I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Interpretation
Bertrand Russell expresses skepticism about the truth of religions and believes they cause harm.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell articulates his strong conviction that organized religions are not only false but also detrimental to society. He suggests that the beliefs and practices surrounding religion can lead to harm, whether through dogma, conflict, or the suppression of critical thought. Russell's perspective invites us to consider the impacts of religious belief on both personal and societal levels, advocating for a more rational and evidence-based understanding of the world.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in society, one might cite this quote to argue against the influence of religion on morality.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier's occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.
I was raised a Christian and was a stone-faced acid head.
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.
Time has three dimensions and one positive pitch or direction. It is therefore not so much like any river or any sea as like the Sea of Galilee, which has the Jordan running through it and giving a current to the whole.
I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.
I worry about global anti-Semitism - not just as a bad idea that originates from bad people, but also as something that arises as a challenge to global order.
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