Free Man's Worship:

http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/A%20Free%20Mans...

I read this collection of his essays on religion about a decade ago and would recommend it to folks interested in the topic:

http://www.amazon.com/Russell-Religion-Selections-Writings/d...

I feel like Feynman (and Russell) are asking a much more interesting question than the typical interwebs atheists and jesus-ists debate that this is already turning into: not, "Is religion right?" But, "What is the future of religious experience, thought and practice in a scientific world?"

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gjm11Aug 2019

So you reckon EO's calling him "Peeping Tom Bertrand Russell" because in one of his essays he calls a particular view of God a "Peeping Tom"? That would be ... strange, but I suppose you might well be right.

(I'm familiar with that essay, but didn't make the connection because, well, the fact that someone uses a particular phrase once isn't any reason to apply it at random to them in turn.)

Incidentally, I'm not sure it's exactly right to say that Russell started out doing good technical work in philosophy and then turned later on to anti-theism. E.g., A Free Man's Worship (not exactly anti-theism, but in the same ballpark) is two years before On Denoting (the paper introducing his account of definite descriptions).

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simonebrunozziMay 2019

Hmm. I usually like Nadia's writing a lot. This article, though, seemed to be much less "crisp" than others, and it confused me quite a bit.

Most of what she tries to describe in the initial part reminds me of the concept of "Moloch" (specifically in the sense described by Bertrand Russell's A Free Man's Worship, and Allen Ginsberg's poem): almost like a super-entity, resulting from the interactions of many individuals, but with a specific behavior of its own.

I don't thinks that it's about "ideas", as Nadia states; rather, it's the fact that molecule : gas = person : humanity, a person has personality but a large mass of persons has a behavior of its own, an inertia that you can't change as an individual.

In the second part of the article, I get the question, I am not sure it is related to the first part or not, and I am not sure whether it's important to compartmentalize, etc.

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wheelsJul 2010

Well, it is a history of western philosophy. Also, I wouldn't say that Russell has a distaste for mysticism; my read of many of his writings on religion (A Free Man's Worship, Mysticism and Logic, etc.) would be that he genuinely sees the value of mysticism and transcendental experience – though I'm going on memory from reading about a decade ago.

Durant's writing is great too, but The Story of Philsophy doesn't have the depth of The History of Western Philosophy, and, I actually enjoy Russell's snark along the way.

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