CONTEMPORARY ANALYTIC CRITICS
From Classics in the Philosophy of Religion, by James Fieser
© 2026, updated 6/1/2026, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
_______________________
CONTENTS
• Bertrand Russell: Facing a Godless Universe (from "A Free Man's Worship", "Why I Am Not a Christian", "Mysticism")
• Charlie Dunbar Broad: God as a Groundless Concept (from "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God")
• Alfred Jules Ayer: Religious Claims as Unverifiable Utterances (from Language, Truth and Logic)
In the early twentieth century, a new style of philosophical criticism took center stage: analytic philosophy. What set this movement apart was its conviction that before we can even assess whether a claim is true, we must first understand what the claim means. Merely making a speculative metaphysical claim about God is not good enough. We must understand the meaning and logical structure of those claims and determine how to verify them. This approach redirected the philosophy of religion away from grand systems and toward a careful analysis of sentences and the criteria for meaningful discourse. Bertrand Russell helped launch this approach by developing a precise logical method for analyzing propositions. His critiques of religion follow naturally from this method: once religious claims are broken into their logical components, their evidential weakness becomes clear. C.D. Broad extends this scrutiny to the idea of a personal God, arguing that the concept lacks any coherent grounding. A.J. Ayer then delivers the most radical conclusion. Using the verification principle, he argues that religious utterances do not even rise to the level of being true or false. Instead, they fail to meet the basic standards of meaningfulness and, at best, simply express our feelings. The linguistic and logical approach of these early analytic philosophers set the general trend of contemporary philosophy of religion afterwards, for both religious critics and defenders.
_______________________
BERTRAND RUSSELL:
FACING A GODLESS UNIVERSE
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was born into an aristocratic British family at Trellech, Wales, and orphaned at an early age, after which he was raised by his strict but intellectually cultivated grandmother. Educated at Cambridge, he excelled in mathematics and philosophy, becoming a fellow of Trinity College and quickly emerging as a central figure in the development of analytic philosophy. His early work with Alfred North Whitehead produced the monumental Principia Mathematica (1910–13), an ambitious attempt to ground all of mathematics in formal logic, while his later writings ranged widely across epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and social criticism. A committed public intellectual, he became equally well known for his outspoken activism—opposing World War I, advocating for nuclear disarmament, and championing civil liberties—which led to periods of public controversy and even imprisonment. Over a long life he wrote prolifically for both scholarly and general audiences, producing influential works such as The Problems of Philosophy (1912), A History of Western Philosophy (1945), and numerous essays on politics, education, and religion. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950, he remained active in public life until his death in 1970 at the age of 97. The selections below are from three of his writings on religion.
In all these writings, Russell expresses the naturalistic outlook that human beings arise from blind, non‑purposeful natural forces. In "A Free Man's Worship", he argues that the universe was not designed with human ends in mind: our origins, emotions, and ideals result from "accidental collocations of atoms," and all human achievements will eventually disappear with the death of the solar system. Because nature is indifferent and often hostile to our values, the only stable foundation for human life is the clear recognition of this fact. He calls this the "firm foundation of unyielding despair." Yet this recognition is not meant to crush the spirit. Instead, it frees us to create our own ideals, to refuse the worship of brute power, and to build a morality grounded in human sympathy rather than submission to cosmic forces. The "free man's worship" is the resolve to honor goodness even in a universe that does not.
In *Why I Am Not a Christian*, Russell applies this naturalistic outlook to traditional religion. He argues that being a Christian requires belief in God, immortality, and at least a high estimate of Christ's moral authority. He rejects the classical arguments for God's existence from first cause and design as logically weak or scientifically outdated. He also denies that Christ, as portrayed in the Gospels, represents perfect wisdom or goodness, pointing to failed predictions about the Second Coming and to the doctrine of eternal punishment, which he sees as morally indefensible. For Russell, the historical record shows that organized religion has often opposed moral progress, and the real psychological basis of religion is fear, including fear of the unknown, fear of death, and the desire for supernatural protection. Science, by contrast, teaches us to face the world without illusions and to rely on human effort rather than imagined allies in the sky.
In "Mysticism", Russell turns to the question of whether mystical experience offers a path to truth. He acknowledges the striking agreement among mystics on themes such as the unity of all things, the illusory nature of evil, and the unreality of time. But he argues that this agreement is not reliable evidence, since mystics diverge sharply on other points and often depend on altered physical states to induce their visions, such as fasting, breathing exercises, asceticism. Such states, he maintains, are no more trustworthy than the hallucinations produced by drugs or intoxication. Mystical emotion may have genuine value, such as bringing calmness to the practitioner, but the metaphysical claims attached to it lack evidential support. Only science provides a dependable method for discovering truth, even if mystical feeling can enrich the emotional life when separated from unwarranted beliefs.
FACING NATURE'S BLIND POWER (from "A Free Man's Worship", 1902)
Humans as a Product of Nature's Blind Power
. . . That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.
How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as Man preserve his aspirations untarnished? A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking Mother. In spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticize, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life.
Religious Worship of Nature's Blind Power
The savage, like ourselves, feels the oppression of his impotence before the powers of Nature; but having in himself nothing that he respects more than Power, he is willing to prostrate himself before his gods, without inquiring whether they are worthy of his worship. Pathetic and very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture, of degradation and human sacrifice, endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods: surely, the trembling believer thinks, when what is most precious has been freely given, their lust for blood must be appeased, and more will not be required. The religion of Moloch—as such creeds may be generically called—is in essence the cringing submission of the slave, who dare not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals is not yet acknowledged, Power may be freely worshiped, and receive an unlimited respect, despite its wanton infliction of pain.
But gradually, as morality grows bolder, the claim of the ideal world begins to be felt; and worship, if it is not to cease, must be given to gods of another kind than those created by the savage. Some, though they feel the demands of the ideal, will still consciously reject them, still urging that naked Power is worthy of worship. Such is the attitude inculcated in God's answer to Job out of the whirlwind: the divine power and knowledge are paraded, but of the divine goodness there is no hint. Such also is the attitude of those who, in our own day, base their morality upon the struggle for survival, maintaining that the survivors are necessarily the fittest. But others, not content with an answer so repugnant to the moral sense, will adopt the position which we have become accustomed to regard as specially religious, maintaining that, in some hidden manner, the world of fact is really harmonious with the world of ideals. Thus Man creates God, all-powerful and all-good, the mystic unity of what is and what should be.
Freeing Oneself from the Tyranny of Nature's Power
But the world of fact, after all, is not good; and, in submitting our judgment to it, there is an element of slavishness from which our thoughts must be purged. For in all things it is well to exalt the dignity of Man, by freeing him as far as possible from the tyranny of non-human Power. When we have realized that Power is largely bad, that man, with his knowledge of good and evil, is but a helpless atom in a world which has no such knowledge, the choice is again presented to us: Shall we worship Force, or shall we worship Goodness? Shall our God exist and be evil, or shall he be recognized as the creation of our own conscience?
The answer to this question is very momentous, and affects profoundly our whole morality. The worship of Force, to which Carlyle and Nietzsche and the creed of Militarism have accustomed us, is the result of failure to maintain our own ideals against a hostile universe: it is itself a prostrate submission to evil, a sacrifice of our best to Moloch. . . .
Humans United by the Tie of Common Doom
The life of Man, viewed outwardly, is but a small thing in comparison with the forces of Nature. The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour. But, great as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionless splendor, is greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow before the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves. To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things—this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship. And this liberation is effected by a contemplation of Fate; for Fate itself is subdued by the mind which leaves nothing to be purged by the purifying fire of Time.
United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need—of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed.
AGAINST CHRISTIANITY ("Why I Am Not a Christian", 1927)
What Is a Christian?
