PREFACE
Bertrand Russell was a well respected British philosophy and logician.
He wrote many books, essays and articles on various subjects.
On March 6th. 1927, he gave the essay “Why I Am Not a Christian” as a talk at the Battersea Town Hall.
This essay was later compiled by Paul Edward into the book, Why I am not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. ISBN-10 0-671-20323-1.
The back cover copy of this book starts with, “Dedicated as few men have been to the life of reason ….”
Reason. Among its many definitions is the following:
The power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements by a process of logic. – Oxford Languages.
We all want to claim reason for ourselves. Intellectuals do.
But then, so does God. For example God once said, “Come let us reason together …” (Isaiah 1:18).
We lift up reason to be a panacea.
However, proper reasoning must start with proper assumptions* .
If we start with bad assumptions, we will get erroneous conclusions.
The worst part is that we might not be conscience of our starting assumptions.
In addition to bad assumptions, numerous fallacies** can lead us to bad conclusions,
even if we start with correct assumptions.
These fallacies can range from ‘looking at the wrong data to analyze’ to
‘arbitrarily limiting the potential conclusions’.
Fortunately, Proverbs 27:17 encourages us, “As iron sharpens iron, so does one person sharpen another.”
By looking over each other’s work, we can help one another avoid many of these pitfalls.
Professor Russell had much intellectual horsepower.
Yet, he was not immune to some of the known sources of error.
This treatise will review the essay, Why I Am Not A Christian***,
section by section, to point out some of these fallacies.
* For example, many people assume that God does not exist.
Others assume that God does exist.
One of these assumptions canNOT be right.
** An internet search will give several websites that describe common fallacies.