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Piero Caballero

Professor Saba

ENC 1102

29 January 2009

Jesus Was Not a Christian. A Response to Bertrand Russell

There are two types of humans; one group let their lives be driven by reason and

science; and the second group let their lives be completely driven by their emotions and values.

In a religion-based Society where only 11.9 % of the world’s population doesn’t believe in the

existence of a God or any other type of deity; and where the war among religions is constant and

ongoing, one religion in particular is analyzed in Bertrand Russell’s essay “Why I Am Not a

Christian” by questioning the existence God and the Christian doctrine. Although Russell’s

refuting arguments about the historical existence of Christ are erroneous and not supported with

facts and although his essay lacks emotion when it comes to the argumentations he makes about

God’s existence, Russell succeeds in presenting enough material that supports his believe of why

he doesn’t accept as true some of the Christian precepts and why he is not a Christian, by

disproving many of the arguments that explain the existence of God, and by pointing out the

problems religion and Christianity have.

The biggest and most prominent flaw in Russell’s essay can be seen when he denies the

historical existence of Jesus Christ. Russell states, “Historically it is quite doubtful whether

Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about him.” Such statement is

erroneous, since Christ existence has been historically proven by many ancient roman historians;

such is the case of the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, who mention a “Christus” or

“Chrestus”, well after the life of the supposed Jesus. It is of course logical to say that even

history is not considered the absolute truth since it often changes over time; so it would have
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been better if Russell had stayed away from that topic, which affected his appeal to ethos or

credibility. Another flaw found in Russell’s essay was the tone used to prove his convictions.

Russell’s passive tone decreases the persuasiveness of his arguments. Passive phrases found in

the essay such as, “I am not concerned to refute it” or “that is another question” jeopardize

Russell’s overall effectiveness.

Russell’s essay was not intended to persuade Christians into leaving their faith behind

and become atheists or non-believers. Russell’s intended audience were secular people, such as

agnostics, atheists, and all other non-believers. In this fact lays the reason why Russell does not

aggressively attack other points of view. He simply tries to share his own believes in a logical

and sometimes philosophical way through the main premise that Christianity and religion are

based on flaws. Even though it is totally understandable why Russell does not use convictional

persuasive strategies, being his audience composed of members of the National Secular Society,

his essay would have been certainly more interesting to read, if he had been more persuasive and

more passionate about his believes and precepts. Russell purpose was to inform and teach his

fellow members of the National Secular Society about some facts concerning religion and

Christianity and the role they played in Russell’s contemporary society.

Russell starts by giving his own definition of a Christian. He states that a real Christian

should believe in immortality and God and should see Christ as a superlative being and as the

wisest of all men in the history of the earth. The purpose of his essay, he manifests, is to reveal to

his audience the reasons why he is not a Christian. He accomplishes this in a more complex and

intellectual way than a regular atheist would do if he were to explain why he wasn’t a Christian.

He divides his thesis into three parts, the existence of God and immortality, Jesus Christ, and

What Must Be Done.

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Russell structures his essay logically dividing it into three main parts as well, all of them

clearly connected directly to his thesis, making of his essay easy to follow and understand. He

starts the body of his essay by disproving the existence of immortality and God through a series

of responses to all the religious and Christian arguments that support God’s existence, such as the

popular Argument from Design. The second part pinpoints the character of Christ. He disagrees

with all of those that believe that Christ was divine or at least the wisest of all men. Even though

Russell agrees and sympathies with some of Christ’s maxims he finds many flaws on his

teachings focusing mostly in the falsity of his second coming and on the fairness of his precepts.

All of his citations in this part of the essay are directly taken from the bible increasing greatly his

appeal to ethos.

In the third part of his essay Russell spends more time talking more in general about all

religions and about the real reasons why people become believers. The author mentions two main

reasons why people choose faith rather than reason (here Russell touches the popular topic of the

conflict between faith and reason and why they can’t coexist). He considers Christian faith as an

emotional consequence from fear and insecurity. And even though Russell generalizes all

religions, not making any distinctionswhatsoever; all of his points made are supported with facts

and references, and presented well structured and analyzed one by one implementing subtitles,

which overall increases his appeal to pathos or the logic of his argument.

Russell believes that there is a huge factor playing roles in why people become religious

and he states that people mostly believe in God because they need to feel protected and once they

believe, what takes control over their faiths is fear. People obey God for fear, emotions take place

rather than their reason, some because their values play a role, others because they need an

emotional support. Russell talks about all these reasons, and aside from all those good points he

makes, I think that religion was invented by some type of arbitrary government in some point in
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history to subjugate the masses. The drug of religion will always be served by the government, or

at least allowed, to keep its people high and ignorant and unaware of their corrupt agenda.

Although Russell never touches this subtopic directly when he speaks about Religion; he

transmits this message throughout the essay when in various occasions he implicitly ridicules

religious people by making statements such as, “[hell] ceased to be an essential item because of a

decision of the Privy Council”, meaning that Christians weren’t required to believed in Hell

anymore due to a governmental verdict.

In sum, although “Why I Am Not a Christian” presents some factual flaws, it never

ceases to be a great persuasive document, due to its well backed up content. Russell’s essay

about the reasons why he is not a Christian has logical, philosophical and moral elements. Due to

his argumentations based on reason and science he was able to transmit an intellectual lecture

about religion and Christianity, never supporting his believes on emotions, making of his essay a

true manifestation of his knowledge and convictions.