I think. . . that there are two different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature -- namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and in immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. I think you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think you have any right to call yourself a Christian. Of course, there is another sense, which you find in Whitaker's Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshipers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians. The geography books count us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense, which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things: first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant him a very high degree of moral goodness. . . .
The Existence of God
To come to this question of the existence of God: it is a large and serious question, and if I were to attempt to deal with it in any adequate manner I should have to keep you here until Kingdom Come, so that you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in a somewhat summary fashion. You know, of course, that the Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason. That is a somewhat curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas. They had to introduce it because at one time the freethinkers adopted the habit of saying that there were such and such arguments which mere reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist. The arguments and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic Church felt that they must stop it. Therefore they laid it down that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to prove it. There are, of course, a number of them, but I shall take only a few.
The First-cause Argument
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. 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. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.
The Argument from Design
The next step in the process brings us to the argument from design. You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy argument to parody. You all know Voltaire's remark, that obviously the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.
When you come to look into this 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. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists? Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending -- something dead, cold, and lifeless.
I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that, they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries about much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things.
The Character of Christ
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree that that was so. I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the way, but I could go with Him much further than most professing Christians can. You will remember that He said, "Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-tse and Buddha some 500 or 600 years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept. I have no doubt that the present prime minister [Stanley Baldwin], for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a figurative sense. . . .
Then there is one other maxim of Christ which I think has a great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among some of our Christian friends. He says, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor." That is a very excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practised. All these, I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to live up to. I do not profess to live up to them myself; but then, after all, it is not quite the same thing as for a Christian.
Defects in Christ's Teaching
Having granted the excellence of these maxims, I come to certain points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one is not concerned with the historical question. Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. . . .
The Moral Problem
Then you come to moral questions. There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him. . . .
The Emotional Factor
As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. 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. You know, of course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler's book, Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in Erewhon there is a certain Higgs who arrives in a remote country, and after spending some time there he escapes from that country in a balloon. Twenty years later he comes back to that country and finds a new religion in which he is worshiped under the name of the "Sun Child," and it is said that he ascended into heaven. He finds that the Feast of the Ascension is about to be celebrated, and he hears Professors Hanky and Panky say to each other that they never set eyes on the man Higgs, and they hope they never will; but they are the high priests of the religion of the Sun Child. He is very indignant, and he comes up to them, and he says, "I am going to expose all this humbug and tell the people of Erewhon that it was only I, the man Higgs, and I went up in a balloon." He was told, "You must not do that, because all the morals of this country are bound round this myth, and if they once know that you did not ascend into Heaven they will all become wicked"; and so he is persuaded of that and he goes quietly away.
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.
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. 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. . . .
Fear, the Foundation of Religion
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, 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. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
LIMITATIONS OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE (from "Mysticism" 1935)
Testing the Credibility of Mystical Testimony
The chief argument in favor of the mystics is their agreement with each other. "I know nothing more remarkable," says Dean Inge, "than the unanimity of the mystics, ancient, mediaeval, and modern, Protestant, Catholic, and even Buddhist or Mohammedan, though the Christian mystics are the most trustworthy." I do not wish to underrate the force of this argument, which I acknowledged long ago in a book called Mysticism and Logic. The mystics vary greatly in their capacity for giving verbal expression to their experiences, but I think we may take it that those who succeeded best all maintain: (1) that all division and separateness is unreal, and that the universe is a single indivisible unity; (2) that evil is illusory, and that the illusion arises through falsely regarding a part as self-subsistent; (3) that time is unreal, and that reality is eternal, not in the sense of being everlasting, but in the sense of being wholly outside time. I do not pretend that this is a complete account of the matters on which all mystics concur, but the three propositions that I have mentioned may serve as representatives of the whole. Let us now imagine ourselves a jury in a law-court, whose business it is to decide on the credibility of the witnesses who make these three somewhat surprising assertions.
We shall find, in the first place, that, while the witnesses agree up to a point, they disagree totally when that point is passed, although they are just as certain as when they agree. Catholics, but not Protestants, may have visions in which the Virgin appears; Christians and Mohammedans, but not Buddhists, may have great truths revealed to them by the Archangel Gabriel; the Chinese mystics of the Tao tell us, as a direct result of their central doctrine, that all government is bad, whereas most European and Mohammedan mystics, with equal confidence, urge submission to constituted authority. As regards the points where they differ, each group will argue that the other groups are untrustworthy; we might, therefore, if we were content with a mere forensic triumph, point out that most mystics think most other mystics mistaken on most points. They might, however, make this only half a triumph by agreeing on the greater importance of the matters about which they are at one, as compared with those as to which their opinions differ. We will, in any case, assume that they have composed their differences, and concentrated the defense at these three points-namely, the unity of the world, the illusory nature of evil, and the unreality of time. What test can we, as impartial outsiders, apply to their unanimous evidence?
As men of scientific temper, we shall naturally first ask whether there is any way by which we can ourselves obtain the same evidence at first hand. To this we shall receive various answers. We may be told that we are obviously not in a receptive frame of mind, and that we lack the requisite humility; or that fasting and religious meditation are necessary; or (if our witness is Indian or Chinese) that the essential prerequisite is a course of breathing exercises. I think we shall find that the weight of experimental evidence is in favor of this last view, though fasting also has been frequently found effective. As a matter of fact, there is a definite physical discipline, called yoga, which is practiced in order to produce the mystic's certainty, and which is recommended with much confidence by those who have tried it. Breathing exercises are its most essential feature, and for our purposes we may ignore the rest.
In order to see how we could test the assertion that yoga gives insight, let us artificially simplify this assertion. Let us suppose that a number of people assure us that if, for a certain time, we breathe in a certain way, we shall become convinced that time is unreal. Let us go further, and suppose that, having tried their recipe, we have ourselves experienced a state of mind such as they describe. But now, having returned to our normal mode of respiration, we are not quite sure whether the vision was to be believed. How shall we investigate this question? ...
Altered States do not Reveal Truth
The certainty and partial unanimity of mystics is no conclusive reason for accepting their testimony on a matter of fact. The man of science, when he wishes others to see what he has seen, arranges his microscope or telescope; that is to say, he makes changes in the external world, but demands of the observer only normal eyesight. The mystic, on the other hand, demands changes in the observer, by fasting, by breathing exercises, and by a careful abstention from external observation. (Some object to such discipline, and think that the mystic illumination cannot be artificially achieved; from a scientific point of view, this makes their case more difficult to test than that of those who rely on yoga. But nearly all agree that fasting and an ascetic life are helpful.) We all know that opium, hashish, and alcohol produce certain effects on the observer, but as we do not think these effects admirable we take no account of them in our theory of the universe. They may even, sometimes, reveal fragments of truth; but we do not regard them as sources of general wisdom. The drunkard who sees snakes does not imagine, afterwards, that he has had a revelation of a reality hidden from others, though some not wholly dissimilar belief must have given rise to the worship of Bacchus. In our own day, as William James related, there have been people who considered that the intoxication produced by laughing-gas revealed truths which are hidden at normal times. From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes. Each is in an abnormal physical condition, and therefore has abnormal perceptions. Normal perceptions, since they have to be useful in the struggle for life, must have some correspondence with fact; but in abnormal perceptions there is no reason to expect such correspondence, and their testimony, therefore, cannot outweigh that of normal perception.
The mystic emotion, if it is freed from unwarranted beliefs, and not so overwhelming as to remove a man wholly from the ordinary business of life, may give something of very great value-the same kind of thing, though in a heightened form, that is given by contemplation. Breadth and calm and profundity may all have their source in this emotion, in which, for the moment, all self-centered desire is dead, and the mind becomes a mirror for the vastness of the universe. Those who have had this experience, and believe it to be bound up unavoidably with assertions about the nature of the universe, naturally cling to these assertions. I believe myself that the assertions are inessential, and that there is no reason to believe them true. I cannot admit any method of arriving at truth except that of science, but in the realm of the emotions I do not deny the value of the experiences which have given rise to religion. Through association with false beliefs, they have led to much evil as well as good; freed from this association, it may be hoped that the good alone will remain.
Source: Bertrand Russell, "A Free Man's Worship" (1902), "Why I Am Not a Christian" (1927), and "Mysticism" in Religion and Science (1935), adapted.
_______________________
CHARLIE DUNBAR BROAD:
GOD AS A GROUNDLESS CONCEPT
Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971) was an English philosopher known for combining analytic precision with a sustained interest in psychical research, a mixture that made him an unusual and sometimes controversial figure in twentieth‑century philosophy. Born in Harlesden and educated at Dulwich College and Trinity College, Cambridge, he became known for clear, systematic work in metaphysics and epistemology while also treating telepathy, clairvoyance, and related phenomena as legitimate subjects of philosophical analysis. His writings in Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research (1953) and Lectures on Psychical Research (1962) drew both curiosity and skepticism from colleagues, and his personal life—he was openly homosexual at a time when this was criminalized in Britain—further set him apart from many contemporaries. He spent most of his career at Cambridge and died there in 1971 at the age of 83. The selections below are from his article "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God" (1925).
Broad begins by defining a personal God and clarifying what it means to be a "person". For him, a person must think, feel, and will. Additionally, a person must possess both contemporary and successive mental unity, and the being must immediately recognize this unity within itself rather than relying on an external observer. He then distinguishes between three senses of the word "God". In the popular sense, a God is a person who is much more powerful and wise than humans, yet not unique, infinitely powerful, or necessarily morally superior. The theological sense pushes all attributes to extremes, demanding absolute perfection, logical consistency, uniqueness, and existential independence from the universe. Broad notes that theologians may intend these extreme attributes as compliments rather than literal descriptions. Finally, the philosophical sense is much wider, as a philosophical God need not be a person at all. This sense encompasses deism or varieties of pantheism, where God is identical to the universe as a whole. Broad argues that we should restrict the word to the popular and theological senses, both of which require a personal being.
Regarding knowledge of God, Broad examines claims to direct knowledge. He rejects the claim that God's existence is self-evident, for propositions asserting existence rather than necessary connections between qualities are rarely self-evident. He also discounts supersensible perceptions of God. We cannot test these experiences through cross-sensory checking or consensus, and even taken at face value, they would support a bewildering variety of popular gods rather than a single theological deity.
Broad dismisses deductive arguments for God, noting the ontological proof is fallacious and the cosmological proof fails to establish a personal God. He then analyzes inductive arguments, beginning with the argument from design. The adaptation of inorganic nature to life is unconvincing, since such conditions are local and temporary within an immense universe. The intricate design of organisms themselves serves as a strong argument only if we assume that organisms are complicated machines that originated from inorganic matter. Broad rejects the mechanistic view of biology, which makes the design argument unconvincing to him. Even if accepted, design would only prove a past superhuman workman of limited power or goodness rather than a creative, morally perfect theological God. Broad also rejects inductive arguments from human minds, as the hypothesis of God explains nothing about how mind arises from matter. He concludes that people only postulate God when they start with a narrow, inadequate view of nature. While Broad admits that mystical experiences point to a contact with some reality, he finds no good reason to suppose this reality is personal, since many Eastern mystics and certain European philosophers reject the personal interpretation. Finally, Broad argues it is irrational to believe in God on authority, since experts do not agree on proofs and claims of direct perception remain highly suspicious.
MEANING OF "GOD" (from "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God" 1925)
The Meaning of "Personal God"
In order to discuss the question whether there is any ground for believing in the existence of a personal God it is necessary to begin by defining our terms. For the word 'personal' and the word 'God' are both highly ambiguous. I will begin with the word 'personal'. . . .
We have said that 'a personal God' means 'a God which either is a person or is a whole composed of nothing but interrelated persons'. But what do we mean by a 'person'? I do not know that we can define the term; but, by considering examples of what we should call 'persons' and by contrasting them with examples of what we should refuse to call 'persons', we can see pretty well what is involved in being a person. We call a sane grown man a 'person'. We refuse to call any inanimate object, such as a chair, a 'person'. We also refuse to call a cat or a dog or a horse a 'person', though we admit that they have feelings, impulses, instincts, habits, etc. And I think that it would be felt to be a strained and metaphorical use of language to call a very young baby a 'person'. If we reflect on these examples I think we shall see that we apply the name 'person' literally to a substance if, and only if, it fulfils the following conditions: (1) It must think, feel, will, etc. (2) Its various contemporary states must have that peculiar kind of unity which we express by saying that they 'together make up a single total state of mind'. (3) Its successive total states must have that peculiar kind of unity with each other which we express by saying that they are 'so many different stages in the history of a single mind'. (4) These two kinds of unity must be recognized by itself, and not only by some external observer, i.e. it must not only be in fact a mind, but must also know that it is a mind. And this knowledge must be, in part at least, immediate and not merely inferential; though its knowledge of many details about itself may, of course, be inferential and not immediate. It may be the case that every substance which has the kind and degree of internal unity necessary for being a mind also knows immediately that it is a mind. Still, it is one thing to have this kind and degree of unity, and it is another thing to know immediately that one has it; and it seems logically possible that the former might happen without the latter. In that case we should not, I think, refer to this mind as a 'person'. It is therefore necessary explicitly to introduce this fourth condition. . . .
Popular Sense of the Word "God"
I have now, I hope, made clear what is meant by 'being a person', and have stated some important additional facts about this characteristic. The next point to be considered is what is meant by being a 'God'. I think it is quite certain that the word 'God' is extremely ambiguous, and that it has commonly been used in at least three different, though connected, senses. I distinguish these as the popular sense, the theological sense, and the philosophical sense. In the popular sense of the word 'God' a God is ipso facto a person. This person is supposed to be analogous to a human being, but to be much more powerful. It is supposed to be able to do things of a different kind from those which human beings can do, and I think that it is generally conceived as not subject to death and as exercising an important influence on the weal or woe of human beings. This is all that is involved in the notion of a God in the popular sense. It is not supposed to be necessarily unique; it is not supposed to be infinitely powerful or perfectly wise, but merely to be a great deal more powerful and a great deal wiser than any living human being. And it is not supposed of necessity to have created men or to have created the material world, nor is the continued existence of nature and of men supposed necessarily to be dependent on the continued support of a God in this sense. Lastly, a God, in the popular sense, need not be morally superior to the best human beings, though he must be wiser than the wisest and stronger than the strongest human beings. Jehovah and Apollo are Gods in the popular sense; but Jehovah inculcated a high moral tone by precept rather than by example; and Apollo, in view of his relations with Cassandra and with Hyacinthus, might have had difficulty in obtaining the College testimonial for deacon's orders, which has never been held to require a superhuman level of moral achievement.
Theological Sense of the Word "God"
The word 'God', in the theological sense, has in one respect a wider meaning, and in other respects a narrower meaning, than the same word when used in the popular sense. . .
