It's a collection of essays and transcripts of speeches, some more relevant to the topic of religion and/or the present day than others. Here are my thoughts on the title section. I may not have quite as much to say about the other essays, but this is the crux of the book and the very first section of it.
Chapter One- Why I Am Not a Christian. Transcript of a lecture. 1927.
Russell determines that a Christian is not merely "a person who attempts to live a good life." You have to believe in God and immortality and you have to believe that Christ was either divine or the wisest of men. Russell debunks the popular "proofs" of religion back then, which are often still used today.
The First Cause Argument- If God is the First Cause, who made God? "There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination."
The Natural Law Argument- Why does the world, such as the movement of planets, behave as it does? Because God made it that way? Why did God make it that way and not another? "If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted." If God did have a reason, than where did that come from? "You have really a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver." Similar to the First Cause Argument.
The Argument from Design- "It is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years."
The Moral Arguments for Deity- There is no right and wrong outside of God. If there is a difference between right and wrong, is that God's doing? "If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good." Right and wrong have to have been created/decided separately from God. Here again, you have to go beyond God for the answer.
The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice- The idea is that there is much injustice here on Earth, so there just HAS to be an afterlife where real justice happens. The long-suffering good people finally get Paradise and the evil who got off scot-free finally burn in Hell. Russell's scientific argument is that if this world is marked by injustice, it's likely to be the way of things and there is no perfect justice anywhere. "Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bed, you would not argue, 'The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance.' You would say, 'Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment'; and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe."
Those are all the main arguments for God. Russell goes on to describe the Character of Christ, in which he basically says that one the one hand, Christ had many edicts which so-called good people do not follow, such as turn the other cheek and give all you have to the poor. On the other hand, Christ's teaching has flaws, such as the idea that the Second Coming was just around the corner in his own time, yet people are still waiting 2000 years later. Also, Christ's character has flaws, such as his insistence that people who turn away from his teaching should burn in Hellfire, the way Christ destroyed a fig tree for having the gall to not be producing figs for him to eat during a season when figs are not yet ripe, and my favorite argument against Christ's goodness, "the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill to the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs."
Russell then talks about the Emotional Factor, where "it is very wrong to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it." He makes the connection that whenever religion has been particularly strong, there have been more persecutions, inquisitions, and cruelties inflicted on people, whether or not they are believers. "You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world."
Russell next discusses "How the Churches Have Retarded Progress," such as forbidding divorce, "because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness." Not all religions deny divorce, but it was used only as an example of how religions use arbitrary rules that do nothing for the good of the people.
Russell finishes up the lecture with "Fear, the Foundation of Religion." "Fear is the basis of the whole thing- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand."
Finally, "What We Must Do." "A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men."
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