An atheist Bertrand Rusell once said?

Question

Unless you assume a God the question of lifes purpose is meaningless
do you agree or disagree your reasons?

Answer 1

I think the meaning and purpose of our life is entirely up to us. And I think this is true whether there's a God or not.

The truth is that whether God designed us this way or we evolved this way, we have free will. We are unique at least on Earth in our ability to even -consider- the meaning of life.

Does life have meaning for a dog? I think it does, at least for some dogs. But a dog never thinks about it or makes serious long-term decisions about it. Maybe I'll go to obedience school. Maybe I'll become a guide dog! How many puppies should I have?

If God designed us this way, I think it shows that he must want us to figure things out for ourselves, to choose the meaning of our own life. But even if he doesn't exist, we still have that prerogative, to decide for ourselves or to let others decide for us. And the responsibility for our own lives.

Answer 2

Bertrand Russell is isolated and doesn't believed in relationship. Thereby, I could not agree or disagree in general point of view as it will depend on who will have it for their life but for me, relationship is the purpose of life which means life's purpose is not meaningless, so, I disagree on it for my self.

Answer 3

Life is life, what does that have to do with God.

An atheist also once said Carl Sagan " How can you prove the unexistance"? How is GOD any different than Santa, Voodoo Lady, Rabbits foot?

Do you need to follow God in order to have morals? No I bet you most of the people in jail right now believe in God. What does that tell you about Christianity.

Answer 4

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God” (Psalms14:1)

Answer 5

why does life have to have a reason?

Answer 6

I agree

Answer 7

yes i agree but also will add to it that also need to know God

Answer 8

Just to clarify Bertrand Russell's views on religion . . .

"Christians hold that their faith does good, but other faiths do harm . . . What I wish to maintain is that all faiths do harm. We may define “faith” as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. When there is evidence, no one speaks of “faith”. We do not speak of faith that two plus two is four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence."

"I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue."

"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."

"Intellectual sobriety will lead us to scrutinize our beliefs closely, with a view to discovering which of them there is any reason to believe true. If we are wise, we shall apply solvent criticism especially to the beliefs which it is most painful to doubt, and those most likely to involve us in violent conflict with men who hold opposite but equally groundless beliefs."

"Irrationalism, i.e., disbelief in objective fact, arises almost always from the desire to assert something for which there is no evidence, or to deny something for which there is very good evidence."

"It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers."

"It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it."

"My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped early days to fix the calendar and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others."

"One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it."

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown, and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. 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."

"Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of wars; religion prevents us from teaching the scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the verse of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door and this dragon is religion."

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."

"So long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans."

"That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called Ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion."

"The expression 'free thought' is often used as if it meant merely opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy. But this is only a symptom of free thought, frequent, but invariable. 'Free thought' means thinking freely -- as freely, at least, as is possible for a human being. The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the free thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things: the force of tradition, and the tyrant of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker."

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd."

"The moderns differ from the men of the thirteenth century both in aim and in method. Democracy has substituted co-operation for submission and herd-instinct for reverence; the group in regard to which herd-instinct is to be most operative has become the nation, which was formerly rendered unimportant by the universality of the Church. Meanwhile propaganda has become persuasive rather than forceful, and has learnt to proceed by the instilling of suitable sentiments in early youth. Church music, school songs, and the flag determine, by their influence on the boy, the subsequent actions of the man in moments of strong emotion. Against these influences the assaults of reason have but little power."

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic."

"The pursuit of philosophy is founded on the belief that knowledge is good, even if what is known is painful. A man imbued with the philosophic spirit, whether a professional philosopher or not, will wish his beliefs to be as true as he can make them, and will, in equal measure, love to know and hate to be in error."

"The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men . . . We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages."

"There is nothing accidental about this difference between a church and its founder. As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any other privileged caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so that they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress."

"There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dares not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed."

"This (persecuting) attitude has been reserved for Christians. It is true that modern Christian is less robust, but it is not thanks to Christianity; it is thanks to the generations of freethinkers, who, from the Renaissance to the present day (1920s), have made Christians ashamed of many of their traditional beliefs. It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own days were persecuted by all orthodox Christians...... The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance and solely as a result of the onslaughts of freethinkers."

"Throughout the last 400 years, during which the growth of science had gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge of the ways of nature and mastery over natural forces, the clergy have fought a losing battle against science, in astronomy and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in biology and psychology and sociology. Ousted from one position, they have taken up another. After being worsted in astronomy, they did their best to prevent the rise of geology; they fought against Darwin in biology, and at the present time they fight against scientific theories of psychology and education. At each stage, they try to make the public forget their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present obscurantism may not be recognized for what it is."

"William James used to preach 'the will to believe'. For my part, I should wish to preach 'the will to doubt'. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite."

“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.”