The theological sense of the word 'God' is thus wider than the popular sense, in so far as the former can be applied either to a person or to certain wholes composed of interrelated persons, whilst the latter can be applied only to a person. In all other respects, however, the theological conception of God is narrower and more rigid than the popular conception. (1) Theologians push all the attributes of God to extremes. A God, in the theological sense, must be not merely very wise and very strong; he must be perfectly wise, and capable of doing anything which does not involve some internal logical inconsistency. (2) It is an essential part of the theological conception of God that he shall be morally perfect. (3) It is also part of the theological conception of God that he shall be unique. By this I mean that theologians are not content to hold that there happens to be only one thing answering to the definition of 'God', just as there happens to be only one thing answering to the description of 'the brother of Romulus'. They hold that, from the nature of the case, there could only be one God, just as, from the nature of the case, there could only be one individual answering to the description 'the most virtuous undergraduate in Trinity'. I think that this is one reason why theologians refuse to call the persons of the Trinity 'Gods', and confine the name 'God' to the Trinity as a whole. For, in all other respects but uniqueness, the persons of the Trinity would seem to be 'Gods' in the strict theological sense. (4) Finally, it is, I think, part of the theological conception of God that he cannot be identified with the universe. There has to be some asymmetrical relation between God and the rest of the universe, so that there is a sense in which we can say that the latter is existentially dependent on the former whilst the former is not existentially dependent on the latter.
I will make a few explanatory comments on the theological conception of God before passing to the philosophical conception. (1) I do not know how far the statements of theologians about the omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection of God are to be taken literally. It may be that this pushing of God's attributes to extremes is only intended as a compliment; and that when God is said to be perfectly wise, and good, and powerful, these phrases are to be regarded as analogous to 'Your Serene Transparency' when applied to German princes or 'His Most Religious Majesty' when applied to Charles II. Persons who used the latter phrases plainly did not intend to deny that German princes are opaque to light, or that Charles II was sometimes inclined to be a little careless about the higher spiritual values. And it may be that theologians do not intend their statements about God's attributes to be interpreted too literally. On that hypothesis the theological conception of God may not really differ so much from the popular conception as it seems to do. . . .
Philosophical Sense of the Word "God"
I pass now to the philosophical sense of the word 'God'. This is very much wider in either the theological or the popular sense of the word. A 'God', in the philosophical sense, need not be a person or a whole composed of nothing but interrelated persons. It therefore need not be wise or good, for these epithets apply only to persons. The name 'God' has been applied by certain philosophers to the Universe as a whole. Thus Hegel calls the Absolute 'God', and Spinoza talks of 'God or Nature' as synonymous terms like Augustus and Octavius. I think, however, that even in philosophy the name 'God' would be applied to the Universe only on the supposition that the Universe has a much more intimate internal unity than it appears to have at first sight, and that this unity is of a special kind. I think that all philosophers who have asserted the existence of God have held one of three views about the internal structure of the Universe: (1) That there is a certain part of the Universe which is not existentially dependent on any thing else, and that all the rest of the Universe is existentially dependent on this part of it. This substance is then called 'God', whatever its other characteristics may be. This is the doctrine which is known as Deism. It is held by those philosophers who talk of God as 'the great First Cause'. (2) That there are certain characteristics of the Universe from which all its other characteristics necessarily follow. In that case the name 'God' will often be applied by philosophers to the Universe in virtue of its having this peculiar internal structure. Thus Spinoza distinguishes between Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata. Natura Naturans is the Universe, regarded as having certain fundamental characteristics from which all the rest follow. And Natura Naturata is the Universe, regarded as having all the characteristics which follow from these fundamental ones and as having no others. The Universe in its completeness is thus Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata; and Spinoza calls it 'God' in virtue of its having this kind of internal structure. This doctrine is one form of Pantheism. (3) That many of the features which seem to characterize the Universe or parts of it do not really belong to it, but are distorted and partly illusory appearances of characteristics which really do belong to it; in particular, that the Universe is in reality purely mental (i.e. that it is a mind or a society of minds), and that matter, space, and motion are distorted appearances of this mind and its states or of these minds and their mutual relations. The name 'God' is then often applied by philosophers to the Universe as it really is on this view, as distinct from the Universe as it appears to be. This, I suppose, is why Hegel called the Universe 'God'.
I think we may say that no philosopher asserts the existence of God unless he holds one of these three views about the nature of the Universe. On the other hand, many philosophers who do hold one of these three views would refuse to assert the existence of God, on the ground that the word has much more definite implications in theology and in ordinary life and that the use of it in the philosophic sense is misleading. E.g., the Universe, as Dr. McTaggart believed it to be, is a God in the third philosophic sense of the term. But McTaggart always refused to call it 'God' and blamed Hegel for doing so, on the ground that the phrase 'The Absolute' completely conveys his meaning whilst the word 'God' inevitably has associations and arouses emotions which are not justified by what he believed to be the facts. Here I agree with him. I think that we ought to confine the word 'God' to the theological and the popular senses of it; and that, unless we have reason to believe in the existence of a God or Gods in one of these senses, we ought not to say that we believe in the existence of God at all. Now, in these senses of the word, a God is necessarily a personal God. It is either a divine person, or it is a whole composed of nothing but divine persons so intimately related that none of them could exist apart from the rest and outside this whole. And I have defined what I mean by a 'person' and what I mean by 'divine'. The question then is: What reason, if any, have we to believe in the existence of divine persons? For it is plain that we can have no reason to believe in wholes composed of nothing but divine persons related in certain ways unless we have reason to believe in divine persons. And we might have reason to believe in the existence of divine persons whilst we had no means of deciding whether there was one or a dozen, and no means of deciding whether they stood in such and such relations to each other or not.
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
A man who believes in the existence of a divine person might try to justify his belief in one of three ways: (1) He might claim to know directly that such a being exists; or (2) he might claim to be able to prove the existence of such a being, or to make it very probable, by argument; or (3) he might believe it on the authority of others. I will consider these three alleged grounds in turn.
(1) Direct Knowledge of God
A claim to direct knowledge of God's existence might take two different forms: (a) A man might find the proposition 'God exists' self-evident, as most men find the proposition 2+2=4. Or (b) he might claim to know that God exists because he has in some supersensible way perceived God; just as most people claim to know that their chairs and tables exist because they have perceived these objects with their senses. It is quite certain that most people who believe in the existence of God do not pretend that their belief can be justified in either of these ways. Very few people would claim that they find the proposition that God exists self-evident; and still fewer people would claim to have themselves perceived God. But such claims have been made; and there is no way of positively refuting them. But there are reasons which ought to make the claimants themselves extremely doubtful, and which ought to make us still more doubtful, about accepting their claims at their face value. It is notorious that propositions may seem self-evident although they are not true. For propositions which are inconsistent with each other, and which therefore cannot both be true, have seemed to be self-evident to different people. During the war it seemed self-evident to most Englishmen that Germans are morally inferior to the English; and it seemed equally self-evident to most Germans that Englishmen are morally inferior to Germans. One of these propositions must have been false, and probably both of them were. It may be said that in this case both parties were blinded by patriotic emotion; but it might equally be suggested that those persons who find the existence of God self-evident are blinded by religious emotion. If it appears self-evident to some people that there is a perfectly wise, good, and powerful being, it appears equally self-evident to many other people that the existence of such a being is inconsistent with the amount and kind of evil which exists in the world. Lastly, we know what sort of propositions have appeared to be self-evident to nearly everyone and have never been in any danger of being refuted. They are always propositions which assert that one quality is necessarily accompanied by a certain other quality; they are never propositions which assert that there exists an object which has such and such qualities. Now the proposition that God exists is of the latter kind, and not of the former; it is therefore most unlikely that it is really self-evident in the sense which it is self-evident that 2+2=4.
Let us now consider the claim to know directly that God exists because one has perceived him in some supersensible way. Perception may roughly be defined as being in direct cognitive contact with an existent something which manifests certain qualities to the percipient, and is instinctively regarded by him as a part or an appearance of a more extended and more enduring object which has certain other qualities that are not manifested to the percipient at the moment. E.g., when I say that I see a penny, I am in direct cognitive contact with something which manifests the qualities of brownness and approximately circular shape; and I instinctively regard this as a part or an appearance of something which is permanent, which has an inside as well as an outside, and which has qualities like hardness and coldness that are not at present being manifested to me. If this belief be mistaken, I am not perceiving what would commonly be called a 'penny'. Now it is notorious that in ordinary sense-perception we are often deluded and sometimes wildly deluded. A simple example is mistaking a mere mirror-image for a physical object, and a still more striking example is perceiving snakes or pink rats when one is suffering from delirium tremens. It is quite certain, then, that there are delusive sense-perceptions. Now, in the case of sense-perception there are several tests which we can use to tell whether a perception is delusive or not. We can check one sense by another, e.g., sight by touch. We can appeal to the testimony of others and find out whether they see anything that corresponds to what we see. Finally, we can make inferences from what we think we perceive, and find whether they are verified. We can say: 'If there are really rats running about my bed my dog will be excited, bread and cheese will disappear, and so on.' And then we can see whether anything of the kind happens. Now it does not seem to be possible to test the alleged supersensible perception which some people claim to have of God by any of these means. Very few people have had the experiences at all; they are very difficult to describe, and therefore to compare; and it is very hard to point to any verifiable consequences which would follow if, and only if, these perceptions were not delusive. And, so far as I can see, nothing comparable to supporting the testimony of one sense by that of another is here possible. This does not, of course, prove that such supersensible perceptions are delusive; but it does show that we have no means of telling whether they are or are not. And, as we already know that many perceptions are delusive, this is a serious matter. As Hobbes says: 'When a man tells me that God spoke to him in a dream all that I can be sure of is that he dreamed that God spoke to him.'
Even if we waive this objection, and take at their face value the statements of people who say that they have perceived God, they give no support whatever to the existence of a single perfectly wise, good, and powerful being, on whom all the rest of the Universe depends. They would tend rather to support the view that there is a bewildering variety of Gods in the popular sense, many of whom possess the oddest personal peculiarities.
(2) Arguments for God
Deductive Arguments: Ontological and Cosmological
I pass now to arguments for the existence of God. These may be divided into deductive and inductive arguments. There are two of the former. One professes to prove from the definition of God that such a being must exist. This argument, if it were valid, would have the advantage of proving the existence of an unique individual possessed of all possible perfections, i.e. of God, in the theological sense. But it is universally admitted by philosophers and theologians that the argument is logically fallacious. It is called the Ontological Argument.
The second deductive argument starts from the premiss that no thing or event in nature exists of intrinsic necessity. Such necessity as we find within nature is purely relative and hypothetical. We can say that, given A, B necessarily follows. But we cannot say that A's existence or B's existence is intrinsically necessary if A and B be things or events in nature. It is then argued that, since nature as a whole has this contingent character, its existence must depend on something else whose existence is intrinsically necessary. This something is called 'God'. The argument is known as the Cosmological Argument. It is not so obviously fallacious as the Ontological Argument, and it has been accepted by some very able theologians and philosophers, such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Locke. Nevertheless, I agree with Kant and Hume that it is fallacious. Fortunately it is not necessary for me to prove this here, because the argument is irrelevant for our present purpose. For it is certain that, even if it be valid, it has no tendency to prove the existence of a personal God. At best it would prove the existence of God only in one of the three philosophical senses of that term, and not in the theological or the popular sense.
Inductive Arguments for God
We may therefore dismiss the deductive arguments and consider the inductive ones. These start with certain admitted facts about nature and man, and argue back to the existence of God as the hypothesis which best explains these facts. Of course, the conclusions of such arguments could never be more than highly probable. But I do not think that this is a serious objection. We could quite reasonably say that the existence of God was 'proved' if it could be rendered as probable as the existence of Julius Caesar. Such arguments may be classified according to their premisses. (a) They may start from certain facts about inorganic nature and living organisms. (b) They may start from the fact that nature contains minds which are capable of distinguishing good and evil and of guiding their actions by ideals. (c) They may start from the fact that certain minds have, in addition, specifically religious emotions and other experiences. A complete inductive argument would presumably use all these facts as premisses.
(a) Inductive argument from Design
The first set of facts forms the basis of the famous Design Argument. This has been so thoroughly discussed by Hume in his Dialogues on Natural Religion that there is little left to say about it. I will content myself with the following remarks: (i) We must distinguish between the adaptation of inorganic nature to life in general, and the peculiarities of organisms as such. Let us begin with the former. It is certain that the condition of inorganic nature on the earth is, and has long been, extremely well adapted to the existence and growth of living organisms. So far as we know, the conditions under which organisms can exist are very peculiar, so that it is antecedently improbable that they should be fulfilled. Hence it is argued that they must have been deliberately brought about by a mind which wanted organisms to exist and flourish. This, I think, is a fallacious argument. It seems certain that the fulfilment of these conditions is really very local and temporary. They are probably not fulfilled now in the greater part of the Universe; they certainly were not fulfilled formerly on the earth, and they almost certainly will cease to be fulfilled there in the distant future. Now it is not antecedently improbable that even very peculiar conditions shall be fulfilled for a comparatively short time in a comparatively small region of a universe which is indefinitely extended in both Space and Time. (ii) The position about organisms themselves is as follows. An organism is an extremely intricate system which appears, even to the most superficial view, to be extraordinarily well adapted to preserve itself in face of varying conditions and to produce things like itself. And the more minutely we examine it the more accurately true do we find this to be. Now the only other things that we know of which have the least analogy to this are artificial machines. We know that these have been designed by minds, and we have not the least reason to think that they could have existed unless there had been minds which designed them and arranged their parts in such a way as to carry out these designs. Of course organisms are now produced by other organisms, just as typewriters are produced by other machines. But in the history of any artificial machine we eventually come back to a mind which had designs and arranged matter in such a way as to carry them out. We may assume, by analogy, that if we went far enough back in the history of organisms we should come on a mind which designed them and arranged matter accordingly. This mind was certainly not human, and it must certainly have been of superhuman wisdom and power to produce such results. It may therefore fairly be called 'God'.
I may say at once that I consider this to be an extremely strong argument if we grant two assumptions which are commonly made. The first is that organisms originated from inorganic matter. The second is that an organism really is nothing but a complicated machine, i.e. that its characteristic behaviour is wholly due to the peculiar arrangement of its parts, and is not due to entirely new properties of matter which first appear at the organic level. If we reject either of these assumptions the argument loses much of its force. If there have always been organisms of some kind, and no organism has ever originated from inorganic matter, there is no need to postulate a designing mind even though organisms be nothing but machines. And if organisms be not merely machines, there is no need to postulate a designing mind even though organisms did originate out of inorganic matter. Now, I do not see the least reason to believe that the characteristic behaviour of organisms can be wholly explained by the peculiar arrangement of their parts and the laws and properties of inorganic matter. Hence the argument for the existence of a designing mind from the peculiarities of organisms does not convince me, though I think it ought to have great weight with a purely mechanistic biologist.
(iii) Even if we accept the argument it will not prove the existence of God, in the theological sense. In the first place, it would prove only that a designing mind had existed in the past, not that it does exist now. It is quite compatible with this argument that God should have died long ago, or that he should have turned his attention to other parts of the Universe. Again, so far from proving the existence of a being on whom the rest of the Universe is existentially dependent, it negatives this supposition. It proves the existence of a superhuman workman faced with material whose properties he has to recognize and make use of, and not of a creative being. Thirdly, there is nothing in the facts to suggest that there is only one such being. And lastly, there is nothing to suggest that he is morally perfect. We must grant him superhuman skill and power, but the actual state of the world forces us to limit either his power or his goodness, or his wisdom, or all three. So, at the very best, the argument would prove only that at some time in the remote past there had been one or more Gods in the popular sense of the word.
