The following is from Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian:

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 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 progess 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. . . .

It has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all.  ”What has human happiness to do with morals?  The object of morals is not to make people happy.”

The rest of the book continues in a similar vein.  The most disheartening part of all of it is the thing he’s criticizing isn’t Christianity at all.  What he attacks stands in stark contrast to the example set by Jesus who endured the cross for the joy set before him.

Professor Russell, human happiness has everything to do with morals.  But, as Piper put it, I want a joy as deep as it can be and as wide as it can be, and it better last 80 thousand years or I’m not interested.

Let us not despise human happiness.

Q. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever (Westminster Shorter Catechism).

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