(b) Inductive Argument from Minds like Ours
I will now consider the argument for the existence of God from the existence of minds like ours which can look before and after, make judgments of good and evil, and guide their conduct by them. It may be admitted that we cannot conceive of any natural process by which minds could have arisen spontaneously from mere matter. So it has been suggested that we must postulate the existence of God to account for the facts. But, in the first place, there is no reason to accept the alleged facts; and secondly, the hypothesis of a God would provide no explanation of them. (i) It is quite possible that there have always been minds, and that no mind has ever originated from anything but another mind by a natural process. In that case the hypothesis of God is needless for the present purpose. (ii) If we make the hypothesis we have explained absolutely nothing. We are still obliged to suppose that there have always been minds, though not always non-divine minds. And the production of non-divine minds from mere matter remains just as unintelligible whether we say that it happens spontaneously or that it is miraculously accomplished by God.
The fact is that the Argument from Design and the argument which I have just been discussing illustrate an important general principle. If you start with a sufficiently narrow and inadequate view of nature you will have to postulate a God to get you out of the difficulties in which it lands you. E.g., if you insist that living organisms are mere machines, you have to postulate God to construct them out of unorganized matter. And if you insist that nature is fundamentally material and that mind is a kind of afterthought, you have to postulate God to account for the origin of mind, though, as I have pointed out, the hypothesis does not here really help you. But why should you start with these narrow and inadequate views of nature? They have no trace of self-evidence and they conflict with the observable facts in every direction. And, unless you make this mistake at the outset, I do not think you will be able to find any inductive proof of the existence of God.
(c) Argument from Mystical Experiences
Finally, I come to the argument for the existence of God which is based on the occurrence of specifically mystical and religious experiences. I am prepared to admit that such experiences occur among people of different races and social traditions, and that they have occurred at all periods of history. I am prepared to admit that, although the experiences have differed considerably at different times and places, and although the interpretations which have been put on them have differed still more, there are probably certain characteristics which are common to all of them and which suffice to distinguish them from all other kinds of experience. In view of this I think it more likely than not that in religious and mystical experience men come into contact with some Reality or some aspect of Reality which they do not come into contact with in any other way.
But I do not think that there is any good reason to suppose that this Reality which manifests itself to certain men in religious and mystical experiences is personal. I think that we are inclined to believe this because we are most familiar with the religious experiences of Western Europeans and of Jews, most of whom have put this interpretation upon them. We do not know, or we forget, that the mystics and religious teachers of the Far East on the whole definitely reject this interpretation. And we are inclined to forget that certain Europeans, such as Plotinus and Spinoza, who have had these experiences also reject this interpretation of them.
I think on the whole, then, that there is no inductive argument which makes it at all highly probable that there is a personal God.
(3) Knowledge of God from Authority of Others
It only remains to consider whether it is reasonable to believe in the existence of a personal God on the authority of other men. We all believe many propositions on authority, and in many cases it would be most irrational not to do so. It is rational to believe a proposition on authority if one of two conditions is fulfilled. (i) If experts agree that it can be proved, but the argument is too difficult or unfamiliar for me to follow it myself. (ii) If persons whom I know to be competent and trustworthy tell me that they have perceived certain things which I have not perceived myself. I accept many propositions in mathematics on the authority of Professor Hardy, who tells me that they can be proved; and I accept many propositions in physics on the authority of Professor Rutherford, whom I know to be a trustworthy person and a highly skilled experimenter and observer. But neither of these conditions is fulfilled in the case of the proposition that there exists a personal God. There is no consensus of experts about the alleged proofs, and I can see for myself that these arguments are fallacious. And I have tried to show that the claims of certain persons to have perceived God in some supersensible way are to be regarded with grave suspicion even if we accept their bona fides. Hence it would be irrational for me to believe in the existence of a personal God on the authority of others.
To conclude. Whether there be in fact a personal God or not, it seems to me that we have no good reason to believe in the existence of such a being. I think that there are such grave difficulties in the notion of a God in the theological sense that there are strong reasons against believing that such a being exists. These objections do not apply to the notion of Gods in the popular sense. For all I can see there may be dozens of such Gods; and the only reason against being a polytheist is that there is no reason for being one.
Source: Charlie Dunbar Broad, "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God", Hibbert Journal. 24 (1925): 32-48, adapted.
_______________________
ALFRED JULES AYER:
RELIGIOUS CLAIMS AS UNVERIFIABLE UTTERANCES
Alfred Jules Ayer (1910–1989) was born in London to a family of mixed Dutch‑Jewish and Swiss heritage, his father a successful businessman and his mother from a prominent continental family. He was educated at Eton College and later at Oxford University, where he studied classics and philosophy and quickly gravitated toward the emerging movements in analytic thought. After graduating, he spent a formative year in Vienna in 1932–1933, meeting members of the Vienna Circle and absorbing the ideas of logical positivism that would shape his early career. Returning to England, he held a series of academic posts and in 1936 published Language, Truth and Logic, the book that made him famous at age twenty‑six and established him as the leading English‑language proponent of logical empiricism. During World War II he served in British military intelligence, after which he resumed his academic career with appointments at University College London and later at Oxford, where he became Wykeham Professor of Logic. Over the next four decades he wrote widely on philosophy, broadcasting, and public affairs, remaining a prominent figure in British intellectual life until his death in London in 1989 at the age of 78. The selections below are from Language, Truth and Logic.
The central theme of Ayer's book is that, for any utterance to be meaningful, it must pass a two-part verification test. The utterance must be either (1) true by definition (e.g., all bachelors are unmarried men) or (2) empirically verifiable (the door is brown). If an utterance fails both parts of this test, it is not making any true or false claim about the world, and thus has no real meaning. At most, it just expresses our feelings. According to Ayer, religious claims fail both parts of the verification test.
In the first section Ayer argues that no deductive argument can establish God's existence. A deductive proof requires premises that are themselves certain, but no empirical premise is ever certain, and a priori truths are merely tautologies. Since tautologies cannot entail the existence of anything, no deductive argument can validly conclude that God exists. Ayer then adds that God's existence cannot even be shown to be probable. If "God exists" were a probable claim, it would have to function as an empirical hypothesis that yields testable predictions. But it does not. If "God" is defined in empirical terms, the claim collapses into a trivial restatement of natural regularities. If it is defined as a transcendent being, the term becomes non‑empirical and therefore meaningless. Either way, the sentence "God exists" fails to express a genuine proposition.
In the second section on no empirical probability of God, Ayer distinguishes his view from atheism and agnosticism. Atheists treat "God does not exist" as a meaningful denial; agnostics treat "God exists" as a meaningful but undecidable question. Ayer rejects both positions. If "God exists" is a nonsensical utterance, then "God does not exist" is equally nonsensical, since only meaningful propositions can be contradicted. Agnosticism also fails, because it assumes that the existence of a transcendent God is a genuine possibility. Ayer concludes that theistic, atheistic, and agnostic claims all mistakenly assume that "God" is a meaningful term. In sophisticated religions, God is defined as a non‑empirical, transcendent person, but a "person" with non‑empirical attributes is not an intelligible concept. The word "God" appears to name something, but once we ask what its attributes are, we find that it names nothing at all. The same applies to the traditional notion of an immortal soul: it is a metaphysical term without factual content.
Ayer continues in the next section arguing that science and religion cannot logically conflict because religious utterances do not express genuine propositions. Since meaningless sentences cannot contradict scientific ones, there is no logical tension between the two domains. Any practical antagonism arises only because science reduces the feelings of awe and helplessness that historically motivated religious belief. Ayer also notes that many theists themselves describe God as transcending human understanding, which, if taken literally, implies that God cannot be described in meaningful language.
In the final section Ayer evaluates the claim that mystical intuition reveals religious truths. He allows that people may have powerful experiences, but insists that no experience counts as knowledge unless it yields verifiable propositions. Mystics cannot formulate any testable claims about what they allegedly "see," nor can they specify conditions under which their insights could be confirmed or disconfirmed. Their experiences therefore reveal nothing about the external world; at most, they reveal something about the mystic's own psychological state. Ayer concludes that appeals to religious experience fail for the same reason as all other religious claims: they do not produce empirically meaningful propositions.
WHY REASON CANNOT SUPPORT BELIEF IN GOD (From Chapter 6)
No Deductive Proof of God
This mention of God brings us to the question of the possibility of religious knowledge. We shall see that this possibility has already been ruled out by our treatment of metaphysics. But, as this is a point of considerable interest, we may be permitted to discuss it at some length.
It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved. To see that this is so, we have only to ask ourselves what are the premises from which the existence of such a god could be deduced. If the conclusion that a god exists is to be demonstratively certain, then these premises must be certain; for, as the conclusion of a deductive argument is already contained in the premises, any uncertainty there may be about the truth of the premises is necessarily shared by it. But we know that no empirical proposition can ever be anything more than probable. It is only a priori propositions that are logically certain. But we cannot deduce the existence of a god from an a priori proposition. For we know that the reason why a priori propositions are certain is that they are tautologies. And from a set of tautologies nothing but a further tautology can be validly deduced. It follows that there is no possibility of demonstrating the existence of a god.
What is not so generally recognized is that there can be no way of proving that the existence of a god, such as the God of Christianity, Is even probable. Yet this also is easily shown. For if the existence of such a god were probable, then the proposition that he existed would be an empirical hypothesis. And in that case it would be possible to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses, certain experiential propositions which were not deducible from those other hypotheses alone. But in fact this is not possible. It is sometimes claimed, indeed, that the existence of a certain sort of regularity in nature constitutes sufficient evidence for the existence of a god. But if the sentence 'God exists' entails no more than that certain types of phenomena occur in certain sequences, then to assert the existence of a god will be simply equivalent to asserting that there is the requisite regularity in nature; and no religious man would admit that this was all he intended to assert in asserting the existence of a god. He would say that in talking about God he was talking about a transcendent being who might be known through certain empirical manifestations, but certainly could not be denned in terms of those manifestations. But in that case the term 'god' is a metaphysical term. And if 'god' is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be even probable that a god exists- For to say that 'God exists' is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance.
No Empirical Probability of God
It is important not to confuse this view of religious assertions with the view that is adopted by atheists, or agnostics. For it is characteristic of an agnostic to hold that the existence of a god is a possibility in which there is no good reason either to- believe or disbelieve; and" it is characteristic of an atheist to hold that it is at least probable that no god exists. And our view that all utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical, so far from being identical with, or even lending any support to, either of these familiar contentions, as actually incompatible with them. For if the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted. As for the agnostic, although he refrains from saying either that there is or that there is not a god, he does not deny that the question whether a transcendent god exists is a genuine question. He does not deny that the two sentences 'There is a transcendent god' and 'There is no transcendent god' express propositions one of which is actually true and the other false. All he says is that we have no means of telling which of them is true, and therefore ought not to commit ourselves to either. But we have seen that the sentences in question do not express propositions at all. And this means that agnosticism also is ruled out.
Thus we offer the theist the same comfort as we gave to the moralist. His assertions Cannot possibly be valid, but they cannot be invalid either. As he says nothing at all about the world, he cannot justly be accused of saying anything false, or anything for which he has insufficient grounds. It is only when the theist claims that in asserting the existence of a transcendent god he is expressing a genuine proposition that we are entitled to disagree with him.
It is to be remarked that in cases where deities are identified with natural objects, assertions concerning them may be allowed to be significant, if, for example, a man tells me that the occurrence of thunder is alone both necessary 1 and sufficient to establish the truth of the proposition that Jehovah is angry, 1 may conclude that, in his usage of words, the sentence 'Jehovah is angry' is equivalent to 'It Is thundering.' But in sophisticated religions, though they may he to some extent based on men's awe of natural processes which they cannot sufficiently understand, the 'person' who is supposed to control the empirical world is not himself located in it; he is held to be superior to the empirical world, and so outside it; and he is endowed with super-empirical attributes. But the notion of a person whose essential attributes are non-empirical is not an intelligible notion at all. We may have a word which is used as if it named this 'person', but, unless the sentences in which It occurs express propositions which are empirically verifiable, it cannot be said to symbolize anything. And this is the case with regard to the word 'god', in the usage in which it is intended to refer to a transcendent object. The mere existence of the noun is enough to foster the illusion that there is a real, or at any rate a possible entity corresponding to it. It is only when we inquire what God's attributes are that we discover that 'God', in this usage, is not a genuine name.
It is common to find belief in a transcendent god conjoined with belief in an after-life. But, in the form which it usually takes, the content of this belief is not a genuine hypothesis. To say that men do not ever die, or that the state of death is merely a state of prolonged insensibility, is indeed to express a significant proposition, though all the available evidence goes to show that it is false. But to say that there is something imperceptible inside a man, which is his soul or his real self, and that it goes on living after he is dead, is to make a metaphysical assertion which has no more factual content than the assertion that there Is a transcendent god.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE FOR RELIGION
Why Religion Cannot Conflict with Science
It is worth mentioning that, according to the account which we have given of religious assertions, there is no logical ground for antagonism between religion and natural science. As far as the question of truth or falsehood is concerned, there is no opposition between the natural scientist and the theist who believes in a transcendent god. For since the religious utterances of the theist are not genuine propositions at all they cannot stand in any logical relation to the propositions of science. Such antagonism as there is between religion and science appears to consist in the fact that science takes away one of the motives which make men religious. For it is acknowledged that one of the ultimate sources of religious feeling lies in the inability of men to determine their own destiny; and science tends to destroy the feeling of awe with which men regard an alien world, by making them believe that they can understand and anticipate the course of natural phenomena, and even to some extent control St. The fact that it has recently become fashionable for physicists themselves to be sympathetic towards religion is a point in favour of this hypothesis. For this sympathy towards religion marks the physicists' own lack of confidence in the validity of their hypotheses, which is a reaction on their part from the anti-religious dogmatism of nineteenth-century scientists, and a natural outcome of the crisis through which physics has just passed.
It is not within the scope of this inquiry to enter more deeply into the causes of religious feeling, or to discuss the probability of the continuance of religious belief. We are concerned only to answer those questions which arise out of our discussion of the possibility of religious knowledge. The point which we wish to establish is that there cannot be any transcendent truths of religion. For the sentences which the theist uses to express such 'truths' are not literally significant. An interesting feature of this conclusion is that it accords with what many theists are accustomed to say themselves. For we are often told that the nature of God is a mystery which transcends the human understanding. But to say that something transcends the human understanding is to say that it is unintelligible. And what is unintelligible cannot significantly be described. Again, we are told that God is not an object of reason but an object of faith. This may be nothing more than an admission that the existence of God must be taken, on trust, since it cannot be proved. But it may also be an assertion that God is the object of a purely mystical intuition, and cannot therefore be defined in terms which are intelligible to the reason. And I think, there arc many theists who would assert this. But if one allows that it is impossible to define God in intelligible terms, then one is allowing that it is impossible for a sentence both to be significant and to he about God. If a mystic admits that the object of his vision is something which cannot be described, then he must also admit that he is bound to talk nonsense when he describes it.
Why Mystical Experience Is not a Source of Truth
For his part, the mystic may protest that his intuition does reveal truths to him, even though he cannot explain to others what these truths are; and that we who do not possess this faculty of intuition can have no ground for denying that it is a cognitive faculty. For we can hardly maintain a priori that there are no ways of discovering true propositions except those which we ourselves employ. The answer is that we set no limit to the number of ways in which one may come to formulate a true proposition. We do not in any way deny that a synthetic truth may be discovered by purely intuitive methods as well as by the rational method of induction. But we do say that every synthetic proposition, however it may have been arrived at, must be subject to the test of actual experience. We do not deny a priori that the mystic is able to discover truths by his own special methods. We wait to hear what arc the propositions which embody his discoveries, in order to see whether they are verified or confuted by our empirical observations. But the mystic so far from producing propositions which are empirically verified, is unable to produce any intelligible propositions at all. And therefore we say that his intuition has not revealed to him any facts. It is no use his saying that he has apprehended facts but is unable to express them. For we know that if he really had acquired any information, he would be able to express it. He would be able to indicate in some way or other how the genuineness of his discovery might be empirically determined. The fact that he cannot reveal what he 'knows', or even himself devise an empirical test to validate his 'knowledge', shows that his state of mystical intuition is not a genuinely cognitive state- So that in describing his vision the mystic does not give us any information about the external world. he merely gives us indirect information about the condition of his own mind.
These considerations dispose of the argument from religious experience, which many philosophers still regard as a valid argument in favour of the existence of a god. They say that it is logically possible for men to be immediately acquainted with God, as they are immediately acquainted with a sense-content, and that there is no reason why one should be prepared to believe a man when he says that he is seeing a yellow patch, and refuse to believe him he says that he is seeing God. The answer to this Is that if the man who asserts that he is seeing God is merely asserting that he is experiencing a peculiar kind of sense-content, then we do not for a moment deny that bis assertion may be true. But, ordinarily, the man who says that he is seeing God is saying not merely that he is experiencing a religious emotion, but also that there exists a transcendent being who is the: object of this emotion; just as the man who says that he sees a yellow patch is ordinarily saying not merely that his visual sense-field contains a yellow sense-content, but also that there exists a yellow object to which the sense-content belongs. And it is not irrational to be prepared to believe a man when he asserts the existence of a yellow object, and to refuse to believe him when he asserts the existence of a transcendent god. For whereas the sentence 'There exists here a yellow-coloured material thing' expresses a genuine synthetic proposition which could be empirically verified, the sentence 'There exists a transcendent god' has, as we have seen, no literal significance.
We conclude, therefore, that the argument from, religious experience is altogether fallacious. The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge, any more than our having moral experiences implies that there is such a thing as moral "knowledge. The theist, like the moralist, may believe that his experiences are cognitive experiences, but, unless he can formulate his 'knowledge' in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may be sure that he is deceiving himself. It follows that those philosophers who fill their books with assertions that they intuitively 'know' this or that moral or religious 'truth' are merely providing material for the psychoanalyst. For no act of intuition can be said to reveal a truth about any matter of fact unless it issues m verifiable propositions. And all such propositions are to be incorporated! in the system of empirical propositions which constitutes science.
Source: Alfred Jules Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, first published by Victor Gollancz Ltd (London, 1936), adapted. This work is in the public domain in the United States due to non-renewal of its initial copyright term under the US Copyright Act of 1909.
STUDY QUESTIONS
Please answer all of the following questions.
1. According to Russell in "A Free Man's Worship," why must any viable modern philosophy be built upon the "firm foundation of unyielding despair"?
2. According to Russell in "A Free Man's Worship," what distinguishes the "religion of Moloch" from a "free man's worship"?
3. According to Russell in "Why I Am Not a Christian," why is John Stuart Mill's question "Who made God?" fatal to the First-Cause Argument?
4. According to Russell in "Why I Am Not a Christian," how does Darwinian evolution undermine the classical Argument from Design?
5. According to Russell in "Why I Am Not a Christian," what moral and intellectual defects in Christ's teaching prevent him from regarding Christ as the best and wisest of men?
6. According to Russell in "Why I Am Not a Christian," what is the primary psychological foundation of religious belief, and how does science help overcome it?
7. According to Russell in "Mysticism," why does the partial agreement among mystics fail to provide reliable evidence for their metaphysical assertions?
8. According to Russell in "Mysticism," why are altered physical states induced by fasting or breathing exercises no more trustworthy than drug-induced hallucinations?
9. According to Broad in "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God," what four conditions must a substance fulfill to be strictly defined as a "person"?
10. According to Broad in "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God," how do the "popular," "theological," and "philosophical" senses of the word "God" differ from one another?
11. According to Broad in "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God," why is the claim to direct, self-evident knowledge of God's existence epistemologically suspect?
12. According to Broad in "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God," why can supersensible perceptions of God not be tested in the same manner as normal sense perceptions?
13. According to Broad in "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God," why does the Argument from Design fail to prove the existence of the God of traditional theology?
14. According to Broad in "The Validity of Belief in a Personal God," why is it irrational to believe in the existence of a personal God based on the authority of others?
15. According to Ayer in *Language, Truth and Logic*, why can the existence of a transcendent God be neither demonstratively proved nor shown to be probable?
16. According to Ayer in *Language, Truth and Logic*, why are the positions of both the atheist and the agnostic logically untenable?
17. According to Ayer in *Language, Truth and Logic*, why is the concept of a "person" endowed with non-empirical attributes unintelligible?
18. According to Ayer in *Language, Truth and Logic*, why can there be no genuine logical conflict between natural science and religious claims?
19. According to Ayer in *Language, Truth and Logic*, why does mystical intuition fail to yield any factual information about the external world?
20. According to Ayer in *Language, Truth and Logic*, how does Ayer distinguish between seeing a "yellow patch" and claiming to see "God"?
21. Short Essay Options: Please select one of the following and answer it in a minimum of 100 words.
(a) Critics argue that Russell's "free man's worship" is internally incoherent; if human beings and their moral ideals are merely accidental products of blind physical forces, there is no objective rational justification for prioritizing human goodness over non-human power. How might Russell respond?
(b) Critics argue that Russell's rejection of Christ's moral character relies on a literalistic and unsophisticated reading of gospel rhetoric; expressions of indignation or apocalyptic imagery were common Jewish prophetic idioms rather than personal character defects. How might Russell respond?
(c) Critics argue that Russell's dismissive analogy between mystical states and bodily intoxication overlooks the lasting, life-integrating moral and psychological fruits that distinctively characterize mystical experiences. How might Russell respond?
(d) Critics argue that Broad's strict four-part definition of a "person" relies on an overly anthropomorphic model that improperly restricts how a divine, non-embodied mind could operate. How might Broad respond?
(e) Critics argue that Broad's dismissal of the Design Argument relies on an unwarranted skepticism toward mechanistic biology; if biological systems do in fact exhibit complex functional machine-like behavior, design remains the most reasonable inductive inference. How might Broad respond?
(f) Critics argue that Broad's requirement that supersensible perception must be checked by sensory corroboration or public consensus applies criteria appropriate only to physical objects to a non-physical reality. How might Broad respond?
(g) Critics argue that Ayer's Verification Principle is self-refuting; the principle itself ("a sentence is meaningful only if it is an *a priori* tautology or empirically verifiable") is neither an *a priori* tautology nor empirically verifiable. How might Ayer respond?
(h) Critics argue that Ayer's dismissal of agnosticism and atheism as "nonsensical" ignores the practical, real-world function of religious discourse as a framework for living rather than a set of scientific hypotheses. How might Ayer respond?
(i) Critics argue that analytic philosophy's narrow focus on logical analysis and linguistic verifiability strips philosophy of its historical responsibility to address ultimate questions of human destiny and cosmic meaning. How might either Russell, Broad, or Ayer respond?
(j) Critics argue that by treating all transcendent claims as non-cognitive or meaningless, early analytic philosophers beg the question against non-empiricist epistemologies that acknowledge moral, aesthetic, or spiritual intuition as valid modes of knowledge. How might any one of these thinkers